Zachary(rose)

I am a 14-year-old boy who lives in Hangzhou. I was born on December 20th, 2008. I am studying in a bilingual school in Hangzhou, and I’m an eighth grader. In the future, I wish to leave China and go abroad to America to study. New York and California are two of my favorite regions in the United States. Personally speaking, I appreciate American culture(except for the guns): I enjoy the night view of the city in a comfortable atmosphere, the local sports environment, the diverse natural systems, the rich resources in all aspects, such as fishing resources, etc. Most of my subjects are presented well for the academic area, but the most annoying subject for me is mathematics. For the professions, my first choice will probably be art making. However, what makes me most proud is my four major hobbies: playing basketball, art making, raising reptiles, and performing music.

· Basketball

Basketball is my favorite sport. I started to learn basketball when I was eleven years old. At that time, I was a netter——a tennis player. Due to genetic reasons, I was a short boy at the time. To grow taller, my parents asked me to learn to play basketball. At first, I was relatively passive in practicing basketball and thought it wasn’t much fun, it was just a “shooting trick”. As time passed, I found myself very immersed in basketball sounds entering the net. I began to fall in love with this sport, thus I always take a positive attitude during practice, trying to make myself better. I realized that I’m a good shooter. Every weekend, when I wake up in the morning, I often turn on the television and watch the NBA games. My favorite NBA team is the Golden State Warriors, also my favorite player is Stephen Curry. The reason why I’d like to choose Steph is that he has a lovable character, a style of laying that I admire, and a spirit of leading the team to win with a big heart and never giving up. Besides, I also collect some valuable star cards. Simultaneously, I am also interested in collecting sneakers, I currently have around a hundred pairs of sneakers, some of which are highly valuable. The thing I look forward to most in school every day is being able to play basketball with my mates. I aspire to play basketball with the locals in the United States. Basketball has become a spiritual support for me and a way to relieve emotional stress. Basketball is one of the main reasons why I like the U.S.A.

· Art

Without the three years shrouded in the COVID-19 epidemic, so far my parents have taken me to nearly 30 countries. These journeys broadened my horizons and gradually established my artistic thinking……. After entering puberty, my independent thinking has also been established. Combining my thoughts on things and expressing emotions, I have created many works that satisfy me. The artworks I have created now mainly fall into two directions: drawing/painting works and clothing design. For the former, because of the academic pressure, I can only create almost every week in the studio, and there is only a small amount of spare time that can be used for drawing. I often draw more abstractly. For certain basis, I will split and combine different geometric objects, embellish abstraction details, and sometimes add watercolors; I will also reorganize and summarize the information I have accumulated before to create new images; For the clothing design, I have made a concept clothing with cardboards when I was a seventh grader. The artistic work is called “The Earth”, it was prepared for a kind of fashion show activity held by my school. I am a person who likes fashion, so I got the inspiration from a Louis Vuitton show poster——it had a sort of liquid silver surface that reflected very light, shaped like a pentagon. The Fashion Shows topic was environmental protection. Therefore, I used ultra-light clay to create the Earth style and glued it to my chest. The outer part of the small earth was protected by a transparent cover, and eight battery bulbs were installed between the two, representing the eight major planets in the solar system. The overall effect of the Ark Reaction Furnace on Iron Man’s chest was similar. Four hoses extend from the outside of the Earth, representing the four typical natural habitats that exist on Earth —— rainforest, desert, ocean, and tundra. Each of my pipes has added unique elements such as vines, sand, blue liquid, white powder, and related animal models. I drew a human figure who represented the Earth with rainbow tie dye on the back of the four hose connections. On the side of the clothing work, I adopted a report from 2019 about a dying orangutan. That gorilla was called “Coco” and she knew human sign language. Before dying, she expressed in sign language to humans, ‘Coco loves humans, but humans are foolish. We hope that humans can repair the Earth and protect their homes as soon as possible.’ Next, not only I added red liquid along the edges of the cardboard to achieve the effect of blood dripping, but also I decorated some environmental logos to alert people to protect our Earth’s environment.

· Reptiles

I have been fond of raising crawling pets since I was a little boy, the earliest variety I started raising was probably the green iguana of the American Iguanidae family, yet according to the Washington Convention (Appendix 2 of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora), green iguanas are classified as national second-level protected animals and it is illegal to raise them in personal names (many animals cannot be raised under China’s constitution). Since then, I started feeding geckos, which are a safe kind of lizards that are less challenging to look after. The most popular gecko internationally and I keep the most interest in is called the Crested Gecko. It belongs to R-genus that all live in a nearby island of Australia——New Caledonia. Crested Gecko is a kind of relatively small lizards, and they have unique and eye-catching “eyelashes” on their eyes. They have been created by many breeding players to create a variety of combination strains, for example, the Lily, Cappuccino, Harlequin, Cream, Tricolor, Axanthic, sable, and so on… In my home, I will keep my crawling pets in relatively large landscaped terrariums. As a result, I started researching tropical plants, and I prefer bromeliads and pteridophytes. Because my family is not very interested in this, I cannot breed many lizards for commercial purposes(to earn money!). Hence, I have chosen some reptile varieties that are more in line with the decoration style of my new home. In my opinion, The Golden Tail Palace Guard in the Spike Tail Palace Guard is destined. They inhabit the Victoria Desert in South Australia: With their red eyes and golden tail paired with black and white spots body, it has a very elegant and luxurious atmosphere…… I love everything in nature —— I like to observe them crawling inside the original cylinder, and I like to observe them self-feeding at night…

· Music

I have been playing the violin since I was 7 years old. In the beginning, the original intention was just to add a special skill to me. Then I played the violin quite well and had some talent, which evolved into one of my major hobbies. When I graduated as a junior high school student, I joined the Zhejiang Youth Symphony Orchestra. At first, I thought that it was interesting and enjoyable. I fell in the symphony surrounding my ears, so I paid a lot of passion to this. On the other hand, nowadays I withdrew from the orchestra. The excuse was that I received unfair treatment there: When I first entered the band with a score of second place, our conductor said that I was the chief of the new students and gave me high expectations. In those years in the band, I thought I could pull it superiorly, the transition happened in this year’s New Year Concert. At that concert, the teacher ranked me sixth, and I was not convinced. What is even more infuriating is that they even ranked many lower-level players ahead of me. I was pretty angry! I immediately withdrew from this unfair and relationship-dependent symphony orchestra after the concert ended. Although I have almost little time to play the violin, I still listen to classical music. My favorite classical music work is La Campanella. This outstanding work’s soundtrack was taken by the K-pop girl group——BLACKPINK whom I love the best. This is a fusion of old and new cultures. As I mentioned, I also really enjoy listening to pop songs. I have always wanted to try creating some popular music works, but I haven’t been able to find the opportunity. Having said so much, jazz(At the beginning, it was called ‘jass’ because some racists or troublemakers removed the previous’ j’ and changed it to ‘ass’, so it was changed to Jazz ‘) which originated from black people, is also a form of music that I enjoy. Jazz can give people a casual bar feeling at night, which is my favorite part…….. I love my life.

That is me~ ——— ZACHARY(ROSE)