AI 时代，不作恶；做自己。 In the Age of AI, Do No Harm; Just Be Yourself.

I am Amanda. Born in the 1970s, I have spent more than thirty years in foreign trade. I am also a mother — my daughter is currently pursuing her PhD in Medicine at one of China's top universities.

After turning fifty, I decided to redefine myself. I am YingChao (YC), focused on the on-the-ground integration of AI into manufacturing within foreign-trade scenarios. To be honest, my background is in international trade — a classic humanities path. I had next to zero foundation in programming or code; for the past three decades the computer was, to me, mostly a business tool: email, documents, customer relations.

In 2009 I began recording small fragments of work and life on Weibo. The intent was simple: to leave behind some genuine traces. I never thought about monetizing traffic. Looking back at those scattered notes today, they have become the most convincing material for the "Journey" section of this site. This page is, in a sense, the digital expression of my personal IP. Going forward, I want to offer B2B companies practical pathways and methodologies for landing AI.

When I shared this plan with people close to me, doubt arrived first:

"Aren't you just fuel for the big platforms?"
"AI in manufacturing involves compute, data, scenario fit — how can it possibly be that easy?"
"How do you handle the data risk?"

That is normal. The people closest to you are usually the first to surface the risks in your plan.

The night I was preparing this site, I listened to a podcast between Lu Yu and Zhang Quanling about AI's impact. Zhang did not answer "what should ordinary people do?" directly. Instead, she recalled a CCTV documentary filmed around the year 2000: a middle-aged laid-off woman from northeast China walked past a luxury boutique that had just entered the Chinese market in Beijing. She paused, looked through the window at the carefully arranged goods for a while, then turned and walked away. The camera followed her departing back for a full fifty seconds — no dialogue, just that quiet, receding figure. In that era, luxury was a completely foreign world to her. She looked once, then chose to walk away.

That moment moved me deeply.

Today the rapid iteration of AI leaves many professionals feeling lost and anxious — unsure how to step in, unsure what this transformation has to do with them, even afraid of being left behind. Facing the AI wave, my feelings are no different from anyone else's: I don't know where to start, and I don't know what I can do.

But that night, after the podcast, I made a decision: I do not want to be the person who only looks through the window and then walks away. I want to try to step inside, however slowly, however clumsily — at least to verify for myself whether this path is walkable.

So I built this site — to document the full process of how a non-technical foreign-trade practitioner learns AI from zero, understands it, and finally applies it in real business scenarios. As for whether I become "fuel" for some ecosystem — I have thought it through. Like those old Weibo posts, which have now become part of my personal IP, perhaps the accumulation here will become the endorsement for the next chapter. More importantly: I tried, instead of merely watching and walking away.

If I make it through this AI cycle, the people I most want to thank are the Gen-Z AI product managers — Shengyi, Frank, Yiya, Shaoyou, Mocax, Xiaolin, Qiao Benhuan Cai, and many others. Their patience and professional guidance brought me from a complete novice to a deep user. They convinced me of this: age is not a threshold, background is not an obstacle; what matters is whether you are willing to learn and to practice.

So let us witness together what possibilities a 70s foreign-trade practitioner can carve out in the age of AI.