QQ Zone’s desktop and mobile formats are maddeningly incompatible. Its permission design is ancient too. The author has decided to keep another copy, edit it, and publish it here. Dear readers, please be merciful.
I have not returned to QQ Zone to write a journal for a long time since graduating from high school. Today I suddenly felt inspired and wanted to speak my mind freely, so I came back.
I have met many friends on the internet, while keeping only a few in real life. Friends, the recent pandemic has been difficult. Please take care of your health first and look after the people around you.
When you have time, come back and read the words below; we can talk them through properly.
1. Before University Graduation
Before I graduated from university, I used QQ Zone’s new “archive” feature to store all my posts and journals from before September 1, 2017.
Looking back now, perhaps I too was affected by the speed-up-and-fee-reduction campaign around 2017 (see tombkeeper’s post https://m.weibo.cn/1401527553/4769417797832257 ). China’s internet changed enormously during that period (in fact, perhaps the change began even earlier). It made me feel that speech might no longer be as free as before. The internet I imagined, where everyone lived together in harmony—the spiritual refuge of my younger self—seemed, perhaps, to be gone.
The crisis frightened me. I was anxious not only about finding work as graduation approached, but also about countless problems in life and in my mind that needed solving. I still believed that knowledge could give me courage in this chaotic world.
At university I learned all kinds of things within my reach. There are many beginner-friendly interests that cost little money; mathematics, programming, music arrangement, and writing eventually became my three great sources of spiritual nourishment—perhaps all connected to the anime and manga world, which in my heart symbolised openness and inclusiveness, though its definition has since become generalised.
I was lucky to make a relatively correct choice at graduation: becoming a worker in the internet industry. On one hand, I really did like programming (perhaps not that much); I enjoyed its “controllability.” On the other, programming gave me more positive feedback. These two sides reinforced each other.
Programming is like mathematics in a way. In mathematics, follow the axioms and you can derive theorems; follow the theorems and you know the result. Objective laws do not change with subjective opinion. Similarly, if you follow how a computer works, it will output whatever you input. It is that simple.
Of course, after actually learning programming, I discovered that only printing Hello World in a console is simple beyond simplification. I did not grow up in a first-tier city, so I was naturally not among the first internet citizens. When I started, I was already far behind many outstanding peers: while I was writing Hello World, others might already have been researching the AI that is popular today.
But why should that matter? If someone more gifted than you also works harder than you, does that make your own effort useless? I cannot agree. This is one reason I wrote Sad, Slow Song in high school. Our early education looked only at individual scores and ignored the collective: however excellent one person is, individual ability is limited; only cooperation between people can produce better things.
Unfortunately, most teachers then did not know how to educate (those of you from my school who have grown up should know whom I mean). Unequal educational resources, an incomplete system, and other causes led to a strange phenomenon: students near the top of the rankings were mostly terrible at making friends.
I do not want to discuss why here (use Poirot’s little grey cells if you like). I only want to say that whether I work hard or you work hard is our own business, our responsibility to our own lives—nothing can force us not to work hard.
Of course, the politically correct internet slogan now is “lying flat.” I lie flat too, but because I am tired and need rest (I really did need rest before), not because I suddenly decided that effort is “involution.” If anyone truly thinks that way, I suggest you stop reading now, or you will produce only shallow thoughts before angrily wanting to curse me.
The internet makes buzzwords popular and powerful; they influence how people understand language subconsciously. Some netizens—robots, paid posters, or something else—use such a narrow way of speaking that even today’s AI (yes, ChatGPT included) is better. Isn’t that failed education?
No. In some places and periods there was no education at all. So, although I have always (well, perhaps not always) mocked the education we received, the rules we followed as students were at least stable, simple, and comparatively encouraging when set beside some things I saw after graduation.
2. After University Graduation
It has been more than four years since graduation and I am still working. I have experienced things both large and small. Recently, because of the pandemic, business trips, a temporary lull at work, and various other reasons, I could not do much else, so I had the leisure to write these thoughts late at night.
I do not want to say much about the different colleagues I have met or the internet workplace as a whole (I do not think four years are enough to observe anything worth detailing). What I want to say is that even after yesterday’s apparently rapid development, and today’s slowdown after three years of pandemic, China’s internet still has a glorious tomorrow. The pandemic brought enormous changes to the world; after the internet shift around 2017, this was the second time I felt the tide of an era. The tide may swallow people, but it no longer frightens me so much.
Soon after the pandemic began, I moved from one company to another and continued living in a city that, though not rich in cultural depth, was relatively open and economically developed. The new company differed from the old one: people were younger, easier to talk to, more open and free—what I thought the internet should be. After working there for a while, I transferred to my current department for various personal and collective reasons. The new department is in an even more open and inclusive city, and I feel better than before.
Of course, companies and departments differ, and my current department is not perfect. It simply suits my present state. I feel at ease with my colleagues and our work. There are difficulties, but we overcome them together; when something happens, we lay it all out. Work is fundamentally one of humanity’s many ways of communicating, so for me it is not merely a way to earn money.
As I wrote in Sad, Slow Song : people are not machines, nor are they tools. I understand that working people hold different attitudes toward different things, but I make my own choices and, as with programming, roughly anticipate their results. At least for now, the deviation of the world line remains within the observable range, doesn’t it?
Fictional works come from reality’s cries; changes in the world come from objective laws. I think human nature will remain stable for a very long time, so my way of treating people and the world should remain stable too.
I am lucky, and grateful, to have responsible parents who have continually taught me how to get along with others. On one hand, they are teachers and understand how to educate children; on the other, they love me. Even when that love is severe, it remains a ray of winter light.
I have also met many friends. Wherever you come from, whether we connected in person or through thousands of fibres, you are indispensable to my understanding of this world—and to the world itself.
This article uses no respectable literary form. By contemporary literary categories it might be an essay or miscellany; by modern entertainment formats it is a long post made by stitching together several short posts. If you object to the structure, I will answer with the title of a Beatles song: Let it be.
3. Now
Finally, here is a passage from one of my favourite Chinese TV series, My Own Swordsman, for us to encourage each other with.
Li Dazui: Hey, why do you think you read, anyway?
Lü Xiucai: At first, I read for fame and rank.
Li Dazui: Ah, that is true.
Lü Xiucai: Later, the more I read, the less sure I became. So many books, piled to the rafters.
Li Dazui: Hey, can reading make you impulsive too?
Lü Xiucai: Not impulsive—
Guo Furong: Ahem.
Lü Xiucai: —it is impulse, it is impulse. Eventually the impulse made me realise something.
Lü Xiucai: How should I put it? Take making friends: you use your heart, not your learning.
Lü Xiucai: We read not to show off, but to communicate better.
For copyright reasons I cannot include an image. If you are interested, search for episode 13, “Dazui Pretends to Be a Literary Master to Save Face; Xiangyu Holds a Contest to Resolve the Crisis,” at 17:02.
After every meeting comes another goodbye. Friends, until next time.
—— Written 2022.12.10