Extravagant Hopes

Maybe many years from now I’ll still remember this passage Wang Xiaobo wrote in The Golden Age:

“That day I was twenty-one, in the golden age of my life. I had many extravagant hopes. I wanted to love, to eat, and in an instant become a cloud half-lit, half-dark in the sky. Only later did I realize that life is a slow process of being hammered. People grow old day by day, and their extravagant hopes fade day by day, until they become like a cow that’s been hammered. But on my twenty-first birthday, I didn’t foresee this. I thought I would stay fierce forever, that nothing could hammer me.”

But before I turned twenty-five, I had already understood this—and the truth was even more disheartening than being hammered. I had never been fierce for even a single day, let alone forever.

Looking back at a photo I took last year beneath the cloud-wreathed Meili Snow Mountain in Yunnan, I was so idealistic then—missing no one, thinking about nothing. Standing beneath the towering snow mountain, I imagined myself as a tree in the primeval forest, standing there for centuries upon centuries, desiring nothing.

Later I entered the city and had to live with my parents. Every little thing required reporting to them, which felt helpless. I began longing to buy a house, which meant I had to find a job that could at least cover the mortgage. Then I feared being trapped by the house and losing my freedom in life, so I didn’t even dare mention buying one. Unfortunately, I’ve never been fierce, so these two extravagant hopes are now entangled within me. In such a huge city with so many people, is this a mistake after all? Why do so many people have to come here? Why are so many willing to be buried in the wilderness on the city’s outskirts?

Today a friend asked if I had fully devoted myself to work. I said yes. Actually, for me, there’s no such thing as “working hard.” I’m willing to take a salary that’s just enough, I don’t want to be a corporate executive, I don’t want to travel too far—like those young Japanese people nowadays who are desireless and undemanding. But reality is always crueler than ideals. Like a hammered cow, you’ll never be fierce again. Living on in a barely surviving state is the portrait of a lifetime.