Zen Zen

Sydney

— April 4, 2019 —

The best piece of advice self-confessed ‘summer person’ Zen has received is: “Trust yourself. You are much more than you expected.” And these are words she lives by.

The ambitious Taiwan-born, Berlin-based model is hoping to finish her first 42km marathon in September, road trip around Europe in the summer and stay in Australia through Christmas and the New Year. When she’s not modelling (which she’s been doing since age 19), you’ll find her in the kitchen cooking, outdoors hiking, in the gym working out, or out exploring whatever new city she has stumbled upon. 

Upon waking the first thing she does is prepare her first coffee of the day, she’s currently reading ‘Lessons’ from Gisele Bundchen, considers herself to be more of an intuitive person rather than a rational thinker, and would eat cola, french fries and pizza for the rest of her life if she could. Amen, girl. Her ideal day looks a little something like this: “[It would be] a summer day with 32 degrees. I’d wake up in the early morning with beautiful sunshine, prepare my first coffee and homemade breakfast, then take a sunbath on the balcony. Then, I’d shower and officially start my workday. After work, I’d have dinner with my lovely friends. I would take a wonderful bath and go to bed before 10pm.” Can we come, too?

To her, social media is “a form of addiction today.” If she had to give it up for a week, she thinks she’d really struggle in the beginning, but gradually she would be “very grateful for the clear and simple life” that the absence of social media would bring. She loves that her work allows her to travel and meet people in different pockets of the world, although she initially found it challenging learning how to deal with unsuccessful castings. “I think what helped me personally was realising that the outcome of this or that casting is simply not in my hands,” she explains. 

Over the next ten years, she hopes more and more people will become vegan, because “there is no planet B and we really should take more care of nature and the animals in this world.” Second on the agenda is shifting the way we interact. “I hope people will care more about the relationships we have between each other, [and] not just use our phones and internet all the time, even while we’re eating and sitting together,” she says.

She’s recently been churning through Tidying up with Marie Kondo on Netflix, because a) it’s relaxing, and b) learning how to be tidy helped her to not only organise and clean her room, but also her mind. She recognises that all types of friendships are important, but thinks that because women share a similar logic, we can sympathise with each other more easily, and that’s something we should “cherish.” 

Cool for her is as simple as “someone who is nice doing something really great.” If only there were more Zen’s in the world <3. 
 

Words: Maddy Woon    Photos: Daphne Nguyen    Fashion: Miguel Urbina Tan

Zen Zen is represented by Kult AUSTRALIA
 

Shot on location in North Sydney

                    

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