Once upon a time, a famous painter and writer in Taipei wrote an inspirational story about a bad student. It told of how the young man’s father pondered long and hard how to change his errant son’s attitude toward study. Since neither the stick nor the carrot had worked, he decided instead to challenge his child to do even worse in his exams and score zero.
As you may have guessed, this was much more difficult than the boy initially imagined. Think of a multiple choice test, randomly choose one of four answers and you are still looking at a mark of 25 percent. The boy had to study extremely hard. To get everything wrong, paradoxically, he had to do everything right and become an “A” student.
This fable was one of many inspirational essays written by Liu Yong (劉墉), who in addition to being an artist and bestselling author was also a popular TV show host. He would eventually leave Taipei in the late 1970s to live and work in New York, as an academic.
Photo courtesy of Liu Shiuan
The point is, the story gained a life of its own and was oft repeated and embellished over the years. During the Internet era it has become one of those “powerful, inspirational and life changing memes” that appear on top 25 lists and are said to “transform lives.”
As a full-time cynic it’s highly unlikely that I would have come across the story or learned about Liu. But I have known his son, Sean Liu (劉軒), on and off for nearly 14 years and he recently posted a bit of a rant on his Facebook page (as you do) about how the tale has been repackaged and promoted as a real-life event. In China, the story is even falsely written in the first person and published under his name. It has also been translated into English and is winning fresh fans even as I write.
So now the World Wide Web, aka the whole wide world, thinks that Liu Shiuan was a poor student tricked by his wise father into becoming a model student. Since the story is not true, I get why he might want to put the record straight. But as a one-cent amateur psychologist myself, I also liked the dynamic of a son emerging from his father’s shadow.
Liu Shiuan has over the past few years become a well-known motivational speaker, TV star and radio talk show host. Like his father, he’s also a writer of best-selling inspirational books.
But when I first met him, possibly in 2001, he had just returned to Taipei from New York, where he had lived for most of his life. Having completed a master’s degree in psychology at Harvard University and studied piano and composition at Juilliard, he was just starting out as a polished and ambitious advertising, marketing and public relations executive at Ogilvy and Mather.
We talked because he had an interest in electronic music and was about to transform himself into his alter ego, the deep house DJ SL. I was covering the scene for the Taipei Times in a column that I started (still running!) called Vinyl Word. I even did a profile on him in 2005. I recall at the time he did not want to include the backstory about his dad since, understandably, he wanted to “make it” on his own terms. It was only at my insistence that we did so.
A decade later he’s older and wiser. He does still DJ and produce original music, but the principal focus is on his fast-developing career as a self-help guru (my words, not his). He’s just come back from a convention in Malaysia, where he gave a motivational talk to young people.
He’s also a hit in China, where he took first place on the popular TV program I Am a Speaker (我是演說家), which he describes as a cross between TEDx and The Voice. His winning speech was about a “lucky secret,” the time he stole sushi from a food stand. “I dug deep to tell a story that had the most truth that I could tell, with the greatest value for the listeners.”
Nowadays, he wears glasses, which makes him look more intellectual and engaging. There’s even a trace of gray in his hair for added gravitas. He’s also married, has two wonderful children, one a son who to my mind looks the splitting image of him. It’s as if the wheel has turned full circle.
We meet at a coffee shop in Guting, near the UFO Radio (飛碟電台) office, where he has just come off air. He hosts two shows on the station. It’s cool to see him again. Always interesting, engaging and generous, I end up learning as much about myself as I do him.
He introduces his books, Get Lucky! (助你好運) published last year and Get Lucky II (助你好運2:幸運透視眼) that comes out this week. The first book leverages psychological insights and data, with observations about contemporary life. It addresses the problems of a highly networked, always-on society and the gap between an ideal life, like that presented by all in their Facebook posts, and the negative emotions they actually feel a lot of the time. It looks at how to be lucky, by leaving a positive impression on people, become clear-headed or mindful, and network efficiently in society.
I tell him all this is well and good, but I can’t help feeling cynical about the relentless positivity of the self-help movement. He calls me “a bit of an Eeyore,” the anhedonic donkey character in Winnie the Pooh, who always sees the negatives.
“Actually,” he says, “we do need Eeyore because he’s the one who sees the rain before its coming, so we can be prepared for it. Depressed people usually make more realistic judgments than normal people, who are too optimistic. But you put people off if you drag them down to your level.”
Liu Shiuan has got the background, the nous and the presentational skills to be incredibly convincing. It’s hard to argue with him, because he’s probably right.
His second book looks at good and bad luck, and how even though we can’t forecast something bad that may happen to us, we can minimize the effects by being prepared. It’s a wide-ranging tome that covers aircraft training manuals, natural history and of course, lots of psychological experiments. It looks at what happens to people in emergencies (they freeze) so you should be prepared, how to avoid being careless, or get taken in by the “small people” who undermine you in life, con and stab you in the back.
Before he flies off for another meeting, I ask him once more about the bad student story and if he can see the positives of not letting the facts get in the way of a good story. To some extent, he admits, this is what he does too. Though he does touch on the burden of taking the torch from his father he also likes the idea of carrying it further, spreading hope, positive messages and entertaining stories to a new generation through new mediums. He’s even open to the idea of his son doing the same.
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