Memoirs of a Chinese Rural Youth, 2001-2007 [1, 1 ed.]

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Memoirs of Rural Life in China 2001-2007-Brian Xue

Memoirs of Rural Life in China 2001-2007 Preface In the span of nearly 80,000 words, I reminisced about the time from junior high school to college graduation, spanning over a decade.

Initially, my intention was to write an article to reflect on my three years in high school around the time of my tenth high school reunion. After all, ten years had passed, and I felt I could objectively review that period. Unexpectedly, what started as a brief mention of my pre-high school life turned into a summary of my junior high school years. Considering I had previously written an article recalling my college years a few years after my high school graduation, I added that content as well. In this way, the narrative expanded both backward and forward in time, making the title "Tenth Anniversary" inadequate. Hence, I changed it to "My Ten Years," which seemed more fitting.

In this work, I recollect the approximately ten years from the start of junior high to the end of college. The sections about junior high and the first year of high school were written in the summer of 2016, a small part of the second year of high school was written in the summer of 2017, most of the second year and all of the third year of high school were penned in the summer of 2018, and the college section was written in the summer of 2015.

This somewhat peculiar arrangement resulted in a writing span of over four years, reflecting different writing styles and states of mind in the four sections. Particularly, the part covering the second and third years of high school was essentially a rushed piece.

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I graduated from high school in 2007, and in the summer of 2016, I began contemplating writing the "Tenth Anniversary" article. According to my original plan, I intended to complete all the content before the arrival of 2017. However, due to personal laziness or the sporadic nature of my interest, I lost the motivation to continue writing after completing the part about the first year of high school in the summer of 2016. A year later, in the summer of 2017, I attempted to pick up the pen again, but without much enthusiasm, I wrote a portion before setting it aside.

The plan that started in 2016 lingered until 2018, still incomplete. I began to feel that if I didn't force myself to finish it, it might never be completed. Therefore, I set aside half an hour every night before bedtime, compelling myself to write something. In this way, I forcibly completed the recollections of my entire high school years.

It can be said that the sections before the second year of high school were written spontaneously, while the parts about the second and third years of high school became more of a task-oriented, journallike writing. The section about college was written in the summer of 2015 and somewhat reflects my mindset at that time.

I rarely write, and to some extent, this article is essentially a culmination of my writing over the past five years, a forced outcome of writing for the sake of writing. Nevertheless, I believe this work can represent my evolving views of the world over the past five to ten years. Although it is a memoir, it is essentially an expression of my current self, a personal manifesto disguised as a memoir.

This serves as a preface. 2

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I graduated from elementary school in 2001 and entered junior high. After completing junior high in 2004, I moved on to high school. From my high school graduation in 2007 until the following year in 2017, exactly ten years had passed. I took the opportunity of this decade to reminisce about the three years I spent at Quzhou No.3 Middle School.

I am far from the age of summarizing life, and I don't believe that my recollections of ten years ago can truly represent my views on the bygone years. However, in 2016, I had the chance to reunite with my crush from a decade ago. This disheartening encounter changed the potential trajectory of my life, coupled with various subsequent experiences. I felt it necessary to pause and reorganize my thoughts, taking advantage of the double-decade opportunity to reflect on that era that was both close at hand and just recently passed.

Before delving into the narrative of my three years in high school, I'll briefly outline my life before high school. I hope that the unfolding of the trajectory of my life will be presented in a very natural and smooth manner, rather than abruptly reaching a certain point and then beginning to progress or decline.

1

The summer of 2004 had not yet begun, and the results of the secondary school entrance examination were naturally revealed.

To be honest, I never had any thoughts about my exam results—not fantasies about whether they were good or bad but rather an 3

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indifference towards exam scores, as they were not sufficient to evoke any emotional fluctuations in me at that time. In 2004, I had not encountered anything that made me hesitate or regretful, things that could disrupt your thoughts, affect your emotions, and plunge you into prolonged or long-term anxiety. If not dealt with or resolved, recalling such matters later would immediately cast a gloomy shadow. At that time, however, there was nothing that a visit to an internet cafe for an hour of gaming couldn't solve. If an hour wasn't enough, just spend an extra two yuan—making it two hours.

After making a dozen or so calls to inquire about exam results, I successfully learned about my secondary school entrance exam scores. It was evident that my scores were far from the key high school in our county (even though there were only three high schools in the area, it was easy for everyone to rank them based on the university admission rate). The gap between my scores and Quzhou No.3 Middle School, a key high school in our county, was significant.

It was also the official day for announcing the secondary school entrance exam results. Friends who had been admitted to the expected high schools naturally celebrated. As for me, a rejected nobody, I went to school with my dad. At the entrance of the office, a large group of parents, with several students each, were inquiring about repeating a grade or seeking advice on choosing schools. I didn't have much to think about; I just tried to sneak a few glances at the class exam score sheet in the hands of the teachers within the crowd. I hoped to find a few classmates with similar poor scores to comfort myself by considering the shared risk.

When the teacher who taught natural science saw me, he smiled and greeted me. I remained silent, considering it a form of consolation— 4

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after all, it was just a secondary school entrance exam; it wasn't that big of a deal. My dad started chatting, and the conclusion drawn was mainly a suggestion for me to repeat a year. I didn't agree to stay in this boring campus, so I nodded in silence.

The number of parents increased steadily. Vaguely, I guessed that our batch had the worst exam scores. By "worst," I mean that the number of students admitted to provincial, municipal, and district key high schools was the lowest in recent years. I estimated it to be within ten, considering that my exam scores in the third year of junior high were generally hovering around the top fifteen in the grade. Taking into account the teachers' mood, rounding up, it was probably around ten. (Even to this day, I still don't know what happened to most of my classmates after junior high graduation, except for one or two with the best scores).

What to do if not repeating a grade? Go to the town high school located in the adjacent town? That high school was notorious for its strict discipline—note that discipline here refers to character beyond academic pursuits. It was said that our town's seniors were dominant there. Don't want to go there? How about choosing a district key high school? It was, after all, located in the city, so you didn't have to worry about the rough northern wind from the countryside. What does choosing a school mean? It means paying extra to boost your scores. Does paying money guarantee admission? Clearly not. According to the principle of first-come, first-served, the higher your boost, the better. The spots are limited, so don't wait too long. What to say? Well, it's not even noon yet, and you don't need lunch; rush to the town bus station and take the bus to the city to pay the money.

So, on a certain day after the secondary school entrance exam, my 5

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dad carried more than 13,000 yuan in school selection fees, and I accompanied him on the bus to the city, bouncing along the cement road.

The scene at the school selection fee payment venue that day was unexpectedly crowded. Several classrooms on the first floor of the main entrance of the teaching building had been transformed into fee collection sites. Groups of chairs surrounded the inside, where fee collectors sat, and beside them were counting and checking machines. Confirm name, select school amount, pay money, count money, issue a receipt—job done. In the days after paying the fee, I smoothly received the admission notice for high school, thus entering my alma mater—Quzhou No.3 High School.

This school selection fee had a very complex impact on me, especially over the next three years, becoming the source of all my guilt. When my dad was preparing to pay the fee, I was very surprised. I had never seen so much money in my life (at that time, ten yuan a week was already a lot for living expenses). My parents were the kind who wouldn't give me three or five yuan in pocket money, but when it came to the critical moment, they willingly pulled out such a huge amount. I thought at the time, if you gave me this much money to spend, maybe I could have passed the exam for the second high school (looking back, this thought was unfounded because even if they gave me the money at that time, I wouldn't have worried about not having enough money to go to an internet cafe. I simply didn't care about textbooks and exams. The extra money beyond the internet fees wouldn't have mattered to me. Also, just in terms of this money, it couldn't have substantially changed the trajectory of my life. To this day, this amount remains the highest single expense my family has spent on me in the brief 20-odd years of my life). Although I feel that spending that money was extremely foolish, considering my 6

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yearning for the city and the various possibilities it opened up for me, I did not express any dissatisfaction with the payment. I consistently emphasized my refusal to retake the exam. Interestingly, three years after the conclusion of the high school entrance exam, before I went on to a vocational college with a tuition fee of eight to nine thousand yuan, I continued to express my determination not to retake the exam.

Failing the junior high school entrance exam was not an exceptional event for me. Throughout the more than ten years of my academic career since then, I consistently remained at the bottom of the class. Even upon graduating from university, I found myself among the few who did not obtain a degree.

In general, the academic life focused on textbooks held no attraction for me. It wasn't because I lacked a desire for knowledge or was personally disheartened. It was simply that the school routine was too monotonous and dull. The information and exposure to fresh experiences were extremely limited. This situation persisted throughout the following decade of my academic journey. Even after entering high school, I was not captivated by any subject to the extent that I would invest my energy and attention into exams and studies, believing it would yield sufficient returns.

To be precise, at no stage or in any field of my academic journey did I receive the rewards I desired. I couldn't see even a glimmer of hope, whether from classmates or from teachers, principals, or administrative leaders. I couldn't see any compelling aspects that good academic performance or behavior in school could bring. I'm not just talking about personal qualities; I mean the overall qualities of morality, intelligence, physical fitness, and aesthetics. What I'm saying is that the school life I experienced lacked individuals embodying 7

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these qualities. Whether it was my own issue (the poverty of my personal life leading to a lack of vision) or an issue with the school itself (meaning that hoping for life changes through school experiences is impossible), I still don't know. The circle of people in my school was composed of individuals who, like me, showed no ambition, and all I saw was helplessness.

In 2001, I started attending the public junior high school in the town. At that time, there was also a private junior high school in the town, whose principal happened to be a good friend from my elementary school days. Shortly after graduating from elementary school, I reserved a spot at the private junior high school. However, upon learning that my childhood crush from elementary school had enrolled in the public junior high school, I didn't hesitate much before transferring to the public school. I was acquainted with the principal of the private school because I spent most of my after-school time in the gaming room he owned during elementary school. So, I never attended the private junior high school, and there was always a sense of regret. On one hand, it was because I didn't go to his school. At the same time, the opening of an internet cafe in town during the summer led me to bid farewell to the gaming arcade, channeling all my remaining time into this entirely new and unknown journey.

2

Zhou Hao depicted a possible school life in the era of 2005 in "Senior Year," and Wuping couldn't be considered a small county town, at least compared to the town where I went to school. There were some commonalities, especially in certain aspects. Although my high school life, a few years later, still synchronized with the life of staying up all night playing games as portrayed in "Senior Year," the similarity was 8

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mainly in the aspect of going online; the transition from arcades to internet cafes was primarily due to differences in geographical location. The town's internet cafe was located at the entrance of the town government, while the arcade stood tall on the main street. Opposite the arcade was a pool hall, a nighttime gathering spot for the town's youth during the late 1990s and the beginning of the 2000s. I spent countless evenings wandering between these two places, getting to know other buddies on the street. These buddies gradually moved to the city or transferred to other schools or relocated. I didn't develop any interest in training my pool skills, and the emergence of internet cafes conveniently filled the vacant time I spent idling in arcades.

Later life mostly involved shuttling between the internet cafe and the rural paths leading to it. As the buddies who roamed the streets at night had already left the small town, I focused all my energy on a new online game world. I even forgot about the changes in my daily life happening around me.

Starting from the year 2000, internet cafes were filled with the atmosphere of "Cool Love" and "Love Songs for Singles." Back then, headsets weren't very popular yet, and people sitting near the entrance of the internet cafes always liked to turn up the volume of the songs they played to the maximum. Every time you entered an internet cafe, background music played, as if it were the opening sound of a new world. Intertwined with this were the opening sounds of "Legend of Mir" before entering the game. Even today, more than a decade later, this sound is still used as a signature tune for various online mini-games, which can't help but make people sigh.

One's taste in music is largely shaped by experience. Although 9

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different types of music cause different physiological stimulations to the auditory nerves and the cerebral cortex, in terms of the pleasure brought by listening to music, it ultimately involves promoting the secretion of certain hormones. With the power of these hormones, you might feel either melancholic or joyful, either restless or ready to gaze at the sky with tears in your eyes at a 45-degree angle. You may worry about the country and the people, as if you are trapped in the torrent of history and cannot extricate yourself. You may open the front camera of your phone to capture your sad or angry facial expressions through filters and skin smoothing to post them on social networks.

One of the legacies the internet cafe's audio environment left me with is that I once carefully listened to Yu Quan during my three years of junior high. Even many years later, when Lin Zhi Xuan made a comeback on "I Am a Singer," I still felt a bit surreal.

The internet cafe world in the early 2000s was a world of games. Everyone played "Legend of Mir" under the slow internet speed, and during network interruptions, they would casually enter a local area network (LAN) for a round of "Counter-Strike." In the end, after playing "CS" for three years, I always played the "Warehouse" and "Dust World" maps. Between games, buddies also registered countless chatting accounts on QQ, which were soon forgotten after leaving the internet cafe. The icon of Sina UC still leaves a deep impression. Many days of rising early and staying up late were spent in the internet cafe. I once played every single-player game available in the internet cafe. The transition of online games ranged from Jin Yong to the Stone Age, to "Legend of Mir," to "Journey to the West," to "Miracle," to private servers, until the flowers finally bloomed. However, for the original online game players, this also meant the conclusion of their gaming careers. Coincidentally, after junior high school, games completely 10

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disappeared from my online life. 3 Surrounding the stories of internet cafes are countless. I once planned to write an article recalling my online journey, but I never found the motivation to do so. Later, I wrote an article titled "Personal Journey of Buying Books," considering it a prelude.

Here, I want to talk about the extent to which the internet shaped my early life. Before the opening of the internet cafe in the summer of 2001 in the town, my knowledge of the world beyond the small town came entirely from television. It was an era when local channels were not well-developed, and I spent most of my time on the central channel. However, that portrayed a possible life in Beijing, whereas I lived in a remote village beneath a fourth-tier city. A few years later, after entering high school, I finally had the opportunity to wander around the city during weekends. The unfamiliarity of the city made me feel lost.

Continuing with the weekends before the internet cafe, as usual, I rummaged through the house, secretly taking money for my expeditions. The old streets in town were adorned with various shops—snack stalls, video game rooms, pharmacies, video rental shops, small restaurants. The video rental shop with a fee of fifty cents for three movies shaped my general aesthetic for films. Even in the subsequent decade, Hong Kong movies remained the most attractive to me, despite concerns about the quality of directors other than Johnnie To.

Entertainment in town wasn't limited to just game arcades and pool rooms; both accompanied me through most of my pre-junior high 11

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school years. In the days that followed, small game rooms in convenience stores took over. Initially, the owner attracted kids with various Famicom game cards for two yuan an hour, allowing you to play a dozen games.

When Famicom gradually became a ubiquitous study tool in households within a year or two, the equipment in the convenience store was upgraded to Sony PS. Still, it was two yuan an hour, and you had a plethora of game discs to choose from—Red Alert '95, King of Fighters '97, FIFA 2000—unconsciously, the new century had arrived.

I'm talking about how the internet shaped my early life, particularly my leisure time. After all, with the start of the new millennium, I was about to enter the world of junior high school, and most of my time was spent wandering at school. Despite discussing games most of the time at school, not only with classmates but even my mind was consumed by games, making playing games a joyful and challenging activity. This also explains why my academic performance was not stellar— schoolwork and exams were dull and lifeless, lacking any appeal for a young, underage person.

I've discussed school life, with weekends and summer vacations being my leisure time. Obviously, I couldn't successfully pilfer money from home every weekend, and many times, I was caught stealing money, facing my parents' scolding or even physical punishment. However, the moment I thought about the gaming world that held a continuous attraction for me, all negative real-world problems were pushed aside. The only concern was how to get internet fees or how to find ways to make money.

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In cases where pilfering money at home was discovered or when I couldn't get any money, I would team up with friends to roam and explore. To discover new opportunities for making money, we would steal copper, aluminum, or iron from construction sites and sell them at recycling centers for a low price. We would snatch cardboard or anything else we thought could be sold from people's doorsteps and sell them to recycling centers. When all else failed, we would go to the internet cafe and watch others play games, often for an entire weekend or summer vacation.

In the internet cafe, I met many peers of similar or younger ages. Our methods of making money were quite similar, with stealing money from home being the most common method. Every weekend, you could see angry parents coming to the internet cafe to drag their children home. I felt their frustration was largely due to the unexplained disappearance of money at home, rather than their sons playing games at the internet cafe. Friends who frequented the internet cafe together would also engage in various activities together, as finding internet fees was a common goal. Finding internet fees, going online, being scolded at home, continuing to find internet fees, going online—this was the rhythm of our leisure time and how the internet shaped my leisure life.

Around the winter of 2003, I developed a habit of going to the internet cafe to play games after evening self-study. I was in the third year of junior high school, having switched from boarding to commuting, making it easy for me to go to the internet cafe outside of weekends. Usually, self-study ended at half-past eight, and by the time I reached the internet cafe, it might already be nine. Boarding school classmates who came out to use the internet had already started playing games. I would arrive late, exchange greetings, and start my night. 13

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Perhaps due to the impending high school entrance exam in the third year, one evening after self-study, I hadn't even settled into my seat at the internet cafe when my father came and dragged me out. In a state of melancholy, I walked out of the internet cafe into the night. I didn't even bother to ask the internet cafe staff for a refund. That night, my father was very angry, and I remained silent, returning to my room alone to sleep. I probably cried that night, feeling that the world was so absurd—such a trivial matter could trigger such intense emotional reactions. Similar feelings repeated over the next ten years. It wasn't until around 2014 that I decided to limit the time I spent at home to one or two days each year. Since then, my feelings towards home have improved a lot. It's not that the world changed or that the parents of village residents progressed; it's that I changed. I completely gave up that kind of life and the people in the village.

I spent about twenty-five years, based on my life experiences and personal reflections, finally realizing that my power was too small, too small even to live a good life on my own. Why should I still interact with irrelevant people? It's not because the world is absurd. The world is neither big nor small—it's just here. Why do you have to have expectations for the world? These expectations are based on your years of experience watching children's programs or children's TV shows on Central TV. You developed an illusion based on the daily lives depicted in those programs, thinking that life anywhere would be so colorful and exciting, rather than realizing that the world is an unattainable place. Even the world of a fourth-tier city, tens of kilometers away, is an unimaginable world. I only truly understood this fact in recent years. The world, for me, is a gradually unveiling illusion. I persisted in the same belief for more than twenty years: my life would naturally get better, approaching the daily life depicted in TV programs or dramas. However, reality is evidently a different scene, 14

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harsher than the world portrayed in political textbooks. The stifling life coincided with my growing age and self-awareness, starting to embrace me.

NetEase Cloud Music has a personal all-time song ranking list, although it is inaccurate in statistics, it reflects short-term personal listening habits. In the past two years (2014

-2016), several songs that occupied the top positions in my song list were related to themes of hometown, wandering, and longing. For example, the songs "Three Hundred and Sixty-Five Miles" and "Clouds of Hometown" by the author, the live version of Lin Zhixuan's "Happy Hometown," Pang Mailang's "My Skate Shoes," Luo Dayou's "Oriental Pearl," and Hu Bing's "Return and Arrival."

In fact, in recent years (2012-2015), I have been active within a range of less than 50 kilometers from the village. However, for some reason, this strong nostalgic emotion has always surrounded me. I said, in terms of emotions, when you hear specific melodies and lyrics, an uncontrollable sense of melancholy arises. It's as if, when the music plays, certain neurons in your brain's cortex related to family emotions get stimulated, promoting the secretion of corresponding hormones. You find yourself surrounded by an indescribable and special emotion, and the moments of the past rush back, like the black and white scenes constantly flashing back in a movie. At this point, I have to actively restrain my imagination, limiting these involuntary flashbacks to vague impressions without recalling any specific details. This way, I suppress the sadness because I know that these emotions are of no help to real-life. You can be sentimental, immerse yourself in contemplation of life every night after turning off WeChat and your laptop, wholeheartedly immerse yourself in a movie's scenes, let the power of 15

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empathy reach its peak during the short movie screening time, and still feel lingering excitement after the movie ends, as if trapped in another world. But all of this is temporary personal psychological immersion. Once you leave the cinema and return to the bustling mall space, when the sun rises, you have to rush early, ride a two-wheeled electric scooter or a four-wheeled car, or even an eight-wheeled bus or a subway with ten thousand wheels. Your rich personal emotional world is carried away with the decline of your hormone levels, disappearing entirely into the fragile and illusory emotions of the mundane real world.

I say, sentimentality is not helpful to real life. But why am I so easily stirred by specific emotions brought by a few songs, and why do these songs have such an attraction for me? Why do they immediately stimulate certain neurons in my brain's cortex, initiating a cascade of physiological and psychological reactions based on real-world daily experiences? I think it originates from a special feeling for my hometown, fueled by deep-rooted personal experiences in the village.

Of course, today, there is no real nostalgia for me regarding my hometown, as I don't expect to return to live there. Village life holds no appeal for me. Around February 2015, I posted a status on my WeChat Moments during the Spring Festival: "One night during the Spring Festival, I took a photo on the balcony facing the rural streetlights, with the caption 'The Struggling Countryside.'"

I think the continuous emotional motivation for me doesn't come from the people in my hometown or the landscapes of mountains and rivers. Instead, it comes from the time I spent living in my hometown. I miss my lost youth, the first seventeen years of my life spent in the village and town, all these times shaping my self-identity. In my limited 16

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twenty-plus years of life experience, my life, my perspective of the world, my social interactions, my circle of friends, have all been shaped by the relatively closed village and town.

I moved forward carrying these life experiences, from primary school to junior high school, leaving the village to enter the city for high school, and eventually leaving the fourth-tier city to go to Beijing for university. Every three years, I had the opportunity to face a completely new world—a world open to me and everyone else. Carrying my bag, with the living expenses my family provided, I would take a city-to-rural bus, change to a public bus, transfer to a green train, switch to a high-speed train, take the subway, and move into various new cities and life circles. This was my life world, and my selfidentity, my spiritual world, was a collection of experiences from the ten-plus years I spent living in the village and town.

I wouldn't want to return to my hometown, even though I have to go back there for a short stay every year during the Spring Festival, or else I would have nowhere to go. If I had a choice and better economic capabilities, I wouldn't want to actively return to my hometown. However, whenever I think about the experiences of the past in my hometown, the lost times, the vanished rural houses, the paths in the fields, the stone roads, the cicadas on the trees by the river, the crabs in the small creek at the foot of the mountain, and the childhood friends, I can't help but feel sad and nostalgic. I'm not nostalgic for my hometown, not for life in the village. What I miss is the lost years of youth; I miss my memories; I miss my self-identity; I miss the past me.

In recent years, my feelings towards my hometown have gradually faded at a very noticeable speed. Strangely, in my psyche, my feelings toward my hometown are getting deeper. Whether I'm online or 17

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strolling down the street, I easily associate certain things with the life in the village or town. I read Deng Anqing's "Candy in the Mountains," thought of Lu Xun's "My Hometown," and wrote on my website, "Huafei comes from the mountains but has traveled north and south. Originally a 'ranting guy,' but now gradually feels hopeless in life, finally returning to the mountains, blending into the ordinary urbanrural fringe crowd. While my edge hasn't completely disappeared due to life's slackening, Huafei starts to force himself to write something, considering it a tribute to the gone youth that was once fearless and yet futile."

I feel that writing this "Ten-Year Graduation Anniversary" is not just a review of my past life. It is also a response to my emotions and experiences that constitute my self-identity. By writing about my past, I dissolve my past, using it as motivation to face a new and seemingly hopeless life. 4 Continuing to talk about the setbacks I faced from getting caught while going to the internet café, it happened in the first half of my third year in junior high school. After going through that incident, it was evident that my financial means of stealing money at home had been completely cut off. Perhaps due to certain subjective feelings, I told myself, "I will never go to the internet café again." To emphasize my determination, I gave one of my actively played Legend accounts to my desk mate, thinking that this would mark my complete departure from the world of the internet and games.

Speaking of my desk mate mentioned earlier, throughout the six years of my junior and senior high school campus life, I have left a deep impression on almost every desk mate I encountered. However, I don't intend to delve too much into this here; I will mention a few of my 18

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high school desk mates in the subsequent sections. As for the others, if there's an opportunity in the future, I will discuss them elsewhere.

Now, after handing over the gaming account to my desk mate, the task of sneaking out to surf the internet after evening self-study naturally fell to a new group of successors. After all, in the following couple of months, I had neither the money nor the energy to secretly go to a small internet café to play games. What remained with me was a brief reflection on my junior high school internet life.

I previously dedicated a significant portion to talk about internet cafés, not because the internet dominated the core of my life. In reality, the two yuan per hour internet fee in those days was not a trivial amount. I remember meat buns costing only twenty cents each, a bowl of wonton soup priced at one yuan, and fifty cents being enough to buy a bag of Fumanduo snacks. In school, most of us would steam our own rice, and in the cafeteria, spending one yuan could solve lunch and dinner. In this slightly dull era, the limited experience of internet café life became a rich source of spiritual nourishment, bringing endless joy and unknown possibilities in the midst of impoverished and difficult town life.

In summary, most of the time spent in villages and towns was uneventful, with time unknowingly slipping away. You would sit at home watching television, facing distant and strange historical dramas, romantic films, animated series, news broadcasts, and low-quality local TV variety shows. Following newfound buddies, similar to yourself, you would roam outside, climbing mountains, picking peaches, harvesting melons, catching mudfish, raiding bird nests, stealing chickens, and even playing with dogs. 19

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Hou Hsiao-hsien depicted a very familiar village life in "A Summer at Grandpa's" and "Dust in the Wind." However, evidently, the Taiwanese villages of the 1980s were better off than the towns in Jiangsu and Zhejiang in the early 2000s. Nevertheless, in terms of the spiritual state of life, one can still find many resonances from Hou's films. I yearn for the idle moments I spent in villages and towns, so I once hoped to make a film or short film to express my life. Later, after watching Hou's films, I gave up. I felt that Hou had already captured the essence of life experiences even before I was born, long before I arrived in this world and lived for a decade, creating films that I aspired to but would never have the ability to make.

Intense resonances also appeared in "A Time to Live, A Time to Die," "City of Sadness," and "The Puppetmaster." This was a remarkable phenomenon — that in expressing the experience of village life, your possible life trajectory would unexpectedly appear in films made before your birth. Around the same time, Ang Lee created his "Family Trilogy," which dealt with experiences of urban life entirely.

I wonder, even today, our expressions of village life experiences cannot surpass the world depicted in Hou Hsiao-hsien's works. Meanwhile, the urban life portrayed by Ang Lee in the "Family Trilogy" from 1991 to 1994 remains, for me and those around me, a life that is still somewhat unattainable, both spiritually and materially.

The only consolation might be that I happened to experience the real outbreak of the domestic internet in those years. In 2001, I played Red Alert in an internet café, lighting candles in the novice village of Bichi, chopping straw men at the entrance to level up, cutting deer meat to sell for equipment. The person at the next table might be playing "The Stone Age" or "The Smiling, Proud Wanderer," or engaging in a game 20

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of double-deck while chatting on QQ. Little did we know that we were catching up with the real take-off of the Chinese internet. You might never have the opportunity to drive a million-dollar car and live in a multi-million-dollar villa, but you could, on the same day, get and use the latest iPhone or MacBook as Zuckerberg or Wang Sicong. This is the power of the internet, essentially showing us the possibility of closing the distance between people.

In 1987, the Beijing Institute of Computer Application Technology sent out China's first email to the world, and it read, "Across the Great Wall we can reach every corner in the world." What I want to say is that it is through internet cafés that we have the possibility to cross villages, traverse towns, and reach any possible corner of the world. Whether through online games, chatting, or forums, a completely new and equal world unfolds to us through the internet. This is why I spent so much time reminiscing about those years related to internet cafés.

First draft, August 2016, on Yan Chang Middle Road in Shanghai. 5 In the summer of 2004, before the military training in high school began, I had two months to enjoy my vacation. However, the intense heat of the Southern summer confined people's activities indoors, even with fans, as the air was hot. Spending too much time indoors led to a sense of helplessness, and during the afternoons, it was common to take a short nap to break the monotony. After all, outdoor activities were not suitable from early morning, and indoor spaces were equally inhospitable. The result of this boredom was often a midday nap. Speaking of naps, many times I would fall asleep around midnight and wake up at five or six in the evening, feeling disoriented and groggy. Yet, each day unfolded in a similar manner. 21

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During the scorching intervals, I attempted to do something productive. In one of my sister's parcels, I found a book titled "Youth in Blossom," which I initially treated as a sci-fi adult novel. Later, I dared not continue reading as the plot and story progression were beyond my comprehension. (Around 2011, I stumbled upon the same book at home. Comparing it to my experiences during the years of studying in Beijing, I began to feel that the author wrote a work of documentary literature, depicting aspects of campus life in the early 2000s that still existed in real universities many years later.) Somewhere else, I discovered a book titled "The True Story of Ah Q" and found it captivating. Despite Ah Q's unfortunate life experiences, he did not choose to give up. Instead, he employed a spirit similar to Ah Q's spiritual victory method to cope with the setbacks and disappointments in the real world.

Thus, after reading each of Ah Q's experiences, I had a feeling of being transported to another world. You could interpret this as the power of art, whether it's popular fiction or fabricated stories. Each of Ah Q's independent experiences felt like a movie from beginning to end, and this movie could evoke certain common sentiments in you. This feeling did not occur when I later read about Ah Q. It's not that Ah Q's story is better than Ah P's story; in fact, in many years of reading experiences in Chinese language classes, articles that could evoke common feelings in me were few and far between. Notable examples include Zhang Ruoxu's "Spring River in the Flower Moon Night," Yang Zhenning's speech, and Yu Hua's "Leaving Home at Eighteen." I will discuss these experiences in detail later. At that time, Ah P's story provided me with a rare immersive experience.

This to some extent prompted me to begin pondering my personal situation, although it was only in a very basic sense. Regardless of fiction or non-fiction, good literary works can inspire us to perceive 22

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the surrounding world more attentively, experience life more profoundly, or strive harder in life, rather than letting life unfold on its own.

When I talk about reflecting on personal situations, I mean that, at a young age, I began to gain inspiration from written materials. This discovery was based on personal experience, not the routine understanding imposed by the school. Everything presented in the nine-year compulsory education textbooks cannot be considered garbage, but in terms of the presentation of knowledge and information, it's challenging to be satisfied. It's quite amusing that this examination method, primarily based on memorization, can still be seen in some disciplines' Ph.D. qualification exams today. I'm not criticizing the compulsory education system or academic education in China, which ranges from middle to high levels, or even very specialized fields. I will discuss these aspects continuously in subsequent writing and provide detailed comments to explain why almost all levels of education in China are essentially garbage. However, regarding the nine-year compulsory education mentioned here, policymakers in the education sector, textbook writers, and teachers all lack a fundamental understanding of education as a basic national endeavor. This has resulted in a generally low level of reasoning and inductive abilities, not to mention reading comprehension and innovative thinking, among individuals who have or have not received a lower nine-year compulsory education or higher education.

The general path for humans to acquire knowledge is based on empirical reasoning and induction, where we extend our methods of dealing with future experiences based on rational reasoning. Through experience-based induction, we can better engage in rational thinking. If we consider fictional works as a form of knowledge production, it 23

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also involves imaginative thinking. When dealing with literary and artistic works, some form of imagination is necessary.

Experience is something every living person has, but the ability to reason or induct based on experience clearly requires specialized training. Even imagination and intuition, which play a crucial role in the humanities, can be and need to be strengthened through training.

However, schools do not teach us these abilities; the focus is on memorization-based education. Reciting and doing exercises have become universal methods in both the humanities and STEM fields. Using the metaphor of teaching someone to fish or giving them a fish, schools do not concentrate on improving individual learning abilities. Instead, they force you to learn, treating the cultivation of learning abilities as a matter of personal enlightenment. The expectation is that one day, during continuous memorization or exercise sessions, you will suddenly awaken, integrate everything, or suddenly understand during some weekend holiday extracurricular training class or interest class. Then, you will forge ahead without turning back.

Around the year 2000, I obviously did not have this realization. However, I was lucky to be inspired by reading "Stories" in the corner, and these short stories stimulated my emotions, leading me to brief contemplation on several idle afternoons. This indirectly triggered an awakening of my self-awareness. I began to actively write diaries to record life, but due to my limited starting level, I wrote about mundane things like today's weather, sleeping and waking times, and so on. After a few days, I found it boring and gave up.

I feel that, in a very loose understanding, the brief encounter with the 24

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summer after the third year of junior high school, to some extent, laid a tiny foundation for my later life. This experience hinted at what might attract me later, leading to a related kind of life.

Of course, a small "Stories" or "The True Story of Ah Q" or "Youth in Blossom" cannot have such a great influence. These were just very accidental factors that inclined my personal interests and life trajectory in a certain direction, making me feel close to certain things. Simultaneously, I started cultivating my unique interests because I could find satisfaction in them and receive concrete personal experiences from investing time and energy. A world constructed by books, whether fictional or non-fictional, unfolded certain possibilities in some potential future world for me. It vaguely presented a certain possibility of life, even though only a rough outline was revealed to me. There were too many specific details that I needed to fill in with my own time and energy. Still, considering the source of this accidental influence, the experiences of the summer of 2004 remain stored in the active region of my memory in a very concrete way. 6 The summer of 2004 was not at all lengthy. Within days of paying the school selection fee, I received the admission notice from Quzhou No. 3 High School, explicitly stating that military training would commence in August.

In other words, after idling away for two months of vacation, the guilt brought about by the school selection fee had not yet subsided. As mentioned earlier, this guilt did not stem from my academic performance or the enormity of the sum, but rather from the fact that my parents, despite leading a financially tight life, managed to save money to fund my education. Although I always believed there was no need for such financial hardship, for over twenty years before 25

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I ventured out to earn and spend money on my own, I couldn't change my parents' way of life. Apart from emotional guilt, I indeed couldn't change anything. You can't change anything, just like you can't change anyone. Therefore, one of my life mottos is to change the way you describe the world, and you can change the world. Of course, aside from that, the world remains the same. The bugle for military training had already sounded, and it was time to enter the city with my bags and parcels, embracing high school life.

Due to peculiar historical reasons and its advantageous geographical location, Quzhou had a small military airport in the city, complemented by a radar unit. As one of the indicators of various military-civilian collaborations, our school's military training instructors came from the artillery battalion. The content of the military training remained perennial under the sun – standing and running. August was possibly the hottest period of the year. If you have the chance to open Google Maps, you might see tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of junior or senior high school graduates foolishly gathered on open sandy fields in the coastal region of East Asia, all clad in various shades of yellow, occasionally shouting slogans with a strong ideological flavor left over from over sixty years ago.

We don't simply view the military as an emotionless national machine. Strictly speaking, the military belongs to the party, not the nation. The military upholds the interests of the party, not the nation. However, considering the complex political situation domestically, since the establishment of the Republic in 1949, the hereditary party forces have maintained absolute control over the operation of the country. In the discourse system of the Republic, the party is the country, and the country is the party. Although in terms of both connotation and extension, the nation is far larger than the party, in 26

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the ideological environment of the past sixty years, what belongs to the country is that of the party, and what belongs to the party remains with the party. As for those in the military, most of them are ordinary people from the masses who undergo paid ideological indoctrination in the military for several years and then return to the civilian population, either unemployed or becoming security guards, continuing along the path arranged for them by the previous generation.

So, what makes military training special? If it's not for inefficient ideological education, what other explanation is there? According to one interpretation, military training is actually a historical legacy. The modern school military training system with clear regulations began during the period of the Republic of China's Nanjing National Government. Considering the political atmosphere in the 1920s, we can assume that the Nanjing government advocated school military training, partly to promote nationalism for military considerations, preparing for the entire population to be soldiers. On the other hand, it was to suppress potential student movement forces domestically. Coincidentally, in Beijing over sixty years later, similar events are still happening. Therefore, according to another understanding, military training is just an industry that has emerged in the past twenty-plus years. In that case, the uniqueness of military training is not hard to understand.

Let's skip these sensitive and foolish political topics and continue the story of the summer of 2004. Carrying an extreme guilt for the thousands of yuan spent by my family on the school selection fee, the impact of the foolish military training and the blows from the instructors were quickly forgotten. I started considering recording all my expenses because doing so might alleviate my guilt about money. From as far back as I can remember until going to a distant 27

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place for university, during the nearly seventeen years living with my parents, I witnessed them living an overly frugal life, a lifestyle tradition prevalent and considered normal in Chinese villages, which I found highly inefficient and foolish. However, while living on my parents' money, eating their food, and staying in the space they provided, I couldn't make any meaningful comments or changes. After all, it's not wise to bite the hand that feeds you. That's why, after every big argument with my parents, I would eventually go home and have dinner or go to bed, although all of this ceased after I graduated from university. I rarely went home, let alone eat or sleep there.

So, during the evening self-study sessions after military training each day, I started keeping accounts in a notebook, and occasionally added some diary-like entries. I remember a certain time when I was sitting alone in the back row of the classroom, bowing my head to write my accounts. It was still during military training, and the classes hadn't been organized yet. A classmate came over, looked at me, and realized I was journaling. It made me feel a bit embarrassed. I immediately turned to a new page in the notebook and started doodling.

In reality, life during high school was quite unstable. I once dedicatedly recorded my daily expenses, starting on the last few pages of the exercise book provided by the school, marking dates and various categories clearly. However, not long after, I would find that the notebooks were lost somewhere. In those years, MP3 players hadn't become widely popular, and there was no intentional effort to save data. As a result, many financial records from my early years disappeared with each change of location between semesters, different dorm rooms, or different classrooms. Although I could still provide a basic range for monthly expenses in the early years, those 28

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precise and intuitive numerical records were lost in either a paper recycling station or a garbage dump.

After entering university, with the slight development of technology, I began using my phone to record my expenses. One result was that every penny I spent in the last decade has a trace, and I usually create a report for myself at the end of the year, summarizing monthly and yearly expenditure. It helps me gain a practical understanding of my life based on spending. Of course, during the university period, the expenses were limited in terms of categories. Especially between 2007 and 2012, the annual maximum expenditure was limited to tuition fees, followed by food expenses, book purchases, and some other miscellaneous spending. After 2012, when I started living independently, the disposable amount increased slightly each year, but the expense of rent also increased significantly. You see, a year's rent in school was only a few hundred or a couple of thousand yuan, but when you venture out and want a decent living environment, it's in the thousands or tens of thousands.

So, a very strange point is that in 2012, the first year after leaving school, the standard of living for the whole year was lower than when I was in school. In other words, no matter how you scramble for money, life was still very difficult. Later on, life gradually improved with the introduction of credit cards, and in the past two years

, my standard for evaluating my living standard is how much more I spent this year compared to the previous year. I use that to motivate myself to find a job and strive for a better life. All of this becomes very straightforward when I compare the annual bills of the past decade. 7 29

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The military training ended at the end of August, marking the beginning of the new semester. In other words, it was the true beginning of high school life.

In the previous section, I mentioned the unpleasantness brought about by the foolish military training. However, considering the unknown possibilities that the upcoming new life might bring, such discomfort was quickly forgotten. I chose to redirect my energy towards the new academic struggles and experiences I anticipated in my planned study and diverse campus life.

The new life I spoke of began with a meeting after class placement. A group of people, some of whom had connections during military training, formed small groups, either already familiar or inquiring about hometowns. Some even discovered they were from the same hometown or village or were classmates from junior high. Meanwhile, I silently hoped for a female desk mate when distributing books or arranging seats. After all, I wanted to study hard to repay my parents for the school fees they paid.

The specific state of mind at that time is no longer ascertainable. However, when I was organizing my high school diaries later, I found a diary entry from the beginning of the autumn semester in 2006. Regardless, it reflects the general state of high school life:

"7.1 Carefully flipping through, I realized I hadn't written in my diary for more than ten days, like waking up from a nap and realizing it's the first day of school. I was still online in the morning, wandering aimlessly. After a few short hours at noon, I forgot everything and started studying. Slowly, I began to feel the casual nature of time. 30

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The confusion of the past seemed to be temporarily unraveled. Finally, I understood what 'no time' meant, how time flows like water, and how time flies. Without a purpose but still continuing the diary, knowing I didn't plan or couldn't write anything good, I continued nonetheless. It's like ignorant people living in ignorance but staying content! (2006.9.2)"

With the commencement of school life, the military green environment during training, which was initially calm, became exceptionally lively due to the arrival of high school juniors and seniors from the same school. I, as usual, silently prepared to immerse myself in intense studying on one hand and hoped to integrate into campus social life on the other.

For the former, it's needless to say; the influx of new courses overwhelmed me, and I quickly lost interest in these boring subjects. Instead, I focused on developing new learning projects. As for the latter, I still vividly remember a particular evening after self-study in the dorm, chatting with others. A classmate forcibly came over, demanding contributions for "protection money" for a senior in the third year, claiming it would be beneficial in the future. Although I was very unwilling to contribute ten yuan, seeing classmates around eagerly paying without hesitation, I went along with the flow.

Contrary to my initial plan of social integration in campus life, it turned out to be this form of integration. I envisioned engaging in communicative social activities, enriching experiences, and meeting interesting people on campus, rather than passively going with the flow. However, throughout the three years of campus social life that followed, I adopted the same approach. It's not that I'm personally weak; it's just that, in the context of that era, campus socializing was 31

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monotonous and impoverished.

I can say that I was deceived by TV dramas because reality is completely different from the world depicted in TV and movies. For example, when I finished high school and went to Beijing, wanting to experience another possibility shown in "Waiting Alone," not to mention the worlds depicted in campus romance dramas.

However, in that era, as someone who just finished junior high in a small town and eagerly entered city campus life for thrilling unknown adventures, there was no real reference for me to understand. My sister graduated from the third year of senior high at Three Middle School, but she remained silent, showing no signs of being baptized by the new world. Apart from a few old acquaintances from the village or town, she didn't make any new friends who appeared to be "city people" at first glance. I had to face the potential new life alone, something I had never experienced before in terms of living geography (i.e., the school was located in the city, not the village or town where I had been active for more than ten years) and learning environment (I was a selected student, and undoubtedly, most students in the class studied much better than me). In that era without Baidu Knows or platforms like Douban or Zhihu, if you wanted to know the "experience of xxx," besides TV dramas and movie channels, there were no other reliable channels. In reality, if you wanted to further understand the outside world and the unknown, I could find only two channels. Watch the news during breaks and watch urban romance TV dramas or campus youth dramas (such as the popular "Meteor Garden," "MVP Lover," and "18-Year-Old Sky") in other breaks, plus watching cartoons. That's all there was to life, and those were all the channels available to get information about the outside world. 32

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Continuing with the tense academic life, I once vowed to repay the school fees of thousands and the solemn faces of my father and the worn-out faces of my mother every now and then (our family's economic situation was not considered poor in the village or town, but for some reason, even after more than ten years, my parents still liked to express their understanding of life through similar facial expressions. You should know that this strategy has fundamentally affected the way I spent my three years of high school, making me live under constant pressure during those three years. Generally, my understanding of life is indifferent and plain. If you watch documentaries or the news, you'll see that there are many people on Earth who have lives with food. My parents' sorrowful way of life made me feel that everything was my fault, and they paid for my personal behavior through their hard life. I affirmed the foolishness of studying and school life on one hand, using my willpower to resist the assimilating force of this foolishness, and on the other hand, every time I asked my parents for a few hundred yuan in living expenses, I encountered the tearful faces of my parents, as if a fragile family could collapse at any time due to the few hundred yuan I spent each month. Under the influence of these two pressures, I naturally suffered substantial blows both physically and psychologically. Ten years after graduating from high school, the days I spent affected by neurasthenia have even exceeded ten years, and it can be expected to continue.)

Imagine how eager I was when I received the high school textbooks, hoping that everything would start soon, and I could make a big difference. However, after two class assignments, I was ready to criticize teachers or course arrangements. In the first year, all subjects were covered, with the main courses being Chinese, mathematics, and English, and others including physics, chemistry, biology, politics, 33

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history, and geography. I could achieve the class average in all humanities subjects, but lagged behind in mathematics, physics, and chemistry. Perhaps the reason was that the latter three required much more homework or exams in terms of quantity, so I became less willing. After all, in any evening self-study or self-study class, I needed to set aside some time to chat with my desk mate (mainly to train my skill of talking nonsense), try to get close to female classmates around (most of the time unsuccessful), and daydream (self-reflection) to think about interesting things.

I don't remember where this general view came from, but from the moment I realized it, it became a substantial standpoint in my worldview. That is, I believe daily life should be interesting. However, everything in high school campus life is completely contrary to fun. My school, Qizhou No. 3 High School, has always emphasized hard work. Although located in the city, the core student source comes from students in surrounding villages and towns, unlike the other two similarly competitive high schools located in the city, whose students mostly come from the main urban area and its surroundings. The difference in student sources is not just a simple geographical distinction because the admission score for Three High is generally the lowest among the three schools. Teachers hope that everyone can improve their college entrance exam results by working hard, doing exercises, and other actions so that the next intake of students will improve, and the school will replace the other school to become the second most eye-catching. However, all this was quite unacceptable to me. I also aspired to go to a good school (for example, if possible, I hoped to enter either of the other two), and I also hoped to enter a broader metropolis through high school studies to achieve the learning or social life I expected. Still, I couldn't accept strategies like alchemy, such as doing exercises and homework intensively, to strive for that goal. I hoped for a smooth progression in between, similar to following a certain trajectory, 34

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steadily advancing towards your goal, and naturally reaching the place you want to go without lowering your head and sitting in the classroom doing papers and such. As I expressed in my diary:

"7.2 I can't study, and my grades won't improve. Probably because I don't like reading, don't like homework, don't like classes. I have a certain set of values. I believe that using a huge amount of time and attention to do things must contribute to self-improvement, selfrealization, and progress. The so-called reading, attending classes, doing homework, physics, chemistry, mathematics, biology, English, Chinese - none of them stirs my interest or enthusiasm. It doesn't make me put in great effort with my full attention. I don't base my entire life direction on learning. Although most of my time is spent on studying, my energy is not focused on it. In my free time, I invest in other things." (2006.11.28) 8 I am talking about life after the first year of high school. The first year begins with class assignments and seating arrangements, and to some extent, these non-natural forces determine the possible social circles for the next few years. For me, the social circle ultimately boiled down to friends sitting around me, particularly those on my left and right. Right at the beginning of high school, I encountered some special classmates around me, whom I still consider extraordinary to this day. However, I haven't decided to delve into this story in detail for now.

Several years ago, when I was organizing my book purchases, I wrote a simple summary, starting from the year 2004. Here is the summary:

8.1 Prehistory of Online Book Shopping 35

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If memory serves me correctly, my personal book-buying experience began around the summer and autumn of 2004. At that time, books like "The Little Prince by the Window" and "Harvard Girl" would occasionally appear on my desk, thanks to my desk mate. As I had no reading habits before (prior to this, I had only read "The True Story of Ah Q" from Storytelling magazine, apart from textbooks and comic books), these books were merely flipped through for the images. It was during the high school period in the city, where I went home every weekend and returned to school before Sunday evening self-study. I would often find new books piled on my desk during these weekends, and in my leisure time, I would often flip through them.

Later on, when my desk mate occasionally brought in the 16mo "Good Books" with vivid illustrations, my interest in flipping through books increased significantly. "Good Books" was a reader's publication from Xishi Bookstore at that time, mainly compiling introductory texts on recently published books, serving as a smallscale book review magazine. Looking back today, what left the deepest impression was an article written by Annie Baobei about "Love Letters" in a certain issue. However, many years later, I discovered that this article was published as an introduction in the July 2004 edition of "Love Letters" by Tianjin People's Publishing House. I can infer that the "Good Books" I saw was probably around the 4th-5th issue in 2004 ("Good Books" is a bimonthly magazine, and the 4th-5th issues were probably published between August and October).

The bimonthly format means that you can only repeatedly flip through a small book within two months. Although my desk mate 36

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may have had several issues at hand during that time, it was still not enough. Consequently, almost naturally, I started considering going to Xishi Bookstore myself. So, around the end of 2004, I spent 25 yuan at Xishi Bookstore to buy my first book—Yu Qiuyu's "A Sigh of a Millennium." (This book was probably given to a classmate from Gansu around 2010 or sold, but I lean towards the former).

As for my first book-buying experience, there are probably many things to talk about. For now, I'll only discuss two points: the process of buying books and the issue of book prices. Looking at the background behind the book-buying process at that time, it had a larger context. For instance, during high school weekends, it took about two hours by bus to travel home from the city, making the round trip quite troublesome. So, I usually went home once every three weeks. The living expenses at that time meant that I would only have disposable funds starting from the afternoon of the beginning of each new three-week cycle, just before Sunday evening selfstudy. Naturally, that became the best time to buy books. This arrangement could continue until the end of high school. Ignoring too many details, after wandering around bookstores for two weekends or more (I might have stood there flipping through a particular book dozens of times; during a certain period, I had developed the habit of standing in a bookstore for an entire weekend afternoon), I finally decided to buy "A Sigh of a Millennium."

The price of 25 yuan was not cheap, at least for me at that time, as 30 yuan was enough to buy a new pair of jeans or something else. Another aspect worth mentioning about the 25 yuan is that I seemed to feel that the prices of most books at that time were around 25 yuan. Due to the membership system at Xishi Bookstore, B-level members could enjoy an 80% discount, and E-level members could 37

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enjoy a 75% discount. During most of my book-buying times, I used the B-level membership status of my desk mate, and many books were obtained at the price of 20 yuan, causing the bookstore owner to think for a long time that I was my desk mate. (I reported my desk mate's name when buying books, and the owner could retrieve membership information from the database).

According to my statistical record at that time, the total number of books I purchased from Xishi Bookstore would not exceed 50 (mostly by Annie Baobei, Yu Qiuyu, and similar authors). I am not sure if this "statistical record at that time" is accurate, but even allowing for some error, I think it would not exceed 100 books (which was unimaginable in terms of financial capability at that time; if I'm conservative, I think the total might be around 30 books). Especially after 2007, I began to try more frequently to buy books on Dangdang — many books with titles I had only heard of could be found on Dangdang, and they also offered cash on delivery!

The last memorable book-buying experience came in 2007. One weekend, I bought Chen Danqing's new signed edition, "The Sequel to the Retreat Collection," on Dangdang. Later, I went to Xishi Bookstore specifically to show off and bought another copy there. This was before or after May 1, 2007. As mentioned earlier, in the spring of 2007, I had already started my online shopping journey on Dangdang (the first two books I bought were Schopenhauer's "The World as Will and Representation" and Heidegger's "Being and Time"), even though I often went to Xishi Bookstore near the back gate of the Chinese Medicine Hospital and the new store next to Erzhong later on. It's just that the books in the bookstore could no longer satisfy what I wanted to read, and, at the same time, I had not been doing well for many years. These two factors made me rarely chat with the store owner again. (December 18, 2012) 38

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The above is about the beginning of reading and buying books, which was triggered by my desk mate. Another kind of trigger came from classmates in front and behind. I remember that the student in front of me was a girl who liked basketball. Every week, she would buy "Contemporary Sports" or "Slam Dunk" basketball magazines. At the end of each week, as we sat in the classroom waiting for Sunday evening self-study to begin, many students with extraordinary powers would share strange encounters over the weekend, comment on this week's TV programs, or show something novel to share with everyone.

I took advantage of these moments of exchange or chit-chat, borrowed basketball magazines, and began to read them. It was this unique experience that smoothly turned basketball into my main extracurricular activity for the next three years of high school. At the same time, the "Good Books" my desk mate brought from Xishi Bookstore opened up another world, smoothly making buying and reading books my most continuous hobby for the next decade.

It was a very coincidental and strange experience that happened in the summer when high school began. I have never been a fatalist; I believe that my destiny is in my own hands. Such a belief lasted for at least twenty years. Later, I read Rorty's "Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity," which had a substantial impact on refining my life and worldview. However, I was not convinced by Rorty; I don't believe in the power of contingency. Including later readings on Nagel's moral luck, Aristotle and Hegel's discussion of the individual's position in tragedy, none of them provided much convincing power. Moving forward, as I came out of school, traveled from the south to the north, and, influenced by my life experiences, began to slowly lower 39

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my head to fate, I started to believe a bit in the concept of contingency.

Later, in a response by Zhao Jie on a question about fatalism in the "Wenzhao Wheel" on Zhihu, the answer resonated with me. The reason I agreed with that answer is, I think, based on empirical summaries inside. Later, I found an interview with Wen Zhaolun on Weibo, where Old Zhao talked about his fatalism again:

Old Zhao: Acceptance means acknowledging that there are things in the world that you cannot change no matter what, and they may play a decisive role in your life and development. In this way, when you succeed, you will feel that there is nothing to be proud of; it's just a bit better luck, so continue to strive. When you fail, you will also feel that there is nothing to regret; it's just a bit worse luck, so continue to strive.

What I want to say is the shaping power of experience on life. I was once attracted by the power of reason, but in daily experience, I repeatedly found that to change life, the power of reason is so negligible. Later, I turned into a person who purely pursued changing life, and it was obvious that reason's power was insignificant. In the second half of 2016, I changed my Weibo signature to "Have surprises given by fate, unaware of any worries." Before this, my signature was "How can I bow down to the powerful and flatter them, causing me to lose my cuteness." I think life gave me a very substantial education, making me realize the power of fate, making me aware of the illusion I had held for over twenty years about practical daily life. Experience truly began to shape my life.

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I am talking about an experience that went from active resistance to passive acceptance, about what I consider the power of fate. I have not become a true fatalist; I believe more in luck than fate. So, in my high school more than ten years ago, when I was assigned to a corner in the classroom with a few peculiar classmates around me— front, back, left, and right—these classmates, unconsciously, influenced all my subsequent life. According to my current perspective, this is also a kind of surprise given by fate, resolving countless possible worries I didn't know about back then. 9 High school life is exceptionally monotonous, and, in fact, all academic lives in schools tend to be monotonous, especially when you realize there are more attractive experiences beyond the classroom.

This situation didn't only occur in elementary school when I discovered that the world inside the game room was much richer than the playground and classrooms for play and mischief on campus. It didn't only happen in middle school when I found endless single-player games waiting for exploration in internet cafes, and the vast world of online games embracing you with numerous unknown maps, dungeons, bosses, or equipment to conquer. It didn't only happen after high school when you enter a completely unfamiliar big city, and the physical world around you leaves you bewildered with many unknown stories happening in your surroundings, which you can't intervene in because of a lack of understanding. You encounter not only classmates and schoolmates from nearby towns but also classmates and schoolmates from farther towns and rural areas, speaking in dialects mixed with localized Mandarin. This kind of campus world can make you feel lost. This is just the physical world; you have also experienced the power of the internet. While oscillating between online games and single-player games 41

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throughout middle school, you started exploring BBS, forums, and online communities, making friends with internet users you would never have a chance to meet. You surfed the internet, venturing into another vast world of online exploration. This is another substantial attraction.

The latter led me to internet cafes, guiding me through a purposeless journey of online surfing. This journey lasted for over three years, during the time I spent at Quzhou No. 3 Middle School. Countless nights were spent after evening self-study, either climbing over the wall, forging a cleaning pass, or following the flow of students going home, leaving school to spend the night in internet cafes. It wasn't about playing online games or single-player games, nor was it about chatting with internet friends (of course, that wasn't possible). It was just following the internet data in the internet cafe, wandering between browsers and web pages, consuming most of the nights.

I'm talking about the monotony of studying, a monotony that obviously accompanied me from the beginning of high school. I treated the monotonous academic life as a backdrop, and what I cherished was the leisure during breaks, the idleness of chatting or wandering outside the classroom during evening self-study, or the leisure of playing games on paper with my desk mate. After evening self-study, I would daringly leave the school through unconventional means, entering the internet cafe for an all-night surfing session. I would return to the classroom before the early self-study the next day, lie down, and sleep. One sleep equaled one day, repeating endlessly until evening self-study resumed, and the days passed like years.

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According to the high school curriculum arrangement of that era, in the first year of high school, both liberal arts and science courses were studied together. In the second year, classes were divided into liberal arts and science, classrooms and personnel were reorganized, and classes were reassigned. In the first year, the curriculum included core subjects such as Chinese, mathematics, and English, as well as additional subjects like politics, geography, and history for liberal arts, and physics, chemistry, and biology for science. In the first year, all nine subjects were studied. After class division in the second year, aside from the core subjects, students chose six courses from three different subjects based on their preference.

I entered Quzhou No. 3 Middle School as a transfer student, and you can imagine my academic level. In reality, the results were as expected. My Chinese and English grades were barely passing, while other subjects hovered on the edge of failure. Naturally, I consistently ranked at the bottom of the class in every exam. Ironically, I found that there were still a few classmates who were even less bright than me, with grades worse than mine. I assume they were also transfer students.

Saying that I ranked at the bottom might not be immediately apparent. To put it this way, there were probably over ten classes in our cohort. After each collective exam at the end of the year, exam rooms were assigned based on the previous exam results. I obviously occupied the last two or three exam rooms each time. Of course, the students sitting in front, behind, left, and right were familiar faces every time. Each time, I tried my best to be the first one to hand in the exam, after all, the exam room was a battlefield, and regardless of the results, I couldn't lose in terms of momentum.

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Poor exam results could be attributed to several reasons, such as insufficient intelligence, weak memory, lack of interest in studying, or even interest but not applying oneself. I happened to tick all these boxes. As a transfer student, my academic level was naturally inadequate, and I had absolutely no interest in the high school curriculum, which directly led to a journey of three years or more at the bottom. What's even more troublesome is that this journey often came with conversations with the class teacher after each exam. The teacher would call you to the classroom door or the office before or during a certain evening self-study, earnestly doing ideological work. The professionalism of the teachers is unquestionable, but what they talked about was completely unrelated to my school life. I was eagerly waiting for evening self-study to end so that I could implement the well-planned new internet surfing plan. I didn't even have the leisure to listen to the teacher's nonsense.

This continued during the first year of high school. I don't know how many times I was moved to tears by the class teacher's patient persuasion. The feelings brought by collective talks or individual chats after each exam were mostly similar, saying that I was suffering, but I didn't speak up. After all, speaking up wouldn't change anything. Such experiences became repetitive, reaching a point where even I felt embarrassed to face the class teacher. After all, I had promised to study hard each time, and the results of the next exam were obviously still the same.

Later, one day, before the end of the first year of high school, I took advantage of the teacher's inattention, packed my bags, and went home for the summer vacation early. At that time, mobile phones weren't as widespread, and when filling in personal information, I habitually entered an unreachable phone number (not intentionally, but during that time, my family had just changed our landline 44

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number). I disappeared from the school like this, without worrying about anyone finding me. It was the summer of 2005, before the end of the first year of high school. I thought that with the start of the second year, classes would be divided, and I wouldn't see this diligent and enthusiastic class teacher again. Everything came to an end, and the next year would bring a new class, new classmates, new classrooms, and a new floor. I could start afresh. 10 If previously I didn't know what it meant for plans to go awry or to be caught off guard, then, when I returned to the city after the summer of 2005, back to Quzhou No. 3 Middle School, preparing for my sophomore year, I began to learn some new knowledge about luck.

As mentioned earlier, I took advantage of the teacher's inattention and escaped the foolish first year. Before leaving the dormitory, I specifically instructed my classmates not to tell the class teacher any of my family addresses or personal information. I had decided to completely bid farewell to the past, not targeting any specific teacher or subject. It's just that I found the comprehensive academic life unbearable. Whenever there was a chance, I would go back to avoid the storm, hoping for better luck after the class division next year.

Regarding the specific operation of dividing liberal arts and science classes, my knowledge was solely based on observations of higher grades. You would notice that there were few male students in liberal arts classes. During physical education classes or breaks, when everyone walked out of the classroom, you'd find a scarcity of male students in liberal arts classes. On the contrary, unless something unexpected happened, female students were quite rare in science classes. Based on this limited impression, I once discussed class 45

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division choices with a female student sitting in front or behind me. That friend seemed to have worse grades in physics and chemistry than me, so she naturally chose liberal arts. This aligned with the general trend for female students. When asked about my choice, I clearly stated that I would go back to the liberal arts class. Despite having no interest and poor grades in physics, chemistry, and biology, my performance in history, politics, and geography was equally dismal. However, considering that liberal arts classes had a lot of female students, at least the leisure time activities would be more interesting.

Fate had its own plans. When I inquired about the start of the sophomore year and arrived early at school to prepare for the new life, I discovered that the class division had already concluded. This happened before the beginning of the first year's summer vacation. Because the class teacher couldn't contact me, I was automatically assigned to the larger group—staying in my previous class. After all, the majority of our class chose science. Probably following the belief that there couldn't be a mistake in following the crowd, the class teacher naturally put me into the mainstream. This was not good news. After the school year started, one day in the corridor, I ran into the female classmate from before. As expected, she questioned why I didn't choose liberal arts, making me feel like a fraud. It was really a situation that made me both cry and laugh.

What's even more amusing happened later. Although our first-year class teacher was a political science teacher, somehow he continued to be our sophomore science class teacher. This dashed all my plans, and I found myself back to square one. Not only did I have to worry about how to get through this dull and trivial study period, but I also had to deal with this class teacher for more than a school year. It truly caught me off guard. 46

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I still need to talk about the issue of expectations and disparities. I have always been a relatively self-conscious person. This selfconsciousness is not innate; it's just that my understanding of life allowed me to judge early on what kind of lifestyle is good and what behavior habits are a sign of confidence.

During my high school years, I finally had the opportunity to meet more classmates from urban areas. In them, a more practical and good life was displayed before me. For me, this was something that could be easily discerned from their speech and behavior. My lack of confidence, to some extent, didn't necessarily stem from intellectual insecurities. In reality, in the everyday world, the power of intellect is negligible, and the enhancement of social experience is mainly achieved by defeating rationality with reality. So, how can we expand our social experience and, at the same time, broaden our world? This is a tough question, and in the more than ten years that followed until today, I have not found a very effective solution.

To some extent, I am still pessimistic about life because I find that your social radius does not change based on your geographical environment. After more than ten years of wandering around, my life world still has not escaped the village where I was born. In other words, no matter how much a person tries to change their life, they are still wandering within their own background. The world changes every year, but your life radius remains the same. For over a decade, year after year, we can say that this is another practical manifestation of class solidification, or that within a generation, it is impossible to achieve class upliftment, regardless of how fast external society and technology change. This is a relatively pessimistic explanation, but, in reality, I have not seen any more convincing explanations. 47

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11 For some reason, at a certain point in time, letter writing became a highly periodic activity for me.

My earliest memories of letters date back to junior high school. At that time, there would be a small blackboard outside the security office near the school gate with the names of recipients and their received letters. Following the information on the board, we would periodically go to the security office to collect our letters. I can't recall whether I was enthusiastic about exchanging letters during junior high, as I can't remember frequently corresponding with any friends or find any original letters from that period. Therefore, the tangible evidence of my letter-writing career begins in high school.

Due to moving or not being at home for extended periods after high school, many of my early personal collections naturally disappeared. They likely ended up being sold as scrap paper during some cleanup or waste disposal. The earliest letters I have in my possession date back to the beginning of my freshman year in high school.

On an internally lost envelope's postmark, you can see that this letter is dated September 2004. It's clearly not the start of my frequent letter-writing activities, but it's the earliest communication record I could find. I vaguely remember this being a correspondence with a pen pal whose address I found in a magazine. Unfortunately, I can't recall the content of the letters. Following the typical pen pal communication rhythm, female pen pals often suggest you send a photo within the first or second letters. After eagerly accepting and sending out a photo, the communication tends to naturally fizzle out. I believe that's what happened with this pen pal. 48

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The postmark on the second letter is unclear, but based on the date generally signed at the end of the letter, it seems to be from the second half of 2004. Several subsequent letters extend continuously until the arrival of the winter break in 2005. I have strong reasons to believe that during the first semester of my freshman year in high school, writing and receiving letters became a core activity during leisure time after evening self-study or during classes.

Unfortunately, most of the letters from this period onwards have been lost. I have only two letters in my possession, spanning from the beginning of the second semester of my freshman year in 2005 to the beginning of the summer break in my junior year in 2006. These two letters are dated June 2005 and April 2006. We can interpret this as my long-term pen pals losing interest in corresponding with me after the sophomore year began. Alternatively, one of my very limited pen pals experienced significant changes, lacking the hardware requirements for communication, such as a fixed receiving address. I believe both possibilities were happening concurrently. New communication tools, such as the popularity of Nokia's N70 flagship phone among high school students after 2005, along with the rise of QQ network chatting, were reshaping communication among the younger generation. Additionally, one of my pen pals, after successfully entering high school, ventured into the world of washing and repairing cars upon leaving the original junior high school. This was a completely unknown world, with no time to continue dwelling on the trivial and boring daily life of school.

We can say that QQ began to substantially become a new communication tool for school students after 2005. At that time, 49

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Nokia's groundbreaking N70 flagship phone had already made an appearance in the drawers of some female classmates. Although using a phone to access or browse the web and use the simplified QQ was still a complicated task, we were witnessing the dawn of a new era. It was a very inconspicuous beginning, and in an era where most communication relied on monthly SMS packages, the allure of mobile networks had already shone on me.

In the summer of 2005, as smartphones were emerging, I managed to purchase a second-hand Panasonic phone from my desk mate in installments, priced at five hundred yuan. The ability to take photos was crucial for me. I had always wanted to record life through actual images, and I entrusted this idea to this mobile phone.

As I mentioned earlier, with the advent of smartphones, mobile networks began to emerge. However, in the early days, both mobile phone hardware and the "software" of mobile networks couldn't handle functions similar to today's uploading photos to friends' circles or social media. I was defeated by the limited and narrow functionality of the phone. Despite the extremely limited internal memory, I took many photos. However, there was no effective way to import these photos into other media, let alone store them for later retrieval.

During that time, QQ space was filled with monotonous photos taken with 200,000-pixel cameras in dimly lit internet cafes. This situation persisted until the popularity of MP4 players with cameras and independent storage cards began to improve the situation. For me, the result was that I did not leave behind any image data from 2004 or 2005 for archiving. The earliest high school images I could find date back to 2006 when a friend bought a digital camera on 50

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Taobao. In a very random situation as a trial photo, my 2006 was frozen in a few frames. Along with it, my entire high school era was captured.

Revised on January 14, 2017, in Wenzhou Yandang West Road.

12 After the division of arts and sciences, the second year of high school began. Quzhou No.3 High School is located on Lotus Road, and the campus is not large. Upon entering the campus, you can see a small basketball court on the right-hand side. Beyond the basketball court is a wall, and beyond the wall is a residential area next to the school. Many times, we attempted to climb over the wall to reach the neighboring residential area and then walk out of the community gate proudly towards the internet cafe. However, due to the presence of a security office at the community entrance, every time we left the community late at night, the security guards would look at us with strange eyes. Over time, many people gave up the idea of climbing over the wall to go online in the neighboring community.

On the left-hand side after entering the school gate is the teaching building. The main teaching building consists of two connected large structures. These two buildings are connected by a central corridor, directly on each floor, and the toilets for each floor are located in the corridor. Further inside the teaching building is the cafeteria building, parallel to the teaching building, both visible from the street outside the school wall. Beyond the cafeteria and teaching building is the dormitory building, consisting of two large male dormitory buildings and one female dormitory building. That completes the layout of the entire school. 51

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In the first year, our class was located on the lower floors of the teaching building closest to the outside. In that year, there were about ten classes in the first year, and the space of two or three floors was enough to accommodate all first-year students. So theoretically, we rarely had contact with students from other grades. After all, we were not studying in the same teaching building, and even on different floors. It was difficult to distinguish between sophomore and senior students.

In the second year, everyone moved to the teaching building further back, and new first-year students took the building in front. This pattern continued, and it seemed to be the school's arrangement.

Whether smooth or unstable, I spent my sophomore year in one of the lower floors of the building behind. I am referring to the period from the autumn of 2005 to the summer of 2006, where we repeated the same life rhythm - five days of classes per week, half a day of selfstudy on Saturday morning, the afternoon off, and a major break every three weeks. This meant no self-study on Saturday morning, and we could either take a bus or have our parents pick us up, or use other means of transportation to go home for the weekend.

Close-to-home classmates often went home on Saturday afternoon, while for people like me who took a two-hour bus ride, we usually chose to go home every three weeks, leaving more time for a long weekend to rest and sleep in for two days.

As for activities to pass the weekend, it seemed quite limited. Most of the time, I would choose to stroll along the small roads in the town, 52

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shuttle through the surrounding villages, walk a few kilometers along the foothills, pass through as many nearby villages as possible, or wander in the fields. Occasionally, I would encounter friends working in the fields, and they would always give me strange looks as I roamed around.

In more free time, I would go to the basketball courts in the town's elementary or middle schools. There were only a few basketball courts in the town, and the most convenient ones were in the town's elementary or middle schools. The middle school's gate was not open to the public, so most of the time, you had to climb over the wall to get in, or sometimes you couldn't get in at all. In the end, most people gathered at the elementary school's basketball court located in the geographical center of the town.

It seemed that there were not many young people in the town who loved sports because on many weekends at the town elementary school square, starting from the morning until dinner time, you would find the same group of people playing basketball or chatting. To some extent, everyone knew each other, as most were of similar ages, either close or distant elementary or middle school classmates, or attending the same high school, or neighboring high schools. What was more interesting was that, one day after the end of the college entrance examination, everyone gathered at the elementary school basketball court to chat and play basketball. You would find that most people, like you, barely made it to a vocational college, and some didn't even reach the cutoff for a vocational college. I don't know if this was a manifestation of sports lowering academic scores or a display of "birds of a feather flock together," but for most familiar people in the town, everyone went their separate ways, attending various vocational colleges and technical schools in all directions. Of course, this is a story for another time. 53

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After the division into arts and sciences, the curriculum changes were not as significant as imagined. The core courses for the science track became physics, chemistry, and biology, while for the arts track, the core courses were history, geography, and politics. The remaining common courses were mathematics, Chinese, and English. In fact, these courses were already included in the first-year schedule, but after the division, the science track had fewer history and geography classes, while the arts track had fewer physics, chemistry, and biology classes.

I had no interest in any of these, as I felt that whether it was physics, chemistry, history, or geography, they were too distant from the life I saw and felt. I couldn't even see any special aura that these courses brought to the teachers. At least from the appearance, these teachers were middle-aged women or men, or slightly younger ladies or men, nothing more. On the contrary, the teachers for non-core courses had more distinctive features in terms of appearance and temperament, such as the physical education teacher, art teacher, and music teacher. These teachers for non-core courses, without the pressure of college entrance exams, did not poison or oppress the young students. Even after many years, I still have a profound and friendly impression of them. I feel that they inadvertently became symbols of the most lovable educators.

Life in the second year of high school was nothing special. We woke up around five or six every day, attended early self-study, had breakfast, attended morning classes, had lunch, attended afternoon classes, had dinner, attended evening self-study, and then went to bed. Every three weeks, there was a half-day of self-study on Saturday, and the rest was a continuous cycle of classes, exams, assignments, 54

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and self-study.

For someone like me who considered school life to be torture, I had to develop strategies to cope with this monotonous life; otherwise, I would be driven insane sooner or later. After enough testing, experimenting, and practicing various learning methods for a long time, I finally developed a way to pass the time. This method accompanied me throughout my entire sophomore year.

For a long time, after the end of evening self-study, I chose to climb over the wall and leave the campus, heading to an internet cafe a couple of kilometers away to start an all-night journey. The next morning, before early self-study began, I would climb back over the wall to return to school, buying breakfast at the school gate on the way. After having breakfast, I would embark on a day-long journey of catching up on sleep. I slept from early self-study until lunch, and most of the time, I

didn't even have lunch. The money saved from not having lunch could continue to be used for staying up late on the internet. In other words, the money you needed for the internet had to be saved from your lunch money, so it was a choice between eating and going online. Throughout the entire sophomore year, which lasted for twelve months, I always chose the latter. In the afternoon, it was back to sleeping until I got hungry, which was usually around dinner time. I would go to the cafeteria for dinner, and often, if I overslept, I would have instant noodles in the cafeteria on my way to evening self-study. Ideally, this would be accompanied by two liang of rice to ensure that I could eat enough and have the energy to face the upcoming long night. After evening self-study, as usual, I would climb over the wall to go online. This was the rhythm of life, day in and day out, I didn't know 55

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how long it lasted, or rather, it spanned the entire time of my sophomore year.

Until one day, when I climbed over the wall into the school campus in the morning, I was unfortunately spotted by the physical education director exercising in the campus. I don't know how, but he found out our identities and class. Along with another classmate, I saw our respective parents sitting in the teacher's office before early self-study had ended.

In my diary for that day, I wrote: December 1, 2006, April 1, Saturday, Rain Found XXXX Last night-early morning, climbed over the wall, stayed up all night, then got caught, interrogated, and next would be punishment, calling parents, education, waiting. Not willing to think about the consequences, and won't feel any pressure or sense of responsibility. Maybe I will still be happy, joyful. I don't know why; I'm not afraid. Life won't change because of this, but I found something back. Indeed, every day passes in forgetfulness. Lost and then found again. It seems like I gained a lot, but I actually got nothing. What's wrong? Interestingly, this incident happened on April 1st, April Fools' Day, and for many years afterward, several April 1sts marked significant changes in my life. I wonder if this is my lucky day.

Continuing with the experience of being caught, I don't remember the specific details of that time. Several years later, one day my dad mentioned this incident, saying that I kept giving him a hard time 56

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during my high school years. For example, every time he went to the school, he had to bring a pack of Lijun cigarettes. This made me wonder if I needed to reassess my historical impression of teachers, but I never really thought about it again. What can be confirmed is that the experience on April 1st did not have any practical impact on me. For instance, a few days later, I wrote in a diary entry:

December 2, 2006, April 9, Sunday, Cloudy/Rain Fool An old man, and I really dislike him. Enough to throw all my anger on him, beat him! Curse him, curse his whole family, and then he still won't let me out of the school gate. I, a fool, with problems in my head, strange behavior, saying irrelevant things, nonsense, and a series of it. What is incompetence, arrogance, inferiority, pride, arrogance, embarrassment... I exhausted all possible words, negative words, to describe such a fool. Then I turned around and said to everyone, "This guy was originally a fool, don't bother with him!" So, no one bothered with him again, even though his inner world was vast and turbulent, but he was still a fool. So, that old man didn't let me out, not at all! It seems that the unpleasant experience at that time did not deter my longing for the outside world. In the following months, I continued to find ways to sneak out of school, whether it was staying up late on the internet or wandering around buying books.

The college entrance examination in 2006 took place on June 7th and 8th, coinciding with the eve of our senior year. Quzhou No.3 High School had some long-standing traditions, and although the specific history couldn't be verified, based on our experiences, our senior year friends demonstrated a certain tradition on the eve of the college 57

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entrance examination.

On the night after lights-out, there was a constant sound of hot water kettles being thrown down from the dormitory above, banging like drums. Although we were not participating in the college entrance examination, we felt excited hearing the sounds, as if the old world was about to collapse, and the breaking of the kettles on the ground signaled the horn of the new world.

The prelude to the revelry on the first night of the college entrance examination turned into a wild celebration on the second day. I suspected that kettles and mops from dozens of senior year dormitories were thrown down that night. The continuous sound of kettles hitting the ground lasted even longer than the previous night, seemingly persisting until dawn. The next day, we found heaps of kettle fragments and plastic shells under the dormitory, along with tons of waste paper, test papers, or textbooks scattered around the flowerbeds in front of the dormitory. It resembled the ruins of a battlefield, and as our senior friends began packing to go home, more trash was thrown out of the dormitories, piling up in front of the building, creating a sense of desolation. Was this the feeling of the end of the old society before the change of dynasties, or just a negligible illusion, and everything would continue as usual?

The dormitory management seemed oblivious to this. They made almost no comments on the previous nights' events and took no action to stop the noise – of course, staying outside was dangerous at that time, especially after lights-out in the pitch-dark.

This was just a fantasy. The dormitory staff quickly cleaned up the 58

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scene in the following days, and the chaotic dormitories were easy for them to relocate because a new senior year was about to move in. It was natural to organize the dormitories, and soon, we transitioned from junior to senior year, involving not only the move but also the responsibility of tidying up the debris left by the previous senior year, akin to a battlefield.

On June 8th, after the college entrance examination, we seamlessly became the new senior class. The first thing waiting for us was a mock exam, using the previous two days' college entrance examination papers as a customary practice. It was a diagnostic test since we had completed the senior year curriculum in the second year, theoretically mastering all the required knowledge for the college entrance examination. The remaining task was to identify weaknesses and fill gaps through this practical exercise, determining the direction of our study for the next year. In short, we would restart our learning journey from this test as the starting point.

I have never been particularly concerned about exams. In a diary entry at that time, I wrote:

"On December 3rd, 2006, Wednesday, overcast. Staring at the date, counting on my thumb, one day, two days, three days, the concept of time blurred. In the process, when there was a chance to contemplate, I found that languishing for time, thinking too far ahead every day. A month later, the college entrance examination – I fear my ignorance will invite ridicule. Some things I don't know how to explain, it's because of my powerlessness. I dislike the current school and everyone in it, but they are too insignificant, too cheap, too distant. What can I do? Powerless. Troubled by trivial matters, although I don't want to. But I am indeed insignificant, easily defeated. 59

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I am not a god, just a rural kid with some inferiority, having a breakdown. I don't want to be like this because of you. I avoid you as much as possible because I am powerless. I harbor no resentment towards you; I can only doubt that I am too insignificant, sighing, lamenting, feeling lost, surging up inside."

However, a month after completing the above diary entry, the college entrance examination came, albeit in the form of a mock exam. Soon, the results of this exam were released, and people's reactions were mixed, at least on the surface. For me, it was more a feeling of helplessness and bitter laughter. I remember scoring just above the cutoff for a third-tier university, and this score left me with mixed emotions. I was distressed, considering the high tuition fees of thirdtier schools, it would burden my family, and I would have to face my parents' disappointed faces. Thinking about this made me start to feel despondent. On the other hand, I was somewhat joyful because the score exceeded my expectations. This score also left me feeling helpless. I wished that this test was the actual college entrance examination so I wouldn't have to endure the seemingly foolish senior year that hadn't even begun yet but I knew would be very challenging. Moreover, I had a premonition that next year on this day, I would not achieve the same score. Even though this test was just the starting point for identifying and filling gaps, for me, everything had already ended. I couldn't muster more energy to deal with the tedious memorization and studying for the same subjects in the upcoming year. My entire high school learning journey came to an end on this day in 2006. I knew this very well, but I couldn't escape the fate of enduring another year of foolishness.

I mentioned in a previous article that premature maturity is not a good thing, especially when you are in an era where you are powerless to make any changes. I wrote in that article: 60

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"When I was in my teens, I realized some very universal and negative truths, such as rural life being arduous and hopeless, the campus life in the rural-urban fringe being negative and nutritionless, and high school education and the fervor of parents and teachers in this regard being a foolish experience. These negative truths have existed in Chinese society for centuries and have continued to greet the new generation of Chinese people."

These are negative truths that bring negative emotions. If you don't think deeply about this aspect of life or if you don't have a strong desire for freedom and a better life early on, then current life can still be tolerable. Many experiences, if you don't pay attention to them, can pass by without much impact.

The problem was that the high school years were not days I could pass by in a haze. I already had an understanding of life, knew that I needed to make changes, but physical constraints forced me to be confined within the campus of Quzhou No.3 High School. I had to endure the twelve months after June 2006, and I could only use my brain cells to resist this negative oppression. I felt that during those twelve months, the brain areas related to learning on my cerebral cortex were nearly exhausted or even dead. This brought me benefits in that, with the sacrifice of these dead brain cells, I finally survived those foolish and wasted twelve months. The downside was apparent; in the subsequent years of my life,

it became challenging to turn things around using my brain. The trajectory of my life after those twelve months seemed to be confined to areas where using my brain was not necessary. Additionally, during those twelve months, I successfully developed neurasthenia and 61

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related physiological and psychological illnesses. These experiences shaped and determined the direction of my life for the decades to come.

But I survived, and one day in 2006, I happened to read Yu Hua's "To Live." In that moment, I felt that none of it mattered anymore – just being alive was good.

I've discussed the normal study routine of the second year of high school earlier, and as the second year ended in the summer of 2006, another slightly changed school life began.

Firstly, there was a change in our class leadership. The previous class teacher was responsible for ideological and political subjects, but as a science class, there was no ideological and political content in the college entrance examination. Therefore, it seemed reasonable to change the class teacher. Just a week after the 2006 college entrance examination, before the completion of the second semester of our sophomore year, we met the new class teacher for our junior year. I wrote a diary entry about it, and I'll transcribe it below:

12.4 My Senior 3 Class 7 Sophomore year ended, and a middle-aged person emerged to take over. When he first appeared, I saw him wearing a red short-sleeved shirt. I wasn't wearing glasses, and my vision was blurred, so I couldn't see his face clearly. I thought he might be a distant relative of the previous class teacher, so my perception of the new teacher remained in error. Later, I realized that he was going to send me home in the first week, which seemed reasonable. 62

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At that time, I cried a lot about this matter. Now, thinking back, my eyes are still a bit moist, and my nose feels a bit sour. Then I was sure that I was going to perish under his hands. Subsequent events proved this point. Here is a part of my thoughts on that day:

"That was the first time I went home. The weather was hot, and summer had begun. Dad was a bit anxious, and I was a bit uneasy. While waiting for the bus at the school gate, he called Mom at home, saying he would come home for lunch today, and the teacher would definitely ask me to go home. I felt a bit helpless, feeling that I had outgrown the age of obeying my parents. I thought I could handle some things on my own, but my heart felt light. However, seeing Dad's forehead sweating and the confident look of the middle-aged man who was now our class teacher, I couldn't help but be a little scared. I had not yet realized how heavy it would be in that specific carefree age. Everything seemed indifferent, and what a broad mind it was! I didn't care about the teacher's unjust criticism, and my parents could only bring me a little emotion. Ah, the carefree age, even if it looks like this now."

On the way back home, I chose a single seat near the window, the weather was hot, and I opened the window during the journey. Inside the car, outside the car, it was hot, and the sunlight weakly shone on the ground, trees, and houses. There was no wind. I think I was in a state of mind that was as cold and terrible as the weather. I felt that the ripples of this incident did not affect me much. I was like a stone that fell into the heart river of the middle-aged man who was now our class teacher, splashed with all the filthy water, just like the enthusiastic speeches and directives of a middle-aged man who looked like a skinny vulture and a cicada hybrid. At that time, I thought, is this 63

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middle-aged man, who looks like a skinny vulture, a hybrid of vultures and cicadas? Otherwise, where does his explosive power come from? Fierce animals, vultures are thin skeletons, but they are as cruel and ruthless as death. Cicadas chirp meaninglessly all day long, and when they come, they bring nothing, leaving you covered in saliva when they leave.

I considered myself a person with a conscience, for some reason. Maybe I heard too much of their words. They always said I was immature and lacked conscience. I unilaterally attributed the reason to my poor grades and sincere personality. I always faced things openly and told everyone my thoughts. Whatever came to mind, I said it out loud, but they always thought I was scolding people, criticizing them without any regard for their feelings. I was speechless. Before I realized it, I suffered their merciless attacks, both in language and attitude. I finally understood how a hot and passionate love, sincere and dedicated, could not withstand the conspiracy of base desires. No matter how much you love or get angry, sincerity is never as moving as deception. And then they always thought I was deceiving them. It was like this.

I am a person with a conscience. When I returned home, I thought about it on my own. After all, I was at home now, how relaxed it was! I could do whatever I wanted, as if it was so comfortable. I remembered the old class before, just out of college, young and vigorous, led us for two years, teaching politics. Now the class teacher is a middle-aged man who came out 14 years ago, teaching mathematics.

I always thought that my thoughts before changing the class teacher, what's the big deal if I change the old class? Without that political 64

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figure like a radio, life would be much easier. Later, as things progressed, I realized that politicians liked to discuss things with people, doing political work, relying on the power of ideological eloquence to solve problems. Although these outdated and brainless brothers had no impact on people like us who wouldn't change, thinkers were always marginalized in society — an unchanging reality. But the semester-end grades were still the top in the year, and I had a comfortable life for two years. I had never been foolishly sent home like this, the only time was when I escaped back on my own. After all, the politician gave us enough democracy, which was reassuring.

The machine comrade that followed had the demeanor of a pheasant, used to giving orders, always pointing out what I should do. I had no way. I was really afraid of these high-IQ logicians. It made me voluntarily give up resistance, willingly become a part on their production line, and I was strictly shaped, so I could leave the factory. I couldn't compete with something as strict as the law, and besides, this was a smart god in the high-information age, only accepting the admiration of the masses and then guiding the world with rhetoric!

Those people made me talk incessantly. It's not that I hate them; it's too outdated here. Mostly because I love them, really, not lying. Thinking about my three years in high school, I needed to grow up, but I had to live under their brilliance. Could I not love them? I did a lot of things that harmed others and didn't benefit myself, and I would think about myself.

Forget about school; at that time, I stayed at home. There was no computer in the room, the phone was already overdue, I could only call in, not out. No music, no snacks. I guess I was caught in infinite emptiness. If there was a computer in the room, showing the situation 65

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in the school on the screen, everything under my control, and seeing others suffering in school, studying like crazy, while I slept peacefully at home, what a chaotic space that would be?! I stayed at home for seven days. When I first returned home, my parents didn't say much to me, just Mom's nagging. Eating together at night, the atmosphere always felt a bit wrong. I didn

't dare to turn on the TV. There were vegetables specially bought by Mom on the table. I felt guilty, finished eating, and immediately went into the room.

That night I still sneaked out to surf the internet. I was supposed to study seriously! Annoyed about being sent home, eager to find someone to complain to and vent, I went straight to the internet café. Unfortunately, that night, no friends were online. They were probably still in school, what else could they do? I walked back home disappointedly, the night was dark, and I almost fell into a ditch.

The next few days were a strict self-disciplined life. Occasionally, I would take a break and stare blankly, after all, I felt it was not glorious. Walking on the street after dinner, I was afraid of being seen by others. These days were tormenting enough; I experienced unprecedented embarrassment during that time.

The day I went back to school at noon, my bag on my back, sitting on the bus, I didn't know what was waiting for me in school, pockets were empty, and my heart was too. The end of the experience of the first time going home symbolized the beginning of a new life. I welcomed a new classroom, a new teacher, and the start of Senior 3. (2006.11.24)

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This diary entry was written in the winter of 2006, but in reality, the first semester of Senior 3 was already halfway through. You can understand this diary as a recollection of the summer of that year.

Every year, the college entrance examination takes place in June, specifically on June 7th and 8th. I found another diary entry from that time, recalling the psychological state as the second year of high school was about to end and the college entrance examination was approaching:

12.5 Unbearable Force of Life Can't explain it no matter how! I'm afraid. As the college entrance exam approaches, as always, we only care about when the vacation will start, as it is advantageous for us due to the college entrance exam. Played basketball in the afternoon and saw some Senior 3 students. Got to know them, but I hesitated to say hello. I thought about their upcoming college entrance exams, and they could actually take time to relax. It's good to relax a bit, after all, they've been suppressing themselves for so long. During self-study in the evening, I was flipping through some texts, some dates. I would suddenly think about the college entrance exam in 10 days, and when repeating this sentence, many thoughts would come involuntarily. Former friends, how are they now? How will their college entrance exams go in 10 days? Where will they go in the future? Will they face pressure, studying and living under the burden of family and school? Enduring hardships? The cruel college entrance exam they described will happen in 10 days. 67

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What will happen next? I also thought about myself, a year from today. Facing the same questions, what kind of feelings will I have? If my grades are not good, will I still play basketball? How much pressure will affect my life and studies? What will I become? Now we are all calm, seemingly no one will talk about the college entrance exam, except for supporting the idea of having a break. All the rest is not mentioned. In this indifferent state, we are still immersed in the simple and lazy study of the second year, without any pressure. Little do we know that the Senior 3 class next to us is experiencing such a tense atmosphere. Thinking about the Senior 3 classroom, the countdown sign in the corner has become a single-digit number. What kind of atmosphere will it be in there? Inside the classroom, how will it be among the students? All the pressure, effort, three years of sweat accumulation, awaits the exam in 10 days. Success or failure will become empty numbers. I believe miracles are few in number. If it's our turn, what will happen? Thinking about the single-digit countdown sign on the wall, I suddenly have a feeling of wanting to cry. (2006.5.28 night)

According to tradition, when the current Senior 3 finishes the college entrance exam, the original Sophomore 2 class naturally becomes Senior 3. Although the semester has not ended, in fact, the time from the end of the college entrance exam to the start of the summer vacation is still more than a month. That is, in the middle of the next month, the new and old class teachers complete the handover. Before the Senior 3 academic year is fully underway, we officially enter Senior 3.

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but also a change in the class name. In reality, some of the Senior 3 classes were moved to another campus for some reason. They called it a campus, but it was actually a teaching building transformed from a small factory building. This new campus was even more interesting, with only two buildings, one being the teaching building (the factory workshop and offices) and the other being the dormitory building (the factory dormitory), plus a factory cafeteria. It was in such a place that I welcomed the last year of high school, and after a half-month summer vacation in 2006, I bid farewell to the two years spent on Lotus Road at Quzhou No. 3 High School, entering Qujiang Middle School on Quhua Road for the first semester of Senior 3.

I'll continue quoting a diary entry from that time, marking the beginning of Qujiang Middle School:

12.6 On the second day of moving into the new dormitory, everyone started new activities. Throughout yesterday, there were gradually activities in the nearby dorms. First, people were busy with hanging clothes. Trying every possible way, they finally found the clothesline right in front of them. Then there was a thorough washing of the floor tiles. This was done considering future hygiene, so we had to enter the dormitory barefoot, and shoes were placed at the door. I imagined winter; what would that scene be like? Probably because it was trendy, our dormitory was also infected, certainly not with the flu, as it hadn't shown any downsides yet. So, we thought this was a good start. Indeed, as the only one wearing shoes, I was always excluded. Looking at the half-wet shoe surface, I thought about buying slippers; after all, it was only a matter of time. (2006.8.14 Monday) 13 69

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Qujiang Middle School is located three kilometers away from the Lotus Road campus on Quhua Road, far from the previous campus. Initially, it seemed to be a soap factory area, and later, our senior three science class moved in, and the dormitories of the previous factory area naturally became ours.

Thinking about it, it was originally a small factory. The dormitories had only two floors, with the first floor designated for male students and the second floor for female students. The first floor had only one shared bathroom that could accommodate three to five people washing up simultaneously. However, there were several dormitory rooms along a corridor. The second floor had a shower room with two rows of faucets for everyone to do their laundry. So, during the afternoon break before the evening self-study, many boys would go to the second floor to do their laundry, and the stairs were often crowded with girls.

Qujiang Middle School also inherited the cafeteria from the previous factory area, and the chef in charge of the cafeteria seemed to be the contractor from another rural high school. Due to limited numbers, the previous meal cards were no longer valid, and we returned to using cash to buy meal tickets. Plastic meal tickets with denominations of five yuan, two yuan, one yuan, and five jiao circulated as transaction vouchers in the cafeteria. The words "Duzhe Middle School" on the back of the meal ticket revealed the contractor's previous experience.

Our living area was in the factory area, naturally without a playground. Although everyone would gather in the narrow space downstairs every Monday to raise the national flag and sing the national anthem, the space was limited, and the presence of many teachers' private cars and electric scooters parked downstairs made it even more crowded. 70

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To prevent everyone from feeling too confined in this overly closed and narrow space, almost every class had a ping pong table at the classroom entrance. The classrooms were converted from the factory workshop, so the space was naturally large. During the long break after lunch or before the evening self-study after dinner, some people would gather around the ping pong table or participate in games and competitions, while others would simply watch or chat. During other times, such as the break between classes, everyone would walk to the open space downstairs in small groups to bask in the sun or breathe the less densely populated air.

Although Qujiang Middle School had a small geographical space, there were security guards at the entrance gate. The open space downstairs faced the gate, with the teaching building on one side and the dormitory building on the other. Next to the gate was the security room, and behind the security room was the cafeteria. That was the entire configuration of Qujiang Middle School. Because the number of classes and students was limited, it didn't take long for the security guards to become familiar with the students. However, most of the time, he wouldn't easily let us out of the school gate.

Weekends remained the same. Every three weeks, we would have a weekend off. During other times, we only had half a day off on Sunday. The school set aside half a day for us to go out and buy some daily necessities, allowing us to step out of the narrow space of the factory area and take a break.

Sunday morning was half a day of self-study, and after it ended, everyone could freely enter and leave the school gate for the rest of the day. Generally, everyone would first have lunch at the school 71

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cafeteria, then go out in groups of three to five to stroll around, shop, or engage in basketball activities at the old campus.

Next to the school was a semi-commercial street, which, despite being called a commercial street, only had three to five small supermarkets and snack shops. This included a Sha County snack shop and a small restaurant. Many times, students would choose to have lunch at the Sha County snack shop to improve the quality of their meals. I remember it was also the first time I saw Sha County snacks and had no idea what they sold inside. Fellow students seemed quite familiar with all of this, and the first time I tried Sha County mixed noodles, I found the taste to be very strange. Even to this day, I still have no particular feeling for Sha County mixed noodles, which are neither spicy nor salty.

Next to Sha County was a small restaurant that served common dishes like egg-fried rice, fried vermicelli, fried rice cakes, and also stir-fried vegetables. Countless times, students would go there in groups of three to five, or even more, forming a team and ordering seven or eight dishes. The owner would help us adjust the prices to just average ten yuan per person. In comparison to the prices of two or three yuan per meal in the cafeteria, this was considered a weekend feast.

Talking about the half-day of free time on weekends, aside from the regular activities mentioned earlier, many male students would form teams and head straight to the internet cafe about 300 meters away. After opening in 2004, it became a paradise for students of Qujiang Middle School in the next two years. I also spent countless nights at the internet cafe, as I mentioned before. Perhaps due to previous experiences, it seemed that I had gradually lost interest in what the internet cafe could offer. In the six months spent at Qujiang Middle 72

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School, I seemed to have never stayed overnight at the internet cafe. It could also be due to the limited population of Qujiang Middle School, making it impractical to climb over the wall for an overnight stay. Teachers could easily find out who wasn't in the dormitory. Or it might be temporary fatigue from the internet, causing me to temporarily withdraw from the endless online journey I had before. 14 On weekends, as usual, I would go to the internet café, but the frequency was limited. I still remember watching Jia Zhangke's "The World" and Derek Yee's "Protege" at the Zongheng Internet Café. This was after the summer of 2006, and in reality, it had been one to two years since the release of these two films. However, the lack of external information, including relying solely on luck to find movie resources on the internet, meant that it took me a long time to catch up with the current season's films.

Of course, it was only many years later that I gradually realized the appeal of Director Jia and Director Yee's films. The films I randomly watched during those days did not leave any substantial impression on me. It was only three to five years later, after concentrating on watching movies and brushing up on film history for a considerable amount of time, that I began to appreciate my love for Jia and Yee. I believe both of them are top masters in their respective genres, and it's impossible for anyone to surpass them.

My initial impression of Director Jia came from "Harvest" magazine. One Sunday afternoon, I was wandering near the old campus and noticed a tricycle selling old books and magazines. I saw many torn pages of "Harvest" magazines and others like "Sanlian Life Weekly" and "New Weekly." I asked the owner how much "Harvest" was, and he said three yuan each. I proposed ten yuan for three books, and 73

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although the owner hesitated, I handed him ten yuan and got three copies of "Harvest." One of them was the second issue of 2016, serializing "A Person's Movies," and it featured an interview with Jia Zhangke. It seemed to be my first encounter with Director Jia.

In the following weekends, I attempted to buy more back issues of "Harvest" from the tricycle, but with little success. So, I bought a few issues of "Sanlian Life Weekly" and "New Weekly" instead. They were three yuan each, and I asked if I could get four for ten yuan, but the owner disagreed. Eventually, I bought three for nine yuan. In the remaining time, I would go to the Xishu Bookstore next to the old campus or buy a few new books or spend an afternoon reading while chatting with the owner.

This way of spending weekends actually started in the summer of 2004. I've mentioned the "Prehistoric History of Online Book Purchases" in previous writings, recalling some experiences related to Xishu. Here, I'll add some information about the bookstore owner. Generally, each time I paid for books, it became an opportunity to chat with the owner. Even after leaving Quzhou for Beijing to study in 2007, during winter breaks, I would still visit Xishu and say hello to the owner's old friend.

In 2005, the owner might have confided in me about his struggles. After graduating from a university in Sichuan, he spent a long time preparing for the postgraduate exam in economics but failed to get admitted. He came to Quzhou and opened this bookstore, which primarily focused on social sciences and humanities. However, the bookstore couldn't make enough money. Despite his parents helping out, he even started selling drinks from a fridge in front of the store and later added romance novels and tutoring books to the shelves. Still, it couldn't sustain his livelihood. Eventually, after getting married 74

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and having a child, he realized the bookstore couldn't continue, so he closed it and found another job.

Originally, the bookstore could have been the starting point for a social circle. It was the only social science and humanities bookstore in this fourth or fifth-tier small city, and it was run by an idealistic young man. However, it couldn't resist the pressures of society or the impact of online bookstores like Amazon and Dangdang. The rise of online book purchasing, along with the competition from these platforms, proved fatal to offline bookstores, including the potential circles of like-minded readers that these bookstores might have fostered. I never had the chance, through Xishu's mediation, to meet more enthusiasts of humanistic books mentioned occasionally by the owner, including the active readers' QQ group. When I started buying books online from 2007, eventually moving to Beijing and fully embracing online book shopping, I unconsciously left the QQ group around 2008, marking the end of my connection with Xishu in Quzhou.

Life at Qujiang High School continued, involving classes, self-study, meals, laundry, and sleep, along with endless monthly exams.

I seemed to have actively isolated myself from exams. I mentioned before that when I finished the high school entrance exam in my second year, my high school life could have ended prematurely.

And, in reality, that's what I did. In the following year, whether at Qujiang High School or the new campus in Shenjia, the center of my life seemed to be focused on getting through each day as quickly as possible and developing methods for day-to-day living. At Qujiang High School, one method was reading the "Harvest" magazines and 75

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the books Xishu had bought.

I remember one time during a monthly exam when the papers were already distributed to our seats. I was still reading a novel with my head down, thinking that if no one objected, I would continue this action until the end of the exam. However, the head teacher apparently sensed my intentions, walked over, took my book, and found me reading Milan Kundera's "The Unbearable Lightness of Being." He just smiled and told me to put the book away, saying, "You don't understand this book; read it later." I also smiled, thinking, "I don't understand it, but do you?"

The head teacher was right; I didn't have the capacity to grasp the content of that book, especially at an age with limited life experience. But what I cared about was the way to pass the time and the opportunity to experience more possibilities in life. As for the results, buying a book for twenty or thirty yuan, whether I understood it or not, wouldn't make a big difference. I probably thought this way during that foolish monthly exam; that was my thinking at the time.

We moved into Qujiang High School in August 2006 and left in February 2007, precisely six months of living. During that time, our rhythm was to go home once every three weeks, with the frequency of returning home being about once every twenty days. In fact, the number of times I returned home in six months did not exceed ten.

The way my family provided living expenses was generally every two months, around 600 yuan each time. This method effectively controlled my personal spending to an average of 10 yuan per day.

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I mentioned many online experiences and book-buying experiences earlier. This implies that, to maintain my diverse spending patterns within the unchanged basic living expenses, I had to make a move on the quota to have a more balanced approach to managing my living expenses – a kind of financial management.

Returning home every three weeks cost approximately 20 yuan for the round trip. With an average of three returns in two months, subtracting the 60 yuan transportation cost, our fund pool had 540 yuan left. Distributing 540 yuan over sixty days in two months meant an allocation of 9 yuan per day. Let's start with three meals a day. Breakfast generally cost around 1 yuan, consisting of a bowl of porridge and two buns. Lunch and dinner were similar, averaging around 3.5 yuan each. So, according to this calculation, after deducting the essential expenses for three meals, 9 yuan per day left us with 1 yuan as pocket money, which could be used for any nonmeal-related expenses. Over a two-month period, it meant having 60 yuan in discretionary spending every two months.

Nighttime internet café rates were around 8 to 10 yuan, and if we spent all our pocket money on overnight stays, we could afford it six times, averaging one overnight stay every 1.3 weeks. At the time, the internet café's hourly rate was 1 to 1.5 yuan, while an overnight stay was ten hours. Therefore, using hourly rates for internet usage was not cost-effective, as overnight stays offered a much better deal.

Now, what if we used the money to buy books? Considering the average book price was around 25 yuan, our pocket money for two months could buy 2.3 books. For general reading, two books were sufficient for two months. 77

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And what if we spent the money on snacks? At that time, Sprite cost 2.5 yuan per can, and instant noodles were 3.5 yuan per bowl. With 60 yuan, you could have ten opportunities in a two-month period to have instant noodles with Sprite. Basically, you could try it once every week.

However, the problem was that these three spending plans were mutually exclusive. When you chose one, the other two became impossible to achieve. So, what was my spending strategy at the time?

During overnight stays, my spending pattern was simple. I would spend 2 yuan on meals for the day, and the remaining 7 yuan would go towards overnight stays. At the time, there was a stable breakfast vendor near the school gate selling glutinous rice balls for 1 yuan each, which became the mainstream choice for a long time. They were sufficiently filling and easy to transport. You could ask classmates with the ability to go out to buy one for you, to be used as breakfast or lunch.

As I mentioned earlier, during the all-out internet time, I would return from overnight stays around dawn. After eating a glutinous rice ball, I would climb over the wall back to school and blend into the crowd attending the early self-study session. After breakfast, I would start a day of sleeping on the desk, as my academic performance had always been at the bottom of the class. Thus, my seat was naturally placed at the back of the classroom, either next to the trash can or in a corner. The unique geographical conditions provided a much freer personal space. You could sit in a dim individual space, and as long as you didn't disturb other students excessively, nobody cared whether you were sleeping or not during class. 78

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You could sleep until the end of the afternoon self-study session and then start the next overnight stay. Of course, this was the ideal scenario. Most of the time, hunger would force you to wake up in the afternoon, and once awake, it was not easy to fall back asleep. You had to endure until the end of the afternoon, finding a way to get a glutinous rice ball to satisfy your hunger before starting the second half of rest and recovery. Or, before the evening self-study began, you could go to the cafeteria with the majority to grab a meal. Usually, you didn't have the spare money for a meal card, so you tried to borrow one from a classmate, pulling down your face to ask for a meal card. If successful, you could enjoy a rare full meal before the evening selfstudy session and the end of the school-wide dining rush, and if you received a meal card, it was a rare opportunity to have a satisfying meal.

In times of material scarcity, achieving a more diverse life was challenging. However, I didn't give up trying as many different approaches as possible. Of course, the results were usually pitiful, especially easily spending almost all the money for a month or two in the first week.

During weekends, if not spending the whole day at the internet café, we occasionally formed a group to go to the city or visit a large supermarket. For someone like me who spent most weekdays in the internet café, weekends naturally focused on outdoor activities. Whether shopping or browsing bookstores, spending money was inevitable. Buying a short-sleeved shirt or two books might result in going over the weekly living expenses, and if you decided to eat something more substantial or have snacks, the outcome would be catastrophic.

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We also had to consider that weekend trips were just a negligible aspect of a diverse life. Because apart from the significant weekend of returning home every three weeks, the remaining weekends only provided half a day of free time for activities. In most cases, you had to find ways within the closed school to develop a richer lifestyle. Opening a restaurant for meat once a week and buying snacks were considered diverse ways of living, but was it okay to think of daily internet use as a way to do so? However, one had to consider the economic pressure brought by this diverse lifestyle. Especially as time accumulated, the originally expected two months of living expenses might be used up in the first half month, leaving you wondering how to get through the remaining days.

Not eating could mean skipping a meal, a common method. I used this strategy for at least two years. When you couldn't bear the hunger, you had to borrow money to eat. But regardless of whether you could borrow money or not, you still had to repay it. In a situation where the monthly basic living expenses remained the same, how would you repay the money borrowed for extra spending? This kind of problem troubled me for many years. In fact, from 2001 to 2004 during junior high school, I frequently found myself borrowing money to eat, going through times of having a meal and times of not having a meal. I remember there were often days when I couldn't afford breakfast, and my stomach would start growling during the second class in the morning. I would sit there feeling somewhat absent-minded, not agitated but rather in a daze, as if my soul had left my body.

This lifestyle, or spending strategy, started from my junior high school days and continued until I graduated from high school, with no substantial changes. The various ups and downs during that time are too numerous to mention, so, to this day, I haven't found a better way to organize the memories of that period. Therefore, I can only 80

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temporarily leave it unmentioned. 15 For a long period of time, after concluding my overnight journeys at the internet café around four or five in the morning, I would climb over the wall to return to school. Accompanied by the sound of early selfstudy, I would lie on a desk at the back of the classroom and easily fall asleep, waking up almost twelve hours later just before the evening self-study.

The unbearable hunger and the sense of idleness caused by extended sleep prompted me to consider arrangements for the evening selfstudy. I would go to the small store next to the cafeteria, rumored to be operated by the school principal's relative. There, I would buy a bucket of instant noodles and a can of Sprite, and then go to the cafeteria window to purchase two or three liang of rice. This successful combination created a satisfying feast of noodles and beverages.

Especially after a hearty meal, I felt full of energy with nowhere to release it. The teaching building was brightly lit, and the self-study classrooms were quiet. Occasionally, teachers, administrators, and class leaders would pass through the corridor. In a sudden moment, you would swiftly hide in the shadows and sneak back into the classroom, or simply wander towards the grassy field surrounding the track. You might find a corner on the lawn to rest or walk slowly along the track, keeping an eye on your surroundings, always aware of the possibility of encountering school leaders, such as the headmaster or vice principal—though, most of the time, no one cared about your nocturnal strolls, especially during the evening self-study rather than breaks or meal times.

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The Quzhou Third Middle School's playground was enclosed by the teaching buildings and residential areas. One end of the playground had a wall separating it from the residential area, while the other faced the teaching building. Flower beds and lawns were interspersed between the teaching building and the playground. Walking openly between these green spaces was obviously unsafe, so most of the time, I would move slowly along the wall of the residential area or loiter near the fitness bars in the corner of the field. To some extent, this was a blind spot in terms of visibility. If you stood on the teaching building trying to survey the campus, you wouldn't see this corner.

On countless nights, I crouched next to the flower bed against the wall of the teaching building or sat on the fitness bars, trying to maintain a position that wasn't easily toppled, contemplating life.

What I'm talking about is the nightly strolls that continued day after day, mainly brief wanderings during the night, risking the possibility of being reported by the head teacher or the teacher on duty during evening self-study. I squeezed out some time, escaping from the confined and gloomy classrooms, disappearing into the dark night of the campus, seeking a bit of tranquility.

I often wondered, must youth be spent in this foolish way, in this joyful and energetic time after being "fed and satisfied"? Must people be confined in strict schools and be indoctrinated with exam techniques and memorization skills?

Or is life full of different possibilities, like those students who commute daily to school, residing around the school, entering and leaving at scheduled times, as if this rigorous campus is just an inconspicuous 82

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stop in their day, neither a starting point nor an endpoint.

However, I obviously couldn't imagine what that specific alternative life might be. Even a decade later to this day, I still don't know what it's like to live that kind of life—what is it like to be a daily commuter? I don't know.

So, what did I know at that time? It was an attitude toward enduring the difficulties of the present time. I had to survive this period, and I couldn't be defeated, not by this oppressive life, even though the oppression might have come from my previous school experiences and background.

I took walks, sat on the fitness bars lost in thought, and returned to the classroom towards the end of evening self-study, beginning to plan the subsequent overnight internet journeys. I started scheduling time for online roaming, watching videos, movies, listening to music, or browsing forums. Where to download the rumored adult films or searching for various keywords on eDonkey and QuickTime became part of the plan.

Was this a method of resisting real life? I don't know. For me, the habit of walking continued to accompany me for almost every day in the following ten years, whether aimless strolls or self-practice with soliloquies. Evening walks seemed to have become an inseparable part of my life, perhaps shaping a certain aspect of my self-identity.

But just looking at the situation at that time, I thought walking was a temporary escape strategy. I seemed to be close to the edge of 83

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despair, and through various methods and measures of daily selfwandering, I smoothly consumed that period of seemingly worthless but physically and mentally vibrant youth. It might have been the most powerful time in terms of my physiological state during my life, but it was also a time of psychological oppression bordering on collapse. Fortunately, I eventually survived, although I still cannot estimate the opportunity cost I incurred during that time and the impact it has had or will have on the path of my life. 16 Let me briefly discuss the contradiction between diverse lifestyles and the enclosed school life to conclude my memories of Qujiang High School.

Whether it was the old campus on Hehua East Road or the factory campus on Quhua Road, the actual life was not so closed. Many students from the urban area shuttled in and out of the school gate every day. Some accompanying parents rented short-term houses around the school, allowing students who did not live in the city to still come and go through the school gate every day.

So, this kind of enclosure is only applicable to boarders. The small dormitories and campus may limit the potential activity space, but for many others, they don't need these geographical spaces. The workload of coursework and exams is overwhelming; there is no time for developing various extracurricular activities. A diverse life is out of the question when exam papers and assignments have already flooded the desks, and time is insufficient. Where does the contradiction come from?

To some extent, this contradiction only exists in the idlers like me. 84

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Indeed, as I mentioned earlier, after the mock exam in the summer of my sophomore year, I realized that everything thereafter would be meaningless and futile. So, I stopped doing more homework and papers, and I did not immerse myself in additional studies or textbooks.

The blank exam papers were quickly collected and piled under my desk. I never handed in any homework assigned by teachers— privileged as a back-row student, where no one cared whether you submitted your homework or not. With continuous monthly exams, weekly tests, and mock exams, I focused on competing for the fastest completion time and writing diaries during the exams.

I confronted this contradiction in a semi-passive way, crossing over the three months at Qujiang High School until the end of the 2007 summer college entrance examination. 17 My junior high school was called "Shangfang Town Junior Middle School," founded in 1958. At that time, during the Great Leap Forward, there was a surge in school establishments, leading to the existence of a secondary school in the remote mountainous area of Shangfang Town in northern Quzhou, named Qu County Agricultural and Forestry School. Initially situated on the hills around the town, the school, being an agricultural and forestry institution, naturally found its place near the forest. After a year, the school moved from the hills to the foothills but remained surrounded by bamboo groves.

In the early 1970s, the school was renamed Qu County Shangfang Middle School, combining junior and senior high school levels. My father completed his high school education here in the late 1970s before joining the military. In the early 1980s, the high school section 85

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was abolished, leaving only the junior high school, and it became Shangfang Town Junior Middle School. My sister attended the junior high school around the turn of the century.

In 2000, the school relocated again, moving from the foothills west of the town to the northeast foothills. It was right after this relocation that I entered Shangfang Junior Middle School, commencing my journey through secondary education.

Previously, I mentioned my experiences in three different campuses of Quzhou No. 3 High School. Let me briefly recall the history of Quzhou No. 3 High School here.

Originally named Qu County 57th Middle School, Quzhou No. 3 High School has a connection to Qu County Forestry School from 1958, judging by its name. However, 57th Middle School was established in 1971, initially located in the suburban area of Naoqiao in Qu County. In the 1980s, the school's name changed to Quzhou No. 3 High School, and in 1990, it relocated to Hehua East Road in the city center. When I entered Shangfang Junior Middle School in 2001, my sister smoothly graduated from junior high and entered Quzhou No. 3 High School, starting her high school years. Three years later, I also entered Quzhou No. 3 High School, located on Hehua East Road, where I spent over a year.

In 2006, I briefly moved to Qujiang High School on Quhua Road, and later in the spring of 2007, I transferred to the new campus of Quzhou No. 3 High School in Shenjia.

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It's a coincidence that both Shangfang Junior Middle School and Quzhou No. 3 High School changed their locations twice, with an interim period in between.

Thinking about it, I wonder if this conveys some metaphor, perhaps providing me with more space for comparison or exploration, thus expanding my range of perspectives on life.

In the spring of 2007, before it concluded, I boarded the 308 bus heading to Shenjia. Passing through the somewhat dilapidated but vigorously developing Zhangtan Town, we drove by the underconstruction new government building of Qujiang District. The bus stopped several hundred meters away from the still underconstruction new campus of Quzhou No. 3 High School, located on the west side of Naoqiao town.

I'm not sure if my memory is accurate, but I recall that when I visited the new campus of Quzhou No. 3 High School in Shenjia, it was March 4, 2007, the 15th day of the first lunar month. It happened to be a Sunday, and I left home early, taking a bus to the city. I connected with a friend working as a mechanic apprentice in the city, and we planned to explore the area together.

Since it was the Lantern Festival, the festive atmosphere was strong. We considered watching the dragon lantern performance in the city later in the evening. However, considering the evening study session starting at 5:30 PM, we felt a bit melancholic. After a brief stroll, I even suggested that he impersonate a family member and call my homeroom teacher, claiming that there was a family matter and I couldn't attend the evening session. However, thinking about the 87

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unnecessary complications that might arise, such as the teacher verifying with my family, I abandoned the idea.

Around three or four in the afternoon, we parted ways. He continued exploring the city, and I boarded the 308 bus bound for Shenjia.

The freedom of the holiday's end can easily evoke a sense of sadness, especially when there is still a strong festive atmosphere around. The outdoor air on the Lantern Festival day felt particularly murky. Sitting on the bus, I could sense the sky gradually darkening, with lanterns and fireworks illuminating the surroundings.

I have never been good at distinguishing geography, especially in an era when I knew nothing about urban and suburban spaces. After an unknown number of bus stops, I felt that we were close to the final destination. Following my usual habit, I always get off at the terminal station and walk about a hundred meters in a straight line to see the back gate of my welcoming school and the half-built security booth.

Perhaps due to the excitement of the day, I decided to get off two stops early. One reason was to experience the festive atmosphere outside, and the other was that I still had time before the evening study session, so I could use it to familiarize myself with the surrounding geography. Thus, I decisively got off at the next bus stop.

The bus stop was by the side of the road, which was a major thoroughfare. There were no shops or lanterns around. After getting off, I walked straight ahead, found a small path, turned into it, and entered a small village. I continued walking forward. It was a very small 88

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village with only a few households. As it was dinner time, I could see many villagers sitting in front of their homes eating, holding bowls. They scrutinized me under the dim light and moonlight, seemingly trying to confirm which neighbor I was. Soon, I passed through the village and reached its end. At the head of the village was a large river, presumably the Qu River. I saw factories on the opposite bank and rocks and water plants in the middle of the river. I suddenly felt a sense of unfamiliarity, as if I had never noticed the existence of this river and the surrounding villages before. I also felt that the village and I would never have any communication, just like the vehicles flowing back and forth on this bridge. I didn't know where they came from or where they were going. I had inadvertently entered this riverside village on a Sunday evening during the Lantern Festival. The sky gradually darkened, and the moon appeared in the sky, becoming clearer and more translucent. In the far distance, fireworks on the horizon bloomed in a faint and elusive manner. I stared at the shallow river, as if I had traveled through centuries.

I stayed by the village for a while, realizing that it was about to get completely dark. I felt that I should get up and go to school. I retraced my steps to the side of the main road, but I couldn't find the spot where I had gotten off before. I started to feel a bit panicked, realizing that I had lost my way. I couldn't make it to school on time for the evening study session at 5:30 PM, and to make matters worse, I couldn't find the way back to school, and the bus stop was nowhere to be found.

I walked along the main road for a few hundred meters, but there were no signs of a bus stop. I retraced my steps back a few hundred meters, and at a junction, I saw someone squatting by the roadside waiting for a bus. I thought this should be the bus stop. I called my homeroom teacher, informing him of my situation that I took the wrong bus and 89

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couldn't make it to school on time. I also called my friend who was still wandering in the city, reporting my misadventure of getting lost. Meanwhile, I boarded the next bus arriving from the nightfall and began my journey back to school. 18 From the 15th day of the first lunar month, March 4, 2007, to the high school entrance examination on June 7, 2007, which was actually less than a hundred days, the classroom still had a countdown calendar, tearing off one page each day. It seemed as if with the passage of time, some miraculous and instant change might occur.

The new campus of Quzhou No. 3 High School was essentially a large construction site. A few scattered teaching and dormitory buildings were mostly completed, but all the other structures were still under construction. However, for the students hoping to reach the pinnacle of their lives in the last three months of intensive preparation, this seemed to be the ideal environment.

The new campus was on the edge of the still-developing Shenjia New District, surrounded by vast fields and orange orchards. The new administrative building of Qujiang District, adjacent to the school, was not yet fully operational. The nearest commercial street was three or four kilometers away. In an era with less developed public transportation, going out for leisure seemed increasingly difficult. Look at what a perfect utopia for studying it was.

Internet cafes seemed a bit out of reach, and for me, having completed all the internet activities in my second year of high school, I was no longer enamored with them. Or rather, I felt that a new world was about to unfold for me in three months, and there was no need 90

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to be overly excited.

As mentioned earlier, on the 15th day of the first lunar month, March 4, I went to the city early in the morning. During the intervals, I even went to an internet cafe. It was during this visit that I placed my first online order on Zhuoyuewang (卓越网), a Chinese online bookstore, and bought two books with a cash-on-delivery payment method. I will talk about these two books in subsequent articles. This was my first experience of online book shopping. Ten days or so later, during the lunch break, without eating, I took a bus to the logistics distribution street in the city, paid for and received the two books I had purchased, and hurried back to school by taxi. It seemed that the transportation cost for getting the books exceeded the book price, but this online shopping experience clearly foreshadowed another gradually emerging world.

In the following months, I bought several more books one after another. With these books, I spent the three months in Shenjia and welcomed the end of my three years of high school.

Reflecting on these three years of high school has been an ongoing process throughout these three years. On a certain day before the college entrance examination, I wrote:

18.1 On High School 2007.5.27 I feel it's necessary to summarize the time that has passed in these three years, the growth after these three years. Although I've attempted this before, it's time that has changed. Writing now, expressing now, there must be some new gains. This is indisputable because the perspective of dealing with things has turned into a 91

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philosophical one for me. Memory, and everything related to it, must be constantly excavated, sought after, reviewed, and then harvested even more abundantly. This is due to the depth of understanding, the depth of vision. We continue to admit how shallow our previous understanding was. Not that things are not as we see them or as we imagine they will become. Everything changes. When the overall reason is the depth of our own understanding, after the baptism of time, the vision becomes deeper, seeing more things, and the field of view widens. What was previously overlooked can re-enter the stage and become the protagonist. My high school, my three years, is also my life. Its significance is immense, and it cannot be ignored or disregarded. This is clearly irresponsible to my own life. Examination, examining the past and today, enlightening and guiding the future, life must be thought about in this way. Remember one thing: regardless of the current situation, no matter how everything is, life continues. This is part of a great life, and every part is crucial. Don't forget, discard, or lose any part. Now belongs to life, and the splendor of life is composed of every part. Life is an organism, and any part or organ malfunction can affect the whole. Moreover, these are the young three years. The significance of youth is immense and can be completely independent in life, leading a meaning. The significant moments in life don't necessarily manifest during adulthood; every period is great. This is even more progressive than the concept of youth, more radical. So there's no need to put big words in the future, exaggerate hopes too much, as if life is only for those few years. Although after adulthood, there are indeed more achievements and greater influence individually. But is it really so for the individual? No, I can confidently answer that it is not.

Life is a process of accumulation, which anyone who has a little selfawareness will know. So I won't repeat it. Mentioning life and elevating it to youth is the confirmation of the significance of high school. It must have been included in the progress. Although it's already coming 92

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to an end, even ending, it's never too late to mention greatness. Because I know that meaning and greatness are always intertwined from beginning to end. This basic self-confidence, I still maintain. The accumulation of greatness must be organized and summarized. This is like a book. After reading it once, the harvest is great because everything is new. But when you read it again, the meaning and greatness are sublimated, deep into the soul, sublimation! I'm not sure whether narration, discussion, or lyrical expression, which style is more suitable for my summary. So I try my best, and it doesn't matter if there are stylistic differences. I try to touch on details that haven't been mentioned before.

Details of the first year of high school were shy and introverted, which was something I wanted to change when I entered high school. However, in reality, until now, it hasn't changed, and it seems to have become more exaggerated. But that's okay. I feel that I have benefited a lot from it, and in many ways, introversion is an inseparable part of my personality. Although I tried to change it and seemed genuinely sincere, it changed very little. Was it a mistake? No, don't doubt it. In three years of high school, an individual must make a leap. You are undoubtedly without doubt. When this lurking idea arose, at least in the first year of junior high school, it was already there. In fact, much earlier, when I first encountered those animated cartoons and TV dramas, it had already sprouted. Admittedly, thanks must be given to television, animated cartoons, and movies. They also play a significant role in shaping my character and strength in human nature. Characters in some movies have always been benchmarks for my behavior, and they still are. There is too much justice in those things. At the same time, the influence I have been exposed to is not small. I am just, because my heart is full of respect, examples, and seeds of justice. To some extent, I completed the leap. Interestingly, the more it was later, the more evident my leap became. Especially after the second half of the third year of high school, I found a philosophy that I had never 93

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been able to describe. I gained a qualitative leap. This prompted the progress of my mind and the completion of my values to a large extent. I have no significant regrets. Indeed, I have no major regrets. To this day, I haven't taken a good look at it. Ha, except for the damn grades, which killed how many brain cells I don't know. This is my enemy, which has kept me trapped in resistance for three years without giving up. This is a formidable enemy. In the end, I didn't win against it. But it beat me up, and I became stronger, or I wasn't afraid of being beaten. Salute to exams, this is the last sentence for today.

I also wrote in my diary after the first day of the college entrance examination:

18.2 College Entrance Examination Day One 2007.6.7 The first day of the college entrance examination is over, and tomorrow it will end. High school life ends, and the study life with suppressed thoughts ends. Although most of this damn resentment probably comes from myself, everything from the outside is inevitable. Curse a few times, resist a few times, life becomes a bit more fulfilling, my last semester, wasn't it spent like this? 19 In the summer of 2006, I moved into Qujiang Middle School, and after six months, I transferred to the Shenjia New Campus. From March to June 8, 2007, the three months in Shenjia became the closing performance of my high school life, concluding with the end of the college entrance examination.

In the last three months, I diligently recorded detailed diaries in my notebooks. At that time, it served as one of the ways to pass the time, and as I wrote, a whole class period or half a day could pass effortlessly. 94

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Unfortunately, due to the lack of time to organize old drafts, the records of these three months remained non-digitalized, making it impossible to quote them here. I have considered that due to frequent moves over the years, my old drafts may have been lost. However, this might not be a bad thing. Even in these relatively relaxed final three months, it was still one of the most challenging times in my three years of high school. Losing the old drafts is like losing memories of that foolish period. You don't need to reminisce about those foolish years. The brain's cortex, which might have stored memories of those months in the form of potential differences, can be considered erased without the "Proustian madeleine" to evoke those impressions. It's like formatting memory cells to store more valuable information in the future, which is a positive thing.

During my sporadic recollection process, I continued to express resentment towards the foolish high school life. This monotonous, closed, and oppressive life seemed to reach its peak in the last three months, as if the blocked pipeline of many years was on the verge of bursting, rather than naturally diluting the solidified garbage collection over time.

In these final three months, my tolerance for life had reached its limit, leading to a sense of despair. One day, I went to the medical room located on the ground floor of a remote teaching building, attempting to gain some understanding of life or relief from a professional doctor, whether physically or psychologically.

Entering the medical room, I found a young school doctor engrossed in reading a book. I didn't interrupt his focus and approached to confirm what he was reading. Surprisingly, he was reading what 95

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seemed to be a medical journal for the current month, and there were also several English medical journals on the table. I found it very strange. How could a secondary school doctor be concerned with cutting-edge medical information?

The school doctor noticed my presence, closed the magazine, and prepared to start a conversation with me. I asked, "Why do you need to read this kind of thing?" He seemed to respond that continuous learning was necessary. This was not the kind of response I expected to lead to the next topic, but I wasn't interested in discussing this further. I said I came for medical help. Recently, my life has been basically without proper meals or sleep, feeling progressively weakened day by day. The most significant issue was that I couldn't understand the world around me, especially the life of the last few months of high school. I felt that this rhythm of life was problematic and, to some extent, meaningless. Why must life be lived in this way?

The doctor's response was not what I expected either. Instead of an equal and experiential insight, he conveyed some universal truths, such as everyone goes through the same thing in the last year of high school. He himself went through it when he was a student, so don't think too much, don't put too much pressure on yourself, just study with a calm mindset. I was not satisfied with this reply, but no matter how I pursued the topic, the doctor's response remained focused on a strategy of comforting communication. Feeling a bit weary, I asked if he could prescribe me some medication. While he couldn't solve my psychological confusion, at least, he could provide some assistance from a medical perspective. The doctor later gave me two boxes of Liuwei Dihuang pills, and with a solemn tone, he sent me away.

Afterward, I started trying to take over twenty Liuwei Dihuang pills 96

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each day because the recommended dosage on the instructions was eight pills per intake, three times a day. However, it seemed that this medicine, which cost me around ten yuan, did not provide any substantive help.

For a period of time, I reached the point where I could hardly sleep at night. Every night, lying on my dormitory bed, starting from lights out at ten o'clock, whether daydreaming or counting sheep, for two or three hours straight until midnight. I could feel a strong physiological drowsiness coming over me, but still, I couldn't fall asleep. Then, I would realize, unknowingly, that it was already morning.

Many years later, I realized that my symptoms at the time should be called neurasthenia. In fact, I sought help at the hospital at that time, but it seemed that no one mentioned this condition. Most suggestions were along the lines of "that's how it is in the last year of high school; eat well, drink well, don't have psychological stress, and it will pass."

But later, when there was no other way, my parents took me to the pharmacy and bought several boxes of mixed Chinese and Western medicine with sleep-inducing effects. This way, I finally managed to fall asleep smoothly, overcoming the most difficult three months.

Of course, such conditions were not unique to me alone. Once, during a morning self-study break, I saw a neighboring classmate nodding off, seemingly on the verge of falling asleep. I casually inquired about the situation. The classmate mentioned having sleep problems. I said, "Luckily, I have medicine, but I can't give it to you because the medicine is too strong. It's not suitable for ordinary people, and more importantly, the pill costs ten yuan each, giving it to you would be a 97

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waste."

Later, at the strong request of the classmate, I still gave him one. He immediately took it, then lay on the desk and slept for a whole day. The next day, he took leave and went home. When he recovered and returned to class, he told me that everything was due to the pill I gave him. Because of the strong effect of the medicine, he felt dizzy and disoriented after taking it. It took him three days to recover to normal.

Thinking about it, that dizzying medicine, for me, could only manage my less than seven hours of sleep at night. I would take the medicine right after turning off the lights at night, and invariably, I would wake up around five in the morning as soon as the effect of the medicine wore off, almost unstoppable. 20 The three months spent in Shenjia were neither short nor long, and quickly, the college entrance examination arrived. Seeing the countdown calendar next to the blackboard, going from three digits to two digits to single digits, I couldn't help but think that it was finally coming to an end – the most foolish era was finally about to pass.

The college entrance examination took place on June 7th and 8th, 2007. Following my consistent exam style, or rather approach, writing prose and miscellaneous essays on the scratch paper during the match and exam process was inevitable. However, the college entrance examination didn't allow early submission of papers, and the scratch paper couldn't be taken out; it had to be handed in after the exam. This meant that the exam process returned to being a boring and idle ordeal. After swiftly filling all the answer sheet spaces, I began to glance around within limits, attempting to observe how the experts in 98

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the examination hall cheated or concentrated.

Unfortunately, I didn't discover any note-passing or whispering, and although there were a few instances of students obviously leaking answers to others, it wasn't surprising. I had initially thought of making a final attempt and had specially gotten a pair of contact lenses, hoping to gain some advantage in this last sprint of the exam through looking around. You see, in my brief exam career, I had never cheated once because grades held no value for me. But in this final attempt, I felt a bit inspired to make a change.

However, due to my eyes being strained from years of uninterrupted online activity, my vision had deteriorated to the point where even contact lenses couldn't adapt to the appropriate prescription. I had to settle for a lower prescription, which, as expected, didn't provide me with a good line of sight. On the other hand, based on my observation of the surroundings, it seemed that the proficiency of those classmates was even below mine. Although I could see the answer sheets of some individuals, I was almost certain at that moment that most of them had answered the questions incorrectly. Well, I spent a few hundred yuan on disposable contact lenses, only to quietly help others correct their mistakes.

Of course, when the exam was over, everyone quickly went online to search for the standard answers for that year. That's when I realized the ones who were wrong were actually me. I scored just over one hundred points in the comprehensive science section, and for a classmate within my line of sight, I felt that if I had followed his answers completely, I could have easily scored over two hundred points in the comprehensive science section. Life is unpredictable, time slips away, and perhaps in this lifetime, I would always be devoid of cheating. 99

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The college entrance exam results were soon released. My scores in Chinese, English, and comprehensive science were all just over one hundred, almost equal in points. I didn't even score a perfect one hundred in mathematics. With a total score just over four hundred, as expected, it didn't surpass my score from a year ago. Considering my level a year ago, I could have reached the undergraduate admission score, so perhaps I had a chance to aim for a three-year college in the three categories. Now, however, I could only choose among the countless three-year colleges, picking some with moderate admission scores as my preferences.

At that time, my application strategy was quite simple. Firstly, I only considered schools in Beijing and Shanghai. Secondly, the schools couldn't have the words "vocational" or "technical school" in their names. Lastly, I wanted to major in something that would guarantee I wouldn't starve to death after studying it. So, three months later, at the end of the summer, I went to Beijing to study my mechatronics major. Simultaneously, I completely bid farewell to high school life, both geographically and in terms of lifestyle – a farewell that would last forever. Brian Xue [email protected] Revised on July 17, 2018, dawn, at Linping City Harbor

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