I Remember When We Were Young—In Memory of Mr. Wang Xiaobo

Around the year 2000, a classmate of my brother's, then a student at Northern Jiaotong University, recommended Wang Xiaobo's works to me. At that time the Wang Xiaobo craze was rising among college students, gradually forming a fan community known as 'the running dogs at Wang Er's feet.'

I was then young and proud, very vain about my literary talent, believing I could become an outstanding Chinese writer, and rather dismissive of contemporary writers and thinkers. I no longer remember which day it was that I happened to open Wang Xiaobo's essay collection The Silent Majority; after that I was deeply drawn to Wang Er's writing and read all of his works.

As I read Wang Xiaobo, I was myself writing the novel The Real World and the Story World. Reading on, I suddenly felt abashed, feeling that my little literary talent was not even fit to tie his shoes. One day after that, I did something that broke my wife's heart: I burned, in one heap, all the manuscripts of millions of characters I had written over the years and the books I had published—because I felt what I had written was a pile of literary garbage, unfit for the hall of elegance. My wife rescued from it a pile of love letters I had written to her. She said these letters were a memento of her youth, written by me to her, her private property, and that I had no right to dispose of them; no matter how low I regarded my own work, these were not to be burned.

Today, of my early manuscripts there remains only a pile of yellowed love letters. I no longer have the courage to look again at these love letters, blown so full of hot air in the throes of passion; for to me today, those letters are almost all lies and unkept promises. Reading those promises is like reading IOUs I gave people and could not honor; I can only flush red. My wife, too, has not looked again for years at these mementos of her youth that she rescued; by her account, they are for when we are old and idle, to look back on our life. Back then I had also written her a separate book of love poetry, packed into a large envelope; because it was so thick and conspicuous, it was stolen from the public mailbox at her university. The girl, then in the throes of love, apparently grieved over it for a long time.

'Writers belittle one another' is an age-old vice. That one writer should drive another to destroy his own manuscripts can only be because that other's work is simply too good. Wang Xiaobo woke me, then dreaming of literature, and drew from me the sigh: 'Since Xiaobo was born, why must Zhou Yu be born?' When I realized the enormous gap between myself and Wang Xiaobo, I no longer dared arrogantly suppose I was fit to rank among outstanding Chinese writers.

Shame borders on courage. From then on, though I kept writing, I never again dared be arrogant. As time passed, with growing life experience and mature thought, I gradually could now and then write a few pieces worthy of standing beside Wang Xiaobo's, which gave me some comfort in my heart. For at last I had not betrayed the fervor of my youth nor the devoted cultivation of my teachers.

Today, whether an essay is good or bad no longer matters to me; with increasing age I care no longer for the vanity that writing brings. But loneliness and regret in my heart grow with each passing day. Deep down I always feel that not having become a close friend of Wang Xiaobo's while he was alive is one of the greatest regrets of my life; hence in recent years, at several Qingming Festivals, I have very much wanted to go to his grave and tend it. The man is gone, but his grave remains; tending it can, in some measure, comfort my disappointed heart.

Reading a person's writing is reading a person's heart. It was Mr. Wang Xiaobo who, with his own heart, helped me enter a state of deep self-scrutiny. This self-scrutiny has lasted more than ten years and may last a lifetime. Mr. Wang once said that the person he felt most should be saved in this world was himself. This words deeply influenced me, and I heartily agree. We have no right to play teacher to others, no right to help other people improve their souls; to be responsible for one's own soul is already quite enough.

Mr. Wang Xiaobo was a liberal and an individualist, and greatly revered Bertrand Russell. His writing is everywhere suffused with a liberal's respect for the individuality and freedom of others, and with a humanist's deep compassion for the spiritual suffering of humankind. Although Chinese writers are many, those as honest, tolerant and rational as Wang Xiaobo are rare—precisely because he was trained as a sociologist. Though his writing is not lacking in criticism, the first thing he criticizes is his own inner world.

I do not know when it began, but I have become attached to living truthfully, unwilling to allow any lie into my life, whether well-meaning or malicious. This is probably connected with my years of life experience and reading and reflection. A person who constantly dissects his own heart and the essence of life gradually becomes unconcerned with appearances in every respect—whether in dress or in speech and action, plain and unadorned.

This transformation has made me only more inclined to keep my distance from people; for every word I speak I strive to utter from the bottom of my heart, yet those around me, while appearing to agree on the surface, think something quite different inside. Over time this gap shows itself. Most of us live in a world protected by all manner of lies; but there is a small minority that likes to live naked and transparent. When these guileless people walk into the crowd, people will smile in astonishment at them and mock their naiveté.

A few days ago in Wuhan I met a high-school classmate, a girl I had once been utterly enamored of. She said that over the years, apart from me, who live for ideals, all the other classmates live for life; that the years had left little trace on me, whether in looks or in mindset, just as before. This moved me deeply; a kindred spirit is hard to find, and yesterday and today she is my rarest kindred spirit. I have grown used to solitude, but when another person deeply understands my heart, I too feel comforted like anyone else.

I think Mr. Wang Xiaobo must have been the same. He lived rather lonely in his lifetime; not too many people understood him. When I first read his works, I could only be said to submit to his thought and literary talent, not yet to understand his loneliness. But today I can gradually understand his loneliness.

I no longer, as in my twenties, feel abashed before Mr. Wang Xiaobo. Objectively speaking, after these years of tempering, whether in prose or in depth of thought, we are now hard to distinguish. Precisely because of this, I revere all the more this guileless writer and thinker, this 'independently marching pig' of thought. Only a strong inner life can sustain a person to live so independently in a worldly society. Conformity takes no courage; independence and originality do.

There is a line from the Song ci: 'In youth I knew not the taste of sorrow; I loved to climb the high towers, loved to climb the high towers, and for the sake of new verses I forced myself to speak of sorrow. Now that I have known the full taste of sorrow, I would speak and yet hold back, would speak and yet hold back, and say instead: What a cool, fine autumn day.' Today, nearing forty, recalling old times and remembering Mr. Wang Xiaobo, the excitement in my heart has settled into calm; all I wish to say to him condenses at last into a single line: I remember when we were young...