On the brutal murder of Yu Xuanyi
Sometime between the evening of Monday January 15, 2024 and the morning of Tuesday January 16, 2024, Yu Xuanyi was brutally murdered at the age of 27 by her husband.
When police arrived at the house, officers found the husband covered in blood and standing near Yu’s body. “She had severe blunt force injuries to her head and there was significant blood spatter on the floor, wall, and the back of the bedroom door where she was found,” […]
In addition to the murder charge, prosecutors filed special allegations that Chen targeted a vulnerable victim, took advantage of a position of trust, and used violence with a “high degree of cruelty, viciousness, or callousness,” a felony criminal complaint states.
Yu Xuanyi’s husband is alleged to have punched Yu Xuanyi to death with his bare fists.
Who was Yu Xuanyi?
Yu Xuanyi lived in Santa Clara, California. She was a Software Engineer at Google. She began her life in China, where she survived a grueling measurement-based education system that culminates in the ultimate measurement, the 高考 (abbr. the Nationwide Unified Examination for Admissions to General Universities and Colleges).
Yu Xuanyi was rewarded for her survival and her excellence by receiving a berth at 清华大学 (Tsinghua University).
The History of 高考
For my United Statesian friends, the 高考 is not to be confused with our SAT.
高考 is as Chinese as KPI I meant apple pie is American. Mythologically it predates the 商 (Shang, 1600 BCE), attestably it was a feature of the 周 (Zhou, 1000 BCE), philosophically it was described by 孔子 (Confucius, 500 BCE) as rationalist lynchpin to his ideal society by providing an objective measure of knowledge and intelligence to select meritorious (male) rulers, and formally it was implemented by the 隋 (Sui, 581 CE) as the 科举 (multi-disciplinary aptitude discriminator).
Chinese people paradoxically believe that the 高考 reflects simultaneously unquestionable merit and untouchable 缘分 (Buddhist: fated pre-ordination).
(Aside: this is a different shape of belief than the United States’ belief that financial success is a direct function of hard work and nepotism. I will analyze this another day, but I believe this comparative analysis would teach my Chinese friends a lot about who I am as a USian, and my USian friends who I am as a Chinese person.)
My dad studied computer science at Tsinghua University. In his youth he was a 学霸 (academic prodigy). My maternal grandfather had been admitted there prior to the Cultural Revolution, but in his youth while he was a 学霸 he did not have 缘分 on his side, so he was a 农民 (peasant, I meant farmer). My mom, despite being smarter than my dad in many respects and very much being a 学霸 (which also means scholar-tyrant), did not have 缘分 on her side when it came to the day of the 高考 (and to be fair, unlike her father but very much like myself, was also lazy as fuck).
Yu Xuanyi and 缘分
Excellence and destiny served as the wind in Yu Xuanyi’s sails. She studied at Tsinghua University, then did her graduate studies at the University of California, San Diego, not far from my hometown of Irvine, and went on to work as Software Engineer at Amazon, followed by Google.
Why write about Yu Xuanyi?
I don’t know. I’ve been thinking about Yu Xuanyi ever since I learned about her in early-February when I was in China visiting family. I normally don’t follow the news, so if my family hadn’t told me, it’s possible I would have never learned of her brutal murder at the hands of her husband.
There are four more topics I plan to write about in the next month:
Money and financial trauma
The paradoxical beauty of the selfishness of love
Education
How I love and yearn for, yet hate and cry for my first home China — a topic my friend serendipitously reminded me of when last night she texted me an iCloud Note from 5 years ago.
Perhaps in exploring those topics, I will understand what it is I want to say about Yu Xuanyi.