Carrying Butterflies Across the Sea

After living in a first-tier city for a long time, it's easy to develop an illusion: that everyone's living conditions are fairly good, and that children basically grow up happily. When you step out of a first-tier city and go to live in a smaller city, and widely contact people from all social strata, you suddenly feel a huge gap, because you see those disadvantaged people in this vast world whom we previously didn't easily encounter.

After being at school for a while and getting to know classmates from all over the country, I, who have been pampered and comfortable in Beijing for two or three decades, have been touched from time to time. Today a female classmate not yet eighteen told me that after this year's college entrance exam, she worked for three months at a milk tea shop and earned 4,500 yuan, which paid her tuition. When the October 1st holiday started, she went back to work for a few more days and earned another 200-plus. Since the semester began, her parents have only transferred living expenses to her twice: once 200 yuan, once 400. The dark circles under her eyes told me she wasn't exaggerating a single word. At that moment my heart ached terribly; I thought to myself, if I had a daughter, there is no way I would raise her like this.

Another eighteen-year-old boy showed me his prescription slip from a doctor's visit and asked me how he should care for his health. During his middle school years, he lived very meagerly, often cooking instant noodles with raw vegetables in the dormitory, and was eventually diagnosed with malnutrition. Nowadays the living expenses his family gives him are also very tight. I asked about his family's basic situation; after listening, I fell silent with a pang of sadness. The school cafeteria hires hourly workers at 7 yuan an hour. Every time I get food and see those callow young girls, after finishing their studies, standing at the cafeteria window serving us food, I also feel a pang in my heart.

Although I was born in the countryside and my family was very poor when I was a child, I have left grassroots society behind long ago. Through personal effort, I have lived a worry-free life in Beijing and created good educational conditions for my child. To be honest, I gradually really forgot the hardships of grassroots society, always assuming that people's lives couldn't be too bad. Over the past month, this illusion of mine has been shattered.

I have now started a co-study group at school, leading a group of young people from all over the country to study together. Several of them come from really difficult families; I plan to buy them two shared laptops for their common use. The computers don't have to be expensive, but I must provide them with some basic learning conditions.

Some learning skills that my son had already mastered in junior high school are still unheard of for most of these classmates of mine even in university; their parents naturally don't know them either, and I hope to teach them. I have seen many confident Beijing children, but the vast majority of the children I've met at our school are basically quiet and reserved, afraid to express themselves.

They are like the "silent majority" in Wang Xiaobo's writing, already accustomed to society treating them as air, and accustomed to calling themselves "little mice." Many of them don't hold out much hope for their future; at an age when they should be bold, they have long since set limits on their own lives. Like butterflies convinced they can't fly across the sea, they don't even try.

That is why I have developed the wish to carry them across the sea, encouraging them to see themselves and look forward to the future. Whether they eventually return to the grassroots or strive toward higher goals, they should not set a ceiling on themselves.

Do these children truly lack talent? The answer is no. The classmate who sleeps in the bunk above me can do a standing long jump of 2.8 meters; he's a slam-dunk star at basketball, which is the level of a national first-class athlete. If he hadn't been born in the countryside, if his parents could have provided him with better educational conditions, his destiny would surely have been different.

The girl who sits behind me can draw beautiful manga; the spirituality that shines through in her drawings can't be hidden. But they all describe themselves as "socially anxious," acting timidly in social situations and not daring to pursue higher life goals. I approached them with an appreciative attitude, praised them, and interacted with them, finally opening their hearts; they very happily opened up to me.

They all have their own vivid personalities and souls, and their own untapped potential. At their age, I was far more bold and daring to pursue my own life ideals. But they, a whole cohort of them, just silently huddle in a corner, not knowing how to move forward. Today's exam-oriented education relies heavily on parents' financial support; many children's talents cannot be expressed because of family poverty.

I will only be on campus for a short few years, and the students I can reach are very limited; I don't have the ability to help every single one of them light themselves up. But I hope to do what I can to help some of the children I meet grow better, ignite their hope, broaden their horizons, and turn them into confident, brave people with clear life goals.

When I look back on my first half of life, I am always deeply grateful to the many people I have met. My wife once said to me: look, we struggled from the countryside to Beijing; although we now live and work in peace in Beijing, how hard the road we've traveled has been, and no one ever gave us a lift. I disagreed with her; I said, at least in my own upbringing, too many teachers and friends lifted me up. If they hadn't again and again broadened my horizons and raised my cognition, my life could not be as bright as it is now.

Having reached middle age, one should have this kind of awareness: we should do our best to open up a broad road for young people's future, regardless of whether that young person is related to us by blood. I love farming life, and I also love sowing seeds for others, happily watching those seeds take root and sprout and eventually grow into sturdy, towering trees. Because only when generation after generation of young people step onto higher life platforms can our society hope to become better.