Grateful for the Company of Books - Written on the Last Day of 2021

I cannot put into words the storms that have raged in my heart over these two years, nor the profound suffering humanity has endured. Beginning in December 2019, when reports about brucellosis in Lanzhou, plague in Inner Mongolia, and unexplained pneumonia in Wuhan appeared one after another, I already sensed that a storm was coming. Out of professional sensitivity, I closely followed developments. I never believed in any downplaying explanation; I always judged risks with my own mind.

On New Year's Day 2020, a leukemia patient and his children came to see me in Beijing. I told them that after this meeting, it would be very hard to meet again. My words proved prophetic: after that meeting, we could only meet by video. At this moment, their family is confined in Xi'an, which is even harder. After New Year's Day 2020, I bought many masks and had my son wear one to school. His classmates all laughed at him, but a month later they realized the seriousness of the situation.

During that period I wrote over a hundred thousand words, sparing no effort to urge everyone to take precautions and urging WHO to raise its alert level. I believe that over 90% of the readers of my official account read some or all of those articles. Some of my pieces spread widely; I saw reports in foreign media mentioning my articles and views, and even some journalists quoting my views when interviewing leaders of other countries. But regretfully, my voice carried little weight; my influence was too limited, and in the end I could not realize my wish to intercept a great storm. Nonetheless, as a human being, I believe we all have a duty to do our part to spare the world a disaster.

Only when the outbreak had finally become uncontrollable did I abandon all efforts and delete every article I had written during that period. For no other reason than that I knew that as the pandemic developed, hatred would spread wildly, and netizens would indiscriminately tear apart everyone who wrote articles like me. Had I lacked this judgment and not known when to withdraw, all my years of reading and experience would have been in vain.

I do not believe that intensifying social unrest in such times is the right thing to do; it would only cause more deaths. My calling is to save lives, not to add to humanitarian disaster. There will be time enough to judge right and wrong - history is always fair, but once a life is gone it cannot return. So I declined all media interviews, donated money and supplies, fully cooperated with the government's pandemic prevention, and from May 2020 on, avoided all sensitive topics, returning to a quiet life of reading and growing vegetables.

I have kept all those articles, to be published another day when the issue is no longer sensitive and they no longer stir social unrest. Everything happening today will require decades, perhaps even a century, for a more accurate judgment. Our records are merely one witness to history; whether they are biased is for history to test.

I can say this openly now because I believe that after two years, most people have settled through this pandemic and are no longer in an irrational state. They can tolerate some views from people like us, even when our words are not entirely pleasant.

There are always some people in the world who are different; I do not know whether by luck or misfortune I happen to be one of them. I have been independent since childhood, seeing different scenery and living a different life, and also enduring all kinds of hardships that others need not experience. That is why my mentor laid a solid humanities foundation for me in my youth, teaching me to think in two directions and saving me from the doom of a tree that stands taller than the forest and is felled by the wind. I am especially grateful to him for this.

I am now in my forties and have lived naked in this world, without any protective coloring. That someone like me is still alive intact is almost a miracle. We know that society does not easily tolerate people with sharp edges all over. Many people have had their edges worn smooth by the storms of life; I have not. That I can live in this society shows that our society has indeed become far more tolerant than before.

I know my character has some fatal flaws; by rights I should hardly survive in this world. Fortunately, there have always been people around me watching out for the risks. Especially my mentor: I have been away from him for over twenty years, but his gaze has never left me; at every critical moment he has stepped forward without hesitation to slam on the brakes for me.

These two years I have spent a great deal of time reading, gradually withdrawing from the towering waves outside. It is not that I do not care about society, but that I know once disaster has become fact, there is little more one can do. Everything in the real world has also taught me that human flaws are hard to overcome. The reason plagues rage into disaster is fundamentally the flaw in human nature. On the road of evolution we humans still have a long way to go, and in such a process, tragedy is always hard to avoid.

People differ in sensitivity, so humanity rarely moves in lockstep; the world is often a boiling mess for this reason. I used to join in the noise; now I am a bystander. I argued from my twenties into my thirties, debating others on many issues, wearing out my tongue for over ten years without seeing the slightest result. Now I realize that the world advances slowly; being impatient is useless. Rather than quarreling endlessly, it is better to settle down and do some substantive research.

So at my age, the storms outside can no longer greatly affect me. I must thank the training I received as a child in my hometown - Hubei Province in my era led the country in education - which allows me to still settle down and read today. The foundation I built in youth through various competitions has not been wasted; I can still easily connect chains of knowledge.

I have no retirement plan. Compared with traveling around in old age, I prefer reading and working to the last moment of life. I may work for another forty-plus years, equivalent to the entire working career of today's young people who start in their twenties and plan to retire in their sixties. So, like those in their twenties, it is very necessary for me to study systematically and keep improving. I treat myself as a young fellow; I do not bemoan my lost youth as many of my peers do.

This seems to contradict my long-held life philosophy of holding all life values in contempt. Indeed, the two are contradictory. But a person's best state is precisely this: only those who harmoniously unite contradictions within themselves can fully taste the true joy of life. Laozi said that all things carry yin and embrace yang; everything maintains stability through two opposing yet complementary sides. An atom contains both positively and negatively charged particles; only with both can an atom be stable. So too with a person: one must have both vigorous vitality and forward drive, and a mindset that negates all meaning, in order to be at peace in body and mind.

Pressing forward without retreat, or retreating without pressing forward, is neither the state I prefer. So I will continue to learn and move forward in a state of desirelessness. I offer this essay as my farewell to the year 2021 AD.