To all Harry Potter fans

I will never forget the firat time I saw the boy with the glasses on screen , it was “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone“ . I had the movie poster hanged on the back of my bedroom door, and just fantasized of receiving the admission letter at the age of ten. I became a fan by watching the films first, then I turned to the books just as the forth book was being published worldwide.

I was born in Shanghai, the city where the East met the West in China. The Harry Potter series were being translated into many languages including Chinese, and inspired a whole generation of children to start reading again. On so many levels, that even as I approach my mid-twenties, my life’s still being impacted by the series. Although the series is deemed by many as children’s literature, the values that J.K.Rowlings tries to get through with the story of this orphan boy and his friends, still resonates with me emotionally as an adult.

Before the last film was released in theatres, my summers were filled with memories of awaiting the trailers to come out, and planning my schedule on the day when each film had its premiere. Harry Potter became a topic that united me with strangers or friends that had nothing else in common with me. But most importantly, it inspired me to enter the field of writing.

Despite the controveries surrounding the author this year, so many fans of the series chose to stand up to protect the integrity of those that may have been harmed by Rowling’s opinion. What I saw through that episode was the courage in the non-biasedness of the fans, which the HP series forever carries as its central motif. The years that these fans like me spent from following the series , cannot be undermined or replaced.

And yet some Of us also found versions of ourselves in the books, which is also why Hogwarts would always be our home. I know that some of you would say that I sound like a pacifist, but I also believe that one can be influenced by the power of literature and story telling to respect the stories themselves and the hardwork that the author had put in at the time of the writing.

That is not to say I worship J.K. Rowling, because she is just a human being like us, and we are all flawed. I admire her creativity and passion as a writer, and that’s the end of the story. The HP series may only be one of the stages of her career, but the impact it has on my generation cannot be denied. I believe that people can still choose to read the HP series if they have never experienced being part of fandom as the series was in developing stage. You will not regret it.