But it was precisely on an afternoon like this that a very strong thought came to me: perhaps this is already the happiest moment of my life. The thought startled even me. Maybe it was because everything before my eyes was too happy that sadness slowly rose from inside it. I thought of my parents growing old, of my child growing up, of the impossibility of staying here forever. Many years from now, when I look back, this afternoon may have become a dream I can no longer return to. In that moment I understood very clearly: happiness is brief. It is something we happen to encounter only during certain stretches of life.

For some reason, this feeling made me think of the Preface to the Orchid Pavilion. I studied Wang Xizhi’s text in school and once memorized the whole thing: late spring, the worthy gathered, young and old together; wine cups floating down the winding stream, everyone seated along its banks. The teacher explained the words, and the textbook gave us a modern Chinese translation. But to be honest, I did not really understand why Wang Xizhi became sad halfway through writing it. In such a beautiful place, drinking and composing poems with friends should have been pure joy. Why suddenly write that “whether life is long or short, all will eventually end”? Why sigh that “what once delighted us becomes, in the briefest turn, a trace of the past”? When I read those lines as a child, I thought they were the usual ancient reflections on life, a feeling very far away from me.

Only today did I suddenly understand. Wang Xizhi was not sad because the Orchid Pavilion was not beautiful. He was sad precisely because it was too beautiful. At moments of extreme happiness, people are most likely to realize how brief happiness is. The more complete the present feels, the more clearly one senses that it cannot be kept. The joy taking place in front of us has almost already begun to disappear at the very moment it occurs.

What once delighted us becomes, in the briefest turn, a trace of the past.

In the past, I only remembered this sentence. Today I finally knew what it meant.

This feeling has become more obvious lately. Part of the reason is family life itself, but part of it also has to do with AI. I have been following and learning the latest AI tools. New models, new products, new concepts; they seem to appear almost every day. Just when I begin to understand how one tool works, something more efficient and more powerful seems to replace it. After a while, there is a deep sense of being unable to keep up.

That anxiety is the feeling of never being able to control the situation. No matter how hard you try to catch up, the road ahead keeps accelerating. You do not know how much value today’s knowledge will still have tomorrow. You do not know whether the skills you now rely on to make a living will become worthless within a few years. If it were only me, perhaps it would be easier. One can always tell oneself: at worst, I start over. But when I look at my parents, my wife, and my child, that anxiety becomes much heavier. What I truly fear is whether this hard-won, ordinary happiness in front of me will be swept into some larger wave of the times.

My parents, my wife, my child, a family living peacefully together. Because these things are so concrete, I fear losing them even more. People in the past, of course, also faced impermanence. Illness, aging, separation; these have always existed. But the sense of impermanence for our generation seems to have acquired another layer. We are not only facing the impermanence of life itself. We are also facing the impermanence of social structures. The AI revolution may already be arriving, and the changes it brings may be more drastic than many earlier technological shifts. Work, education, the distribution of wealth, the organization of society, even the way ordinary people understand and participate in the world, may all change.

So a classical sadness and a modern anxiety have overlapped. The classical sadness is this: even the happiest moment will eventually pass. The modern anxiety is this: even if I want to protect the life before my eyes, I do not know how to do it. When the two are layered together, they form a state that is difficult to describe. It is a deeper helplessness. You know life was never fully controllable, and at the same time you discover that the era itself is becoming even less controllable. You want the happiness in front of you to continue, but you do not know what you should hold on to.

It was in this state that I thought again of the Preface to the Orchid Pavilion. A modern person standing on the eve of the AI revolution could, on an ordinary weekend afternoon, in a bedroom where his wife and child were sleeping, feel the emotion of a man who lived more than a thousand years ago. The times are completely different, but the emotional ground beneath them is somehow connected. At one’s happiest, one suddenly realizes that happiness cannot be preserved forever. When one most wants to protect something, one suddenly feels that one’s strength is not so great after all.

Many pieces of writing cannot be understood when we are young because life has not yet brought us to the right place. Back then, we treated them as textbook passages, as material for exams. Then one day, when life itself carries you to a similar position, you suddenly discover that those sentences were not merely written in a book. They had been waiting somewhere inside your own life all along.

Perhaps this is what literature is for. Wang Xizhi did not solve impermanence. He had no way to make the gathering at the Orchid Pavilion last forever. All he could do was write down that moment. So the gathering disappeared, but not entirely. It became words. It became an emotion that later generations could still enter. The times change, and the ways we express ourselves change as well. But the most basic things in the human heart do not seem to change so easily. A person’s cherishing of happiness, fear of loss, helplessness before time, and impulse to preserve a moment through writing can still recognize one another across more than a thousand years.

Maybe this is what I received from the Preface to the Orchid Pavilion today. It simply let me know that the unease I feel now is not isolated and unsupported. Long ago, someone else also saw impermanence in the midst of great joy, thought of disappearance amid beautiful scenery and good company, and wrote that feeling down. More than a thousand years later, an ordinary person on a weekend afternoon before the AI revolution sat at home, listened to the quiet breathing of his wife and child, and suddenly understood him. That fact alone gave me a little certainty.

I did not expect that, after so many years, I would draw strength from the Preface to the Orchid Pavilion. Perhaps much of the time, people cannot stop happiness from becoming a trace of the past. But we can decide what kind of trace it becomes: one that passed by in haste and was regretted afterward, or one that was truly lived and carefully remembered.

It may sound interesting, but this piece of writing also gradually took shape through a conversation between me and AI. That in itself is interesting. I worry about the future AI may bring, yet I also use AI to sort through my own feelings. It is as if everything has begun to connect with AI. Even thinking about impermanence, family, literature, and the self can no longer remain completely outside it.

For personal reasons, I deleted my Google account earlier this year. As a result, my old GitHub account could no longer pass 2FA, which meant I could no longer update articles at my old blog address . So I registered a new GitHub account and moved the old posts here.

I wonder how many people had bookmarked the old address. From their point of view, I may have simply stopped updating forever. That is one of the biggest drawbacks of publishing personal writing on a low-social static blog: there is no real way to contact readers. I cannot forward this migration notice to any old reader, which is a real pity 😞.

Since I changed both the GitHub account and the blog address, I also changed my pen name from Bright to Mason. Bright, a name that never sounded all that native, actually came from one of my favorite video games, The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky. Bright is the family name of the game’s protagonists. During graduate school, my Legal English teacher, an old San Francisco boy named David, once gently told me that Bright did not really suit me. So I started using Mason, a more natural English name, though I still like the word Bright very much 🙂.

I am saying all this for any old readers who may happen to find the new blog: Bright and Mason are the same person. But perhaps saying it is pointless. Let it all go with the wind 👋.

About the Theme Change

I have always used Hugo to generate my static blog. The method is described in this post . The old theme was Hugo-fuji , created by a Chinese developer. It was clean and simple, and I liked it a lot.

Unfortunately, newer versions of Hugo deprecated several modules that Hugo-fuji depended on, making the theme incompatible with the current version of Hugo. The author also seems to have stopped maintaining the project two or three years ago. So I had to change themes.

After looking around, I found that there really are not many simple and good-looking themes. In the end I chose Hugo-PaperMod , which is the theme you see now. It supports more customization and adapts well across platforms, though it is not as simple to use as Hugo-fuji.

That is all my rambling about moving the blog and changing themes. I hope it was not too tedious. I will keep updating posts here and try to post a little more often. As for YouTube and the podcast, I also want to restart them. Who knows how long I can keep it up this time?

Why Resist the Void

In 2023, I went through many changes in work and relationships. Fortunately, most of them have now been resolved, but new problems keep appearing. I cannot say whether I, or the whole era, are still moving upward. The immense uncertainty of the future keeps pushing me toward nihilism.

I am not someone who wants merely to scrape by. But as time passes, I feel more and more strongly the absurdity of the world and the emptiness of life as part of that absurd world.

On the last working day of 2023, I posted a WeChat Moments update summarizing my year in a few words: “work injury, surgery, moving, buying a car, proposal.” It was like writing a chronicle of someone in another universe who had nothing to do with me. My own experiences were reduced to a handful of plain words.

In the past, I arrogantly treated these insignificant experiences as part of my important personal history, recording them again and again in rough year-end summaries, as if that could resist the meaninglessness of life. Gradually I realized that the void of life does not exist only at the level of narration. It exists solidly. It is larger than our own existence, and older than our own history.

Does that mean we should accept the void? When we make choices that appear important, should we still take them seriously? If the world is absurd and life is empty, why struggle to choose at all?

I thought about this for a long time, especially while lying in a hospital bed after a traffic accident. I still do not have a definite answer, but a vague idea has appeared in my mind: I want to resist the void.

The absurdity of the world may be unshakable, but that does not stop us from resisting the emptiness of life. “The emptiness of life” is a conclusion drawn from outcomes: no matter how hard we struggle, the final result may have no meaning. But perhaps we are not born to pursue a result, nor to create some grand meaning. The process of existing itself should be what we pursue.

Years ago, someone seriously discussed a question with me: if we knew in advance that a relationship would not end well, should we still try to maintain it? At the time, I was unsure and did not understand the deeper meaning. Now I think it perfectly explains why we resist the void.

The meaning of a relationship does not lie in whether it ends well. It lies in whether it gives the people inside it moments of peace and joy. Even if I knew in advance that a relationship would have no result, I should still try to accept it, maintain it, and enjoy it. That is both the process of resisting the void and the reason to resist it.

Even if we are entering a turbulent era, even if great risks are unavoidable, even if I may face more suffering, I still want to struggle with all my strength and enjoy the process of struggling. The purpose of resisting the void is not to eliminate it, but to accept and even enjoy it. I want to pursue inner peace and spiritual freedom before the building collapses, so that when the final judgment comes, I can smile and perish with the world.

How to Resist the Void

If we want to resist the void, we need to find the right way.

I grew up in an era that heavily stigmatized pre-Qin Confucianism. From the official sphere to ordinary public discourse, most people were either distorting and using Confucian thought, or attacking and rejecting it. Confucianism tells us to first cultivate ourselves, then order the family, then govern the state, and finally bring peace to the world. Our textbooks taught the reverse: put others before oneself, put the state before the family, and learn from Comrade Lei Feng.

This overly “modern” approach destroyed the original social structure. It pulled everyone away from their small natural communities and made them submit to a constructed larger community. Absurdity and emptiness became more visible, hovering over everyone and slowly eating away at life.

To resist this modern, imposed sense of emptiness, we need to return to an older place: to the original, more “natural” social structure, and to the thought rooted in that structure. That means early Confucian thought before later fusion and distortion.

To resist the void, we should first cultivate ourselves and then tend to the family. We should make ourselves calm and full, then make the household harmonious and secure, and only then consider those constructed concepts. The same approach applies when facing complex social events. We should first respect and care about the person, the human being, and only then turn to the other things made up of individual people. If everyone were willing to think and act this way, the world would surely become better.

In 2023, I was still struggling on the road of self-cultivation and family-building, and on the road of resisting the void. I tried hard at many things, and I messed up many things. In 2024, this will remain my theme. The most important part for me is self-cultivation. More specifically, it is staying humble.

In 2022, we witnessed a low point of civilization. The great bell was cast aside while the clay pot rang; countless people suffered under the crushing weight of power. Fortunately, thunder still comes from silence, and the curve of civilizational decline still has temporary rebounds. Perhaps no one expected the fire in Urumqi to spread across the whole country. Between people and their long-lost courage, there was only a blank sheet of paper.

In 2022, we finally caught a glimpse of normal life. The price was overflowing pharmacies, hospitals, and funeral homes. On the afternoon of January 18, I walked into a somewhat unfamiliar entry-exit administration hall and saw it packed with people. Long lines stretched in front of the passport counters. People seemed ready to run toward the world. But who knows? Maybe before long, the open door will close again at just the right moment.

Facing an absurd world, I have also thought about the purpose of life. Especially when land I had worked hard to cultivate would not bear fruit, and when the distant shore I had searched for so long would not appear through the clouds, I felt regret and sadness. But the world gives no answer. It is like the pendulum of a clock, swinging endlessly, repeating a purposeless return.

Later I read Camus and learned that the world is absurd, and life has no purpose. Or rather, existence itself is the purpose. We do not need to rack our brains searching for the purpose of life, because a life with a fixed purpose is sad and runs against the absurdity of the world. All we can do is recognize the absurd and embrace the void.

In 2022, I embraced the void in my own way. The year before, I bought a small apartment in my third-tier hometown as one of the material conditions for marriage. The purchase landed exactly at the peak of both housing prices and mortgage rates. If I had to calculate profit and loss, I had already taken a loss of nearly 200,000 RMB within a year.

For a while, my state of mind was poor, especially when the very purpose of buying the apartment seemed to be moving away from me. Later, I finally recovered the essence of existentialism. I am Sisyphus, endlessly pushing the stone up the mountain, and my life is the stone that keeps rolling back down. I told myself: my apartment is not a means to achieve some other purpose. It is the purpose itself. It is a quiet space where I can be alone, an anchor while I sail at sea, and the foundation of all my spiritual freedom.

Yes, pursuing spiritual freedom, recognizing the absurdity of the world, and embracing the void of life were the greatest things 2022 gave me. In 2023, I will try not to cling to so-called purpose, not to obsess over the absurdity of the world, and instead live attentively and freely.

Finally, at the last moment of the Year of Renyin, I wish all of you a way out of the low valley of the old year, and a life you truly want.

Over the past year, the world and I both lived in the aftershock of Covid. We gradually gave up the fantasy of “defeating” the virus and began thinking instead about how to coexist with it. In mid-April , I ended my drifting law-firm internship across Shenzhen, Chongqing, and Nanjing, then enjoyed a month of idle time while suffering through acute otitis media. The June graduation season passed with the wind. I then moved again, this time to Hangzhou, and officially began life as a corporate worker.

As a so-called new first-tier city that tries to measure itself against Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen in every way, Hangzhou has long since lost its old medieval charm. It has become a gathering place for nouveau riche ambition, searching for direction amid aggressive infrastructure development and the smoky fever of the internet industry. In this strange gold-rush atmosphere, even so-called central state-owned enterprises have had to start preaching “entrepreneurship.”

I have never liked this mood, because behind every scene that appears vigorous and thriving lies the extreme exploitation of individual bodies and minds. Besides, beneath the tall buildings, the foundation of decline has already been laid. For people born in the 1990s like me, who have briefly tasted openness and freedom, the decline of civilization is visible to the naked eye. Along with that decline comes deep discomfort and pessimism.

Fortunately, even in a broader downturn, individuals can still move against the current. In 2021, with my parents’ help, I finally bought my first apartment, and I worked hard to pay for the renovation with my own income. In the near future, I will also marry Ms. Zhang and try to shoulder the responsibilities of a family.

Perhaps this is the last stubborn hope of someone supposedly “born proud” in a generally shabby age: to earn money cleanly, and to make people believe that earning money cleanly is possible. Though the person who first said something like this has now become one of the top livestream sellers on Douyin.

I have always believed that for human beings, suffering is a required course and happiness is an elective. That is why I often lack sympathy for the accidents of life that befall others, because in a broad sense, everyone is barely surviving inside uncertainty. But I also believe that people can, through effort, eliminate much of the suffering that lies beyond mere fate: by solidarity and individual effort, by removing institutional evil, by leaving violence and privilege nowhere to hide, and by creating limited fairness in an uncertain world.

At the beginning of the Year of Renyin, winter has indeed passed, and the spring wind is indeed about to blow. Although 2021 brought turning points, please do not forget the suffering still taking place on this land. Do not forget the evils and injustices that once made us angry, resentful, and sick.

I am still myself, still living with a sense of right and wrong, common sense, and reverence. It is only that, under omnipresent pressure from power, loud appeals have turned into irony and veiled sarcasm. May the world still be saved as long as the faint glow has not gone out.

I don’t know what kind of mood I am writing this travel note at this time, because it is not originally a travel note - how can returning to my hometown be considered a trip? But when I finally stood in the east square of Wuhu Station at one o’clock in the morning, I realized clearly: I was finally home.

It all started a week ago. On a gloomy afternoon, I was walking alone on the bamboo-shaded road of the Chengdu Giant Panda Base, thinking aimlessly - about work, about marriage, and even about some insignificant things. Giant pandas are not that attractive to me. After all, they are all similar-looking creatures. I will get bored after looking at them for a while and taking a few photos. So this is a great time to fill your brain with whatever it is.

The result of this thinking was the decision to resign. Although in terms of career development prospects alone, the current job is very good. But its low starting salary and the nature of long-term business trips forced me to face the issue of “work-family balance”. If I choose to return to a provincial capital city near my hometown, there will be a job waiting for me with a higher starting salary and no need to travel. So after a fierce ideological struggle, I came to the conclusion: The so-called “development prospects” are all relative. Even if I return to my hometown, it does not mean that there are no development prospects at all. But compared with life itself, the “prospects” of the current job are not worth my continued pursuit. If the ultimate goal of working hard to make money is to live a better life, then when you have absolutely no other choice, you should not give up life itself for the sake of making money. This is putting the cart before the horse.

Therefore, I decided to return to Shenzhen from Chongqing on April 15. After completing the final work handover procedures, I flew back to my hometown of Anhui via Zhuhai. As for the reason for passing through Zhuhai, it is entirely because the final return ticket cannot be reimbursed. In order to save money, I purchased the relatively cheap flight from Zhuhai to Hefei. Most of the time before (when the company reimbursed the air tickets), I flew directly from Shenzhen to Nanjing, and the latter was the fastest route.

start

Just do it. The habit of “minimalist living” that I have developed in my daily life is showing its power at this time - all the personal belongings I have in my two residences in Chongqing and Shenzhen are only the size of a 20-inch suitcase and a backpack. Therefore, I was able to clear two residences and return to my hometown over a distance of more than 3,000 kilometers in just one and a half days.

After completing the necessary procedures, it was already ten o’clock in the morning. I walked out of the company building with my bag on my back and took a taxi back to my apartment. Before getting in the car, I took what might be the last photo of the company building behind me. Our apartment is a four-room dormitory provided free of charge by the company for interns. It is about half an hour’s drive from the company (it takes one hour to get there by bus). After arriving at the apartment, I quickly went upstairs to take off my suitcase and went through the deposit refund procedure at the front desk (I paid a 100 yuan deposit when I checked into the dormitory). Then walk to the nearby subway station, change once, and arrive at the “Shekou Port” station. After leaving the station, we walked for about 20 minutes and finally arrived at the first stop of our trip back home - Shekou Cruise Center. This is a terminal with unique interior and exterior decoration. The internal structure is very similar to a high-speed rail station or an airport: the first floor is the entrance, and the second floor and above are dining or rest areas. The way to get tickets is also very simple. Just put the ID card corresponding to the ID number registered when purchasing the ticket on the self-service machine near the entrance. The flight I took was the passenger ship Xunlong from Shekou Port to Hengqin Port. There are two types of positions: ordinary and first-class, and the price difference is only thirty yuan. First class not only has fewer passengers, but the seats are more comfortable and the view is better. After boarding the ship, I found a very interesting sign with the words “China Merchants Group, founded in 1872”, which instantly gave me the feeling of dreaming back to the Qing Dynasty. The voyage passed the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge and the Macau Friendship Bridge, and passed through the narrow channel between Zhuhai and Macau. During this period, the mobile phone signal drifted to Macau, and I also received a warning text message from the customs. Although just a few minutes were not enough to turn my itinerary code into red, this short “exit” still made me full of emotions. After more than an hour of sailing, the passenger ship docked steadily at Hengqin Port, Zhuhai. I have heard people talk about Zhuhai’s beautiful environment and pure air a long time ago, and this time I finally felt it myself.

twists and turns

But just as I walked out of the beautiful Hengqin Pier in a happy mood, I received a text message that the flight was delayed for three hours. In January of this year, news of HNA’s bankruptcy and reorganization officially came out. At that time, I had the emotion of “watching him build a tall building, watching his building collapse.” But when the flight was delayed by three hours, and the airline happened to be Hainan Airlines, I felt again at a loss as when “the dust of the times falls on one’s head”. Since time suddenly became extremely abundant, I slowed down my pace and took a bus to the airport bus station while enjoying the scenery along the way in Zhuhai. The nearest airport bus station to Hengqin Port is at Holiday Inn Hengqin. This is a hotel decorated to look like a fairy tale castle. Although I have not stayed in this hotel, the external environment alone feels very suitable for staying on vacation. After waiting on the first floor of the hotel for nearly forty minutes, the airport bus finally arrived. On the way to the airport, the bus will stop briefly at the University of Macau Hengqin Campus. This university is across the sea from Macau. Although it is located in Zhuhai, it is administratively under the jurisdiction of Macau. No matter from any aspect, this can be regarded as a model of “one country, two systems”. So during the second half of the journey to the airport, I walked with a group of students from the University of Macau. Although these people are still students, they have already fallen into the bad social habit of “watching videos outside on the bus.”

After arriving at Zhuhai Jinwan Airport, I waited for more than two hours in KFC and the terminal with nothing to do. During the broadcast, a slightly apologetic statement was made that dinner would be provided to all HNA passengers who had been delayed. But when I saw the middle-aged man sitting next to me in the terminal returning angrily with a box of hot lunch boxes, I gave up on this “free dinner.” In comparison, the “Hainan Special Chicken Noodles” on the plane attracted me more.

At 7:30 in the evening, the radio finally informed us that we were ready to board the plane. So I picked up my suitcase again and stood in a long queue, waiting to board the flight that was supposed to take off three hours ago.

#End

Except for Shanghai Hongqiao Airport, almost all the airports in the cities I have visited are located in remote suburbs. This may be in line with certain economic principles, but it actually goes against the convenience of passengers. Perhaps because of the consideration of convenience, Hefei Xinqiao Airport has set up a special city shuttle bus to regularly transport passengers to the train station and other city addresses. After the plane landed slowly at 9:30 pm, I followed the crowd and hurried to the city shuttle boarding point outside the arrivals hall of the airport. I spent fifteen yuan to buy a ticket to Hefei Railway Station. The shuttle bus didn’t leave “on time” until ten o’clock, and it didn’t arrive until 11:08, which was still more than 200 meters away from Hefei Railway Station.

Yes, you heard it right. The shuttle bus destined for Hefei Railway Station did not actually enter Hefei Railway Station, but dropped us off far away from the train station. The last train that night departed at 11:21, which meant that within thirteen minutes, I had to drag my suitcase and backpack over a distance of more than 200 meters, go through the security check, go upstairs, find the correct platform and squeeze into the train. Although the above process was very difficult and tiring, I managed to get on the train just one second before the train door closed.

Since it was too late, I could only take the green car home. So I stayed for another hour and a half in the foul-smelling green van. Finally, I finally returned to Wuhu at one o’clock in the morning.

As usual, when I write this kind of half-coherent year-end summary, I put on headphones and loop a song that can make me feel either sentimental or excited. This year, what I have kept listening to is still Li Zhi’s unplugged version of “Rehe” from his 2018 New Year’s Eve concert. It is odd: the song is called “Rehe,” but it is really about Nanjing. Just as when I was in Shanghai, I passed Shunyi Road every day but never once went to Beijing.

I do not know when Nanjing became a synonym for “hometown” to me. Perhaps it is because every time I went home for a holiday, I first flew to Nanjing Lukou Airport and then took a train back to Wuhu. Perhaps it is because whenever I introduced my hometown to someone, I would unconsciously say, “My hometown is Wuhu, Anhui, right next to Nanjing.” Or perhaps it is because whenever I mention “China,” I think of Nanjing.

No one who did not graduate the same year as me can really know how hard it was to find a job in China after Covid. I once badly wanted to settle in Shanghai, but the brutal job search left me so heartbroken that when I boarded the plane to Shenzhen, I felt no attachment at all and did not look back. Of course, I have no particular opinion about the stereotypical “Shanghainese,” and I do not think Shanghai is especially hard to integrate into. I simply feel that maybe a place like Shenzhen, with so little tradition, is better suited for my survival. After all, I dislike history and hate tradition.

Grandall is a good law firm, because it took me in when I was most helpless and gave me a platform good enough to hone my skills. I had wanted wholeheartedly to do litigation, but by a twist of fate I stepped onto the path of non-litigation legal work. If I give up the ideal of helping the poor and the wronged, and think only of living a decent life, then law is just a craft for making a living. So I gave up illusions long ago. From the moment I arrived in this cultural desert in the south, backpack on my shoulders and suitcase in hand, youth had already gone with the wind.

One year ago today, I had a fever of 40 degrees and was shivering at a Xie Chunhua concert. At the same time, Li Wenliang sent the WeChat message that would enter human history. Then the whistle sounded, and the whole world changed. I vaguely remember that the theme of Xie Chunhua’s concert was “2020, please be kinder to me.” Well, it was fairly kind to me after all. At least in its final two months, my life showed a small turn for the better.

Late at night, I often curse in my heart the fathers who left our generation such a mess. This country has placed so many burdens on its “successors” that, even without abortion or sterilization, the number of newborns is falling year by year. That may hurt Durex’s share price. But maybe that is fine. I have never liked monopoly capital, if Durex counts as a monopoly. Still, what happens next? I cannot see a way out. Perhaps for an individual, escaping Sodom is the better plan. Unfortunately, Covid arrived just then and cut in half the last false friendly tie between countries.

Tomorrow, I will leave Banan, ride the light rail for two hours to Yubei, and fly home. Of course, Wuhu has no airport. My destination is still Nanjing. But for Nanjing, my hometown lies behind me, by the riverbank, in Quanjiao County, Anhui.

December 31, 2020, Banan, Chongqing

This afternoon, I dragged a large suitcase and a big package of deliveries to the gate on Guangfu West Road. The package contained replacement bedding. The reason I had to carry it around myself was that the closed-campus policy does not allow couriers to enter, forcing me to pick it up from the Cainiao station and bring it back to school.

At the gate, a clumsy security guard told us to line up for “identity verification.” The cursed facial-recognition system showed the same dead expression no matter who stood in front of it: “Recognition failed. Please swipe card and try again.” So we had to register on paper one by one. I later learned that the return-to-campus verification system apparently had not been loaded with any student information at all. In other words, the machine that kept repeating “Recognition failed. Please swipe card and try again” was nothing but a decoration. Every student waiting for “identity verification” had to register manually.

Perhaps my ten-digit student number was too complicated. The security guard acting on orders simply could not find my information in the thick student roster. So, while several girls behind me dragged suitcases and waited anxiously, I had to search the roster myself, fill out the form myself, pass through a “temperature check room” with no staff inside, and finally enter the campus I had not seen in a long time, smoothly and quickly.

After settling in, I packed up the bedding that had lain alone for eight months during the pandemic and mailed it home together with a Mi Band 3. Since I had prepared a brand-new set of bedding for this return, the old, possibly moldy “lonely bedding” became extra stuff that had to be shipped away. I sent the dead Mi Band 3 back too because 33 wanted to use it as her alarm clock and phone notification device, exactly the way I had used it.

Since becoming homeroom teacher of the international class at Beijing No. 11 School, her habit of being unreachable by phone no matter how urgent the matter seems to have improved. Apparently what really makes a person mature is not gentle persuasion from a loved one, but a beating from society. I am quite pleased by this small change in her.

I did not expect registration at this magical school to close at 4 p.m. today. So after calmly enjoying a surprisingly good dinner at the Hexi canteen and walking to the check-in machine near the entrance of Building 40, which had been standing there dumbly waiting for people to swipe cards before 4 p.m., I found that the machine had disappeared. Soon after, the class monitor sent a notice: “Registration closes at 4 p.m. on the 13th. Students on the following list, including me of course, did not register in time. Please complete supplementary registration tomorrow at the terminal on the first floor of Building 40,” which was exactly where I was standing.

At night, it suddenly rained heavily during my “cross-district shower.” I should explain that I am not adding “cross-district” before “shower” to be mysterious. At this magical school, almost all students living east of the river, except those in Building 1 who have their own bathrooms, must cross Suzhou Creek to shower in the public bathhouse on the west side. As everyone knows, Suzhou Creek is the boundary between Putuo District and Changning District. So every night’s shower is, in the strictest sense, a cross-district operation.

Considering Shanghai’s status as a directly administered municipality, what we cross while showering is actually two city-level administrative units. You can imagine our mood when a downpour hits during this cross-district shower. Especially when we saw two sets of bedding by the roadside completely soaked by the rain. Regrettably, their owners seemed to have forgotten the basic common sense that bedding should be brought in before dark. Our good mood became even better.

I know that right now you are sitting in an evening self-study classroom, preparing for the gaokao with endless fantasies about the future. Although your recent mock-exam scores have not been ideal, you are still immersed in the glory of having once ranked among the top 500 in the province in the Jiangnan Ten Schools exam, holding on to a baseless confidence.

You probably cannot imagine that, a little more than a month later, on June 22, your terrible final score will make you doubt your life. I admit that it took us a long time to let this go. That is why, around this time last year, in a letter to my self ten years from now, I swore that I would get into Renmin University for graduate school. Now the graduate entrance exam is over, and I did not get into Renmin.

It is indeed regrettable. The debt from four years ago remains unpaid, and the hope of paying it back in the future is slim. But I have never regretted the big talk I once gave others, because I firmly believe that boasting can make me improve. As the saying widely circulated in English goes: fake it till you make it. Since long ago, we developed the habit of “pretending”: before we can truly do something, we pretend we can. This is not to prove to others how impressive we are, but to let others push us to become impressive. After all, it is embarrassing when a boast falls apart.

You are about to enter a non-elite university that you long looked down on. You will indeed find many disappointing things about it. But none of that can deny the meaning of these four years. Like everyone else, you will make many attempts, some meaningful and some not; make a group of friends, some close and some distant; and develop many thoughts, some left and some right. Some of these attempts, friends, and thoughts will be valuable. Others will be pure wastes of time.

But evolution has made us dependent on our environment. Whether we subjectively like it or not, the things we encounter and the environments we inhabit will leave irreversible effects on us. That is why I, now fully aware of this, can calmly reflect on the past during the brief quiet before graduation. We have made many foolish decisions, and we will certainly make more foolish decisions in the future. But that is the trial-and-error process of life, and we should learn to let it go.

You may feel that the future is completely uncertain. I feel the same. But I remind myself constantly that this uncertainty is the same uncertainty faced by pioneers across time and place. It is the uncertainty of the Mayflower on the Atlantic, and of gold prospectors crossing the Pacific toward San Francisco. In the next few years, I will spend my life in Shanghai. East China University of Political Science and Law should give me a platform large enough to try. Whether I will eventually live in a way I am satisfied with is not something I can answer now.

This may sound repetitive, but I still want to restate the ideology we have held since our worldview first formed at seventeen: always stand on the side of the egg. As time passes, more and more people look at the world through the eyes of the strong. They would rather abandon the axial spirit our ancestors spent thousands of years seeking and retreat to an animal law of the jungle, sympathizing with the powerful. They are obsessed with imperial tactics, geopolitical games, national causes, and calls for military unification. Perhaps they have never imagined that one day they too may become prey for the strong.

But we know clearly that the high wall is covered with fine words and lies. That is not what we want.

This was originally a boring final assignment for a psychology class. After finishing the handwritten version, I still decided to type it up and keep it. Although it is an assignment, every sentence I wrote is sincere. My future self may betray the ideals I once shared with you, or may turn around and laugh at your foolishness and recklessness. Whatever happens, please just smile it off.

I forgive all the wrong things you have done. In return, I beg you not to forgive all the wrong things I may do in the future.

Sincerely,

Respectfully

On the last day of the old year, Wuhu finally had a proper haze. In the morning, as I rode alone to school, I could not see the library hidden in the thick fog. There was a faint, almost imperceptible chemical smell in my nose, and only then did I realize winter had arrived. Unlike intermittent ice ages, winter comes every year, sometimes early and sometimes late, sometimes gentle and sometimes fierce. But in its reliability, in the fact that it always keeps its appointment, it deserves some praise.

The past year was empty for me, lacking any major goal. So I artificially set myself a few small goals of little real significance. They could add one or two byproducts to my monotonous college life, things I could brag about, and help me avoid the permanent loss of momentum caused by losing direction. Over the year, I passed Japanese Language Proficiency Test N3, passed the written part of the high school English teaching certificate exam, read dozens of books, remembered more than a dozen historical episodes, and took another step on the road to owning a dog. Compared with an increasingly hopeless legal career, these small and painless things added quite a bit of color to what should have been a dull life. They at least gave me something to point to during the routine year-end summary and say, “This year was quite full.”

My relationship with my family has become increasingly harmonious. That is another high-quality product I gained this past year. Watching my parents grow older day by day has not produced much resentment toward time in me. Whenever that thought appears, I tell myself that I too will grow old one day. In that sense, my parents and I are even; it is only a matter of sequence. That makes me feel better. Instead of obsessing over the aging of parents and relatives, it is better to use the present well: make more jokes each day, tease ourselves a little more, and let emotional connection be maintained that way. If possible, I will try to make something of myself in a way that fits my parents’ values. That would count as another responsibility fulfilled, at least as I see it.

After crossing a second year-end with Shanshan, my satisfaction with and trust in this relationship have deepened. If possible, we probably will not separate. That also brings another unavoidable problem: the weight of life on my shoulders has grown much heavier. In a society where economic distribution is not exactly fair, it is very hard for people like us to support a middle-class family with our own hands. I hope she understands this as early as possible. But no matter how hard life becomes, I will give it everything. This is not motivational soup or a solemn vow. It is simply because life should be lived this way, and no one can raise their hand and surrender.

According to the old heavenly-stems-and-earthly-branches calendar, after Dingyou comes Wuxu. Two sixty-year cycles have passed since the Hundred Days’ Reform. That was a painful historical story. An attempt to drive social change from within the system failed completely, followed by the execution of the Six Gentlemen, the reactionary backlash of court conservatives, and the fraudulence of Kang Youwei, once the spiritual leader of reform. One hundred and twenty years later, the ghost of the Qing still seems not to have fully left this ancient land. Some of the best and most beautiful things in our old tradition are dying day by day, while wave after wave of stale dregs, revived in the name of “rejuvenation,” have found new life.

The Guo Wengui revelations, the Yu Huan stabbing case after his mother was humiliated, the Hangzhou Greentown arson, the Ming Jingguo resistance case, the RYB kindergarten abuse scandal, Beijing’s expulsion of the low-end population, and the coal-to-gas heating campaign in North China: all these events that left public opinion stunned happened with unusual concentration in 2017. I do not know how later generations will judge our era, but I know that fairness and conscience among the Chinese people have not disappeared.

Baseness is the passport of the base,

Nobility the epitaph of the noble.

Look, in that gilded sky,

The bent shadows of the dead are drifting.

The Ice Age is over,

Why is there ice everywhere?

The Cape of Good Hope has been discovered,

Why do a thousand sails race across the Dead Sea?

I came into this world

Bringing only paper, rope, and a shadow,

So that before the judgment

I may read out the voices already condemned.

In 2017, all theoretical reflection bore the fruit of practice. From then on, my political consciousness fully awakened. Standing far away and watching coldly, or turning my face elsewhere and fleeing timidly, cannot change this unreasonable world. If I still hold any hope of creating a happy life for my future children, I must act and place myself inside it.

In the Constitution, our name is “citizen.” What kind of citizen? One who can express independent views without arrogance; obey politics without servility; participate actively in national policy; feel sympathy when seeing the weak, and anger when seeing evil. That is a real citizen.

If the ocean is destined to break its dikes,

Let all bitter waters pour into my heart;

If the land is destined to rise,

Let humanity choose again the peak of survival.

New turning points and shining stars

Are filling the unobstructed sky.

Those are five thousand years of pictographs,

Those are the eyes with which future people gaze.

That is why I borrowed this line as the title. In another Wuxu year, I will continue walking forward with hope, waiting eagerly for every new dawn.

The longing for sincere love, the tireless pursuit of truth, and an irrepressible compassion for human suffering: these three simple but powerful passions govern my life. This was my 2017. I place my best hopes in the new year, and sincerely wish happiness to everyone who has read this far, and everyone who has not.

Early morning, January 1, 2018