Life Begets Itself Endlessly; the Future Is Promising

In the early hours of today, my little nephew was born in Shenzhen. My older brother, having a son in middle age, has the whole family overjoyed; I called my father first thing this morning to share the good news, and he is beyond happy. When it came to throwing a celebration banquet, my father said we would wait until the epidemic is over; if it takes ten years to end, then we need not think of banqueting for ten years—we will not add trouble to relatives or to society. From the bottom of my heart I thank the Shenzhen municipal government for everything it has done for its citizens in such times; Shenzhen, next to Hong Kong, withstood the huge shock of Hong Kong's outbreak and protected its residents.

Nowadays many voices criticize our country's prevention policy, and I understand the discontent behind these criticisms, because the epidemic really has affected everyone's livelihood. But in my family we have the old above and the young below; some time ago, when my sister-in-law was pregnant, the whole family lived in fear, worrying that the epidemic would spread, the medical system would collapse, and she and my little nephew would be at risk. My own child is also in his second year of high school, with the college-entrance exam a year away—a critical moment. So from the standpoint of our own vital interests, our family strongly supports our government's prevention policy.

This prevention policy cannot benefit everyone, but in a plague era it has indeed protected families like ours that have vulnerable members. From this angle, the prevention policy our country currently follows is a well-deserved good policy worthy of praise. Its imperfections can be further improved in the days ahead.

I know that many people have suffered great losses under the current policy, and I include myself: my income has fallen to less than a third of what it was before the epidemic, and it may continue to fall at any time. Local governments' habit of locking down cities at every turn (or, prettified, “static management”) has dealt a heavy blow to livelihood and the economy and caused many tragedies. But I believe that, after the ordeal of recent times, localities across our country will gradually grope out a model of coexisting with the virus suited to our national conditions. We can hardly achieve zero infection, but there is hope of bringing the infection rate very low. Once a scientific prevention strategy is groped out, it may well both hold off the virus and spare the economy and livelihood.

I am already in my forties, my son is nearly adult, and my nephew has just come into the world. As an elder, I keep thinking that I ought to contribute something to the development of this society; I want the descendants of my family to live in a better world in future. I believe the great majority of parents everywhere think the same way—we always place our hopes in our children. Especially after middle age, knowing our own lives have entered the second half, we all the more hope our children will live in a better world. This expectation for the future is our driving force forward, and the force that keeps us gritting our teeth through hard times.

When I was a child living in the countryside, I often sweated buckets following my parents to work in the fields. My parents never missed a chance to educate us there: we must study hard, leap out of the farming life, and live well, so we would not have to, like them, face the yellow earth with our backs to the sky. Now rural farm work is far easier than in my childhood; machines do most of the heavy labor, and farmers no longer suffer as much as they once did. The three of us siblings have all leapt out of the farming life, and our parents' wish came true.

Our descendants were born in an age of material plenty and did not endure the hardships we knew as children, but the present plague and wars have now made them endure hardships we never did. My parents' generation sweated blood to build a future for their children and created today's China. Now that we too have become parents, we ought, as our parents did for us, to strive for the sake of the next generation. This instinct to protect the young—which even animals possess—is precisely the source of the drive that moves society forward.

My mother-in-law is a person with a strong sense of preparing for danger in times of peace. Before the epidemic I often heard her say that no one enjoys a hundred years of peaceful days; you children must not assume your whole lives will always be tranquil, for who knows which day a great hardship will arrive. What we now face is exactly the great hardship she used to warn us about. The wisdom of elders rich in life experience is one of the great treasures of our society; for a very long time, it was precisely the survival experience passed down orally and heart-to-heart by generations of elders that let humankind propagate to this day.

My mother-in-law lived through the great famine years and cherishes her blessings; she still keeps the habit of drying vegetables. Whatever vegetables the garden grows that we cannot eat fresh, she dries into preserved greens, to be taken out when vegetables are scarce. This year she mailed me a great many of her home-dried vegetables; like a pill of reassurance, they let me know that, even if Beijing is unfortunately locked down, our family will not run out of vegetables.

The hard days I lived as a child taught me that most hurdles in this world can be gotten over, and that when hardship comes one must learn to endure. Our parents, by word and deed, also let us know that we are duty-bound, as they were, to take up our own responsibilities, shield the next generation from the storms, protect their healthy growth, and give them opportunities to develop. As long as a person still lives, there is a chance to fight one's way back.

So I personally always live optimistically; however many storms life brings, however frightening the difficulties before us, I will keep a positive frame of mind. Economic losses cannot rob me of my good cheer, nor can the rampaging virus fill me with fear. If there is no opportunity for development at hand, then use the time to study, sharpen my skills, and build up some intellectual reserves for the future.

This endlessly life-begetting spirit is what life on our Earth has possessed throughout billions of years of evolution. The smallest unit of life is the gene, and the gene's greatest drive is to survive and replicate itself. Only by perfecting and strengthening ourselves can we have the chance to keep living on and on in this world. If, like me, you have your own descendants, I am sure you understand very well the feelings I had while writing this.