December 20, 2023
This is Huifen Li: Hermoine Granger meets Wolfgang
By John Myers
Profile on Huifen Li
By Sheema Zaira
If you attended the National Honors Society induction ceremony, chances are your eyes were quickly drawn to the only girl there wearing a suit, probably looking more sophisticated than the hosts themselves.
If you’re a student at Queens School of Inquiry, you may have heard a passionate pianist play Bach’s Prelude in C as you made your way past the music room.
But if you mistakenly discarded your plastic in the paper bin, there would have been no way to avoid getting caught red-handed by the Bin Cops monitor– not until she took her time educating you about the environmental impacts of not recycling properly.
Whichever way you got to meet Huifen Li, I hope you paid attention to her confidence as she walked on stage and accepted her award.
I hope you stayed a bit longer to hear her play the ending notes of Prelude in C because you know you’ll regret it on your shameful walk home if you didn’t.
And I really hope you continued discussing environmental justice with Huifen, and maybe even read her column in the school newspaper about climate change.
By naming her Huifen, which means “wise and fragrant” in Chinese, her parents were set to raise a mature and precocious young girl. While she remains a responsible student at school in Queens, her mind wanders to the stunning sights of Paris. She imagines herself visiting the Eiffel Tower, and becoming another annoying tourist as she takes a bite from a flaky chocolate croissant, yelling “Bonjour!” to anyone who passes by. These dreams aren’t just wishful thinking though; at only 16, Huifen is intensively preparing for her dream life by enrolling in advanced French classes.
Huifen is an avid believer that “money can buy happiness,” and she knows that you’re lying if you deny it. While many like to assume she’s over-ambitious, Huifen admits that she struggles with a lack of motivation. She feels like she has an obligation to lead a successful career and a need to earn lucratively. Huifen said, “this class system is built entirely off of money. It’s not fair, but it’s reality.” As she spoke, I felt like a kid, dumbfounded and inexperienced, listening to an adult discussing inflation rates and economics.
Huifen’s refined and elegant nature makes sense since she’s always writing. Even the most valuable item that belongs to her is a pen she uses to journal with. She believes writing builds knowledge, knowledge is power, and power is money. As she dips her feather pen into a bottle of ink, she laughs and jokes “the pen is mightier than the sword.”
Nowadays, you’ll find Huifen in a depressing reading slump desperately trying to get out, binge watching The Flash, and playing Sims with her closest friends. Or maybe you’ll find her journaling with her feather pen and diving deep into nostalgia as she hums the catchy melody of Taylor Swift’s, “The Story of Us.”
But wherever you find her, I hope you appreciate the valuable moments you have with her.
