Wedding Party
Manxuan Gu
Maid of Honor
Manxuan Gu is my cousin, but she is more like my little sister in my heart. We have been together since we were born. I still remember when we were kids, we fought over every single small thing in our daily life, from who should have the last bite of the cookie to who should be on the passengers seat in the taxi. We grew up with those fightings and till one day, we realized that those interesting and silly memories made us the most important family member to each other. She is my biggest champion and supporter, and I am honored that she is here as the witness of my new life chapter. She is currently working and living in China, and I can't appreciate more for her flying across the Pacific Ocean to join the wedding, her presence makes my wedding perfect and is the best wedding I ever wished for.
Siqi Ma
Bridesmaid
Siqi Ma and I met during the trip from Purdue to Chicago on our first Thanksgiving in the United States. We planned to visit Chicago separately with two different groups of people, but we ended up visiting the Magic Bean, going shopping, and even staying in the same hotel room together during the trip. That was the time that we started to know each other more and was how our friendship begin in the windy city. Since then, we started to share numerous memories: The hot summer in Fuse apartment watching TV show all day long, the 3889 gang that party every Friday, and the always rainy Christmas and New Year in San Diego. Thank her for flying all the way from Houston, TX to join our wedding and be an important part of my special day.
Binglin Zhao
Bridesmaid
Binglin Zhao and I met at Purdue University in 2014. I still remember that freezing winter day I first saw her in a cute berets at the Ford Dining Court. She complained about how the crazy wind kept blowing her berets away and she had to chase all the way from the top to the bottom of the slope of the hilltop. We spent a lot of time together in the following two years: the spring break in Disneyland, the summer school, the Great Smoky Mountain and so much more! After graduating from Purdue in 2016, she moved to San Diego to get her Master's degree and then found a job and settled down in the city. We reunited in 2020 when I got my job in SD. Thank god that with her around I didn't feel alone and left out in this brand new city during the COVID lockdown. Her optimism and sincerity has always been a good medicine in my daily life.
Kai He
Bridesmaid
Kai He is my colleague in Qualcomm. We both joined the company during the COVID lockdown time and everyone was working remotely. So we did not have a chance to meet each other until last year, about one and half years we have been working in the same group. I hope I could have met her earlier because we have a lot of topics to share and have a lot in common. We have lunch together, go to the bars, celebrate the birthdays, and also talk about the gossips around us. We also share the past experiences, the obstacle problems we have to tackle at work, and in our daily life. Time flies so fast when we hang out. The most impressive thing I found out about Kai is that she is a such strong and independent person who makes rational decisions and never regrets about the past. I am pleased being friends with her and having her at my wedding.
Ye Wen
Best Man
Ye Wen lives in San Jose, CA and he works at Apple as a product design engineer. In his spare time he enjoys board games, snow boarding, and he is a part-time photographer (checkout his Instagram!). The story: The first few years in a totally strange country are always the hardest. The long two-way walks between Walmart and Willowbrook with hands full of heavy grocery bags, the mid-night Sanguosha or HotS games after every weekend’s hotpot party, and the the uneasy wait on Klondike road in dark snow to take a delayed 4B for the 8 AM 505 final exam, all seemed like distanced dreams in another life. Luckily, Ye was one of the guys that went through those days with me, when we were so young, so simple, and so naive. As thesis-option masters, 7 graduate courses are needed for the plan of study, and Ye and I took 6 of them together. After 5 years of diverged routes, we even ended up working for the same company. San Jose and San Diego are so much closer to each other than Weifang and West Lafayette, and Ye is always welcomed in SoCal.
Zhenchuan Xu
Groomsman
Zhenchuan Xu is working on his PhD degree at the University of Waterloo, Canada. He lives with two adorable Corgis, and he is also an Internet influencer on Xiaohongshu, Youtube, and Bilibili (ID: 火娃阿川). The story: For dropouts from the lab in B142 like Zhenchuan and myself, we always had mixed feelings about those years we spent in that underground confined space. On one hand the hard work didn’t transform into something more meaningful as we had hoped, but on the other hand we indeed harvested something more cherishable: true friendships that never fade away. From Willowbrook Circle to Peachleaf Drive, and Amber Lane; From a sky full of stars with Coldplay at Soldier Field Stadium, to the shady gas station near the infamous Gary after visiting a place by Damao, and the capsize on the creek when kayaking at Turkey Run. Before Zhenchuan went off to continue his journey in the far north, he was there the whole time to share every moment of the memorables. Reunion never tastes more joyful during such a life-time event.
Fan Bu
Groomsman
Fan Bu continued to work as a research scientist for Meta at Burlingame, CA after obtaining his PhD degree. He also masters in traditional Chinese calligraphy, and he recently picked up the piano as a hobby. The story: Two mechanical engineers grew fascinated about deep learning, joined the same lab in electrical engineering for computer vision, worked on projects sponsored by the same company for research and internships, and both moved from the mid-west harsh winters to the west coast sunshine. The life choices for Fan and me are quite similar for the past few years. I still remember the day during the COVID lockdown when Fan and I spent the whole afternoon recording testing videos of us falling out of beds in 100 different ways just to validate a trained network. Throughout the acknowledgment and conclusion sections, if not for the in-depth discussion and ever-lasting mutual support we had for each other, the PhD years could have been even harder. Now that we are both bathing in California dreaming, new chapters of our lives await.