I believe in many things. After September 16th, I believe that tragedies happen to break down barriers and make us come together, united and stronger.
Kimi with his mom. He was very close to her since dad is a captain and works long periods overseas. Dad has expressed before his disappointment in Kimi when he chose to pursue a career in music but dad eventually supported Kimi wholeheartedly.
I’ve been trying to write this post for a month now and every single time I attempted to write, tears just stung my eyes. In the states, September is also the month of suicide prevention so every emotion is enhanced in conversations with families and friends, coupled that with my own car accident on the same day, and it was a monumental task altogether. A year ago on this day, we lost a beautiful soul, Kimi Qiao Ren Liang, to depression just a few weeks before his 29th birthday and two weeks after his last movie Days of Our Own was released. Keep in mind we’re not here to point fingers or push blame, but merely remembering and sharing his life story – the sweet soul that we came to appreciate onscreen. And as for me, September 16th is a life-changing day; overcoming pains, cherishing your loved ones, and gaining a new perspective on life and maturity.
Before entering showbiz, Kimi Qiao won many awards for being an athlete specializing in high jumps in primary and secondary schools, even claiming the title at National High Jump Competition in 2003. Famous hurdler Liu Xiang was his classmate. When his parents wanted him to focus in school, he attended Shanghai Dianji University and it was the few years in college that he found the seed of love for music. When he turned 18 in 2005, he participated in Hunan music program Golden Star and won the New voice segment. It was also there that he met Wang Lee Hom, his role model. Afterwards, Kimi spent a brief period in a boyband called PINK17 as the group’s drummer and realized his blooming love for music was real.
It wasn’t until 2007 when he was runner-up to program My Hero that Kimi Qiao officially entered showbiz at the age 20, joining a pretty boy group with Li Yi Feng, Boran Jing, and Fu Xin Bo; they were known affectionately as the Four Alluring Youths. And I took notice of this boy at the same time I became a ardent fan of Zhao Li Ying, both had a sweet friendship in the drama Female Prime Minister (Legend of Lu Zhen) and I continued to follow his works after, especially his touching friendship with Chen Qiao En, and his flamboyant display of affections on We Are In Love with Xu Lu. A person who owned a house full of pink-colored items… is a person to remember. A person who was able to make others smile but couldn’t bring the same light to his own world. As outsiders, it’s easy to say living is harder and braver but how much pain he must have been in to choose the path of no return.
I think we live in a society where it’s constant bang, bang, bang, and little to no time is dedicated to actually sit down, to think and reflect on how our words, actions, and presence affect another person. Yes, these celebrities are public figures, but let’s not view them as public property and throw careless, irresponsible words around. Especially now that social media has the power to carry unpleasantness over hundreds of miles in mere seconds. When I was growing up, when you want to trash-talk someone, you had to go over to their house and do it in person. Face-to-face, one has to live with the consequences. While I was bedridden, I had a lot of time. In the beginning, it was hard and frustrating but those hours became therapeutic in no time as I was able to reflect on many things and why so many tragedies had to happen for us to understand the values of life. We have enough natural disasters as it is to worry about, let’s not add things that we can control into the mix.
Nothing is guaranteed in life, only the past and the present. You live in the now, not for tomorrow. At the end of the day, kindness is free. The world will be a better and happier place with less miserable souls if we are kind to one another and there’s always more than one way to show it. We can do better. We can.
7 thoughts on “Remembering Kimi Qiao Ren Liang a year later… his first death anniversary”
Thank you for writing this post.
It’s versy nice of you to do that.
And i agree with everything you wrote.
I hope Kimi is resting in peace.
7 thoughts on “Remembering Kimi Qiao Ren Liang a year later… his first death anniversary”
Aww applause… you said so many beautiful words. Everyone lives for a reason, no longer able to see them doesn’t mean they are gone someday everyone will get together.
As a fan of Kimi, because him I took interest in Chinese dramas, Korean and Japan dramas were famous at the time I saw him somewhere and thought he looks like a young Bosco Wong. It’s sad to no longer see his bright smile that made me smile on my gloomy days..all his work he left behind is precious.
Thank you for this beautiful post and keep remembering Kimi.
7 thoughts on “Remembering Kimi Qiao Ren Liang a year later… his first death anniversary”
Too much feelings reading this. I still can’t believe kimi is no more…and that it’s been a year since his suicide…
Life moves on so fast…. kimi be at peace.
7 thoughts on “Remembering Kimi Qiao Ren Liang a year later… his first death anniversary”
Thanks for the beautiful and insightful post. I also can’t believe it’s been a year, feels like it was only yesterday… Moreover, I wholeheartedly agree on being careful about what we write about other people online. The way people love to “trashtalk” about others online, while hiding themselves in the anonymity that Internet provides is truly horrifying. Just earlier this week I wrote a long reply comment in another blog that I follow where the blogger had posted information about a drama where a certain actor is the male lead and there was this commenter who would always leave trashtalking comments about this particular actor’s looks. Things like how ugly he was and how his nose looked fake, how he was such a bad actor and that he was such a vain person etc. A true anti-fan who would come out and leave the same kind comment every time this actor was even mentioned and on the day of the actor’s birthday this commenter even wrote that she/he wouldn’t say anything bad about the drama posters as a “gift” to the actor. Wow, just wow it made me speechless. How can people leave such hateful comments? Fine if you don’t like his looks, beauty is in the eye of the beholder and sometimes you like a certain look and sometimes you don’t and sometimes it’s not even about the visual but the charisma and screen presence of an actor that connects with the viewers. However trashtalking about someone’s looks is so shallow and pointless, it’s not like you can convince anyone else to feels to same and also the actors/actresses can’t do anything about it except to go under the knife and then people complain even more, it’s a ridiculous never ending cycle. Then we have acting, which is also subjective but if the majority of the viewers deem it to be a bad or good acting performance then that is actually a valuable a pointer that the actor/actress can take with them and work on their craft. Last we had the “personality attack”, I mean seriously that really got me worked up. Unless you actually have real contact with that actor/actress and actually know this person, you have NO right to even say anything about their personality no matter how much you think you know from what you’ve seen online. In my reply I asked if she/he ever considered how the actor/actress would feel reading that awful comment and how she/he would feel if someone wrote those things about the commenter herself/himself. It’s really cyber bullying if you ask me.
Constructive feedback is one thing, but it when it’s just spiteful hate… I really don’t get it. I read articles about how ppl take to nasty commenting as an outlet for stress and it’s totally beyond me. How can that be relaxing? In my youth when Internet was new, people used it carefully and behaved almost proper like they would in real life. It was so much more pleasant back then, and I guess I’m still “old school” in the sense that I’m still not comfortable badmouthing people online because it feels like a IRL personal attack. I’d rather not leave a comment (although I do tend to lament if a bad actress/actor gets cast in a drama), I prefer spending effort and time writing positive comments and generally the things I write online are what I stand for and would totally say in real life to someone. These days however, I think there’s a sore need for a school class in Internet etiquette (it’s rather sad that this is even necessary). How can people not feel awful when they read about what happened to Kimi Qiao, Tablo and so many others. This online trolling thing has become a such a big problem. The victims are real people, like the commenters themselves (how hard is that to understand?). I really liked what Park Hae Jin did, suing online trolls and giving them the option to do volunteer work with with those anti-fans. It must have been really uncomfortable for those anti-fans to meet the real person that they’d been trashtalking online, but I sincerely hope that it was a wakeup call for all of them.
Sorry for my long ramblings, this has been bothering me a lot lately.
7 thoughts on “Remembering Kimi Qiao Ren Liang a year later… his first death anniversary”
Clarification: Park Hae Jin did volunteer work with his anti-fans. So awesome.
7 thoughts on “Remembering Kimi Qiao Ren Liang a year later… his first death anniversary”
I love your comment. 😀
7 thoughts on “Remembering Kimi Qiao Ren Liang a year later… his first death anniversary”
thankyou for this kimi post. seeing Qiao En post her pink clouds image the other day already makes me weepy.