Spending a Lifetime Beneath the Ivory Tower

After dinner I often take walks on the nearby university campuses. Near my home, besides the National Library, are Beijing Foreign Studies University, Beijing Institute of Technology, Renmin University of China, China Youth University of Political Studies, Minzu University of China, Capital Normal University, Beijing Dance Academy, and others. If I am willing to bike a bit farther, within five kilometers there are also Beijing Jiaotong University, Peking University, and Tsinghua University.

Occasionally my family and I go to the food street in front of Minzu University for a treat; the restaurants there are affordable for salaried people like us. I love everything around my home; after long enough in this environment, it subtly influences you. The youthful college students I see are basically all spirited and upward-looking; daily contact with them rubs off on me.

I am a homebody. Though I live in Beijing, I spend most of my time around my neighborhood. The Haidian university district is beautifully green, with parks and tree-lined avenues everywhere. Even in the heat of midsummer it is not too hot here. I think this area around my home is a wonderful place for a reader to live.

I am a lucky man. When Beijing housing prices were still low, we bought an apartment in the Haidian university district on our then-salaries — back then it was just over 10,000 yuan per square meter with a 20% down payment; now it has risen to around 100,000. So during the years Beijing prices rose steeply, I had no housing anxiety, and now that prices fluctuate, I have little either.

Though we are outsiders drifting in Beijing, when my wife graduated, her major was in demand and she was recruited into Beijing as a scarce talent, securing a Beijing hukou on the spot. Our child therefore got a Beijing hukou at birth, and we never worried about his schooling. Objectively speaking, among Beijing drifters, we benefited from the era's dividends.

At my age now, I have essentially completed all my life tasks. The child is in college; everything has gone smoothly. He now works part-time to cover part of his tuition and has also taken part in social practice, which comforts me greatly.

My son is a sensible and relaxed child. Except for about two months of rebellious behavior in the second year of middle school, he has communicated and gotten along closely with his parents, with stable emotions and a calm, unhurried outlook. When I was injured or ill, he took good care of me, which warmed me. He has his own life plan and is progressing according to it.

The elders in my family are currently in reasonably good health and live frugally; they have saved much of the living allowance we give them. We too live frugally, because we plan not to work for money in the second half of our lives and to spend more time on what we love rather than on making a living; so we spend sparingly now.

In previous years I mostly traveled by high-speed rail; now, if I can get a sleeper ticket on a slow green train, I prefer it — sleep on board for a night and save a few hundred yuan. Lowering my quality of life for money, working myself to the bone, or taking all kinds of risks is, in my view, not worth it. Now I keep walking forward while letting go, and life grows ever simpler.

I myself was once depressed for about half a year due to work and personal reasons, but I have now fully recovered. After a period of adjustment, my current state is the best of my life so far. I love reading, gardening, music, and writing; what I am doing now is everything I love.

I could have lain flat and enjoyed life, but my definition of a good life is having a cause worth striving for. If I were idle at home with nothing to do, I would feel I was wasting my life. Since childhood I have held this view of life: a person must do something beneficial to society to have lived not in vain.

This life philosophy was common among people of my generation (born in the 1970s); young people today may find us melodramatic, but my own experience is that this outlook frees us from the small self and keeps us from lingering too long in personal joys and sorrows.

When a person's gaze is fixated too narrowly on the trivialities of his own life, he is easily trapped by his emotions; but when he widens his gaze to a larger world, emotions no longer dominate his life. The world is vast and the individual tiny; the grievances of the human world pass like fleeting clouds, not worth clinging to.

My physical condition is good — no major illness so far — and my mental state is fine; I have come to terms with life's problems, including my own death. I live happily, but death at any moment would be acceptable. Readers with life trajectories similar to mine often live past 95, and at 95 still remain clear-headed, sharp-thinking, and able to keep working. I plan to live, learn, and work until I am old; I have no retirement plan.

The economist Ronald Coase, in his hundreds, said to the eighty-something Steven Cheung: "You are still young, with plenty of time to do more research; I am still doing research myself." That kind of mindset is beautiful. As long as we do not let age trap us, age can never trap us.

If I live to 95 and work to 95, I still have fifty years of life ahead. I have a plan for those fifty years: I intend to retake the gaokao about every twenty years and receive another higher education. Of course I will not leave Beijing to attend college; whichever school I go to will be a Beijing university, because I do not like big upheavals and will not give up my family and my vegetable garden.

Between ages 45 and 50 I will go to college once, to stockpile new knowledge for work from 50 to 70; between 70 and 75 I will go again, for work from 75 to 95. One must continually update one's knowledge system and brain to avoid aging and declining so fast. Moreover, each such round of exam preparation offers a chance to rebuild one's life, re-coordinate one's time and energy, upgrade one's brain, and keep up with the times — no less than being born again.

I have always regarded myself as a young person, living as spiritedly as the college students I meet every day. I know that in developed countries in Europe and America, older adults returning to university is common; their campuses often have white-haired old men and women sitting in class alongside young people. Perhaps our country will also have many middle-aged and elderly people returning to university classrooms; this will be a lifestyle for some, myself included, and I believe people will grow used to it.

As a child I had a wish: to read for a lifetime and live a life of farming and study passed down through the family. I never expected that, through my own persistence, this childhood wish would actually come true. So far I have spent most of my time living out my ideal life model. Because I dislike managing others and dislike being managed, I have been free all these years.

I have achieved independence. In my modest view, academic freedom is built on the foundation of an independent personality. I often joke that I want to be a happy "amateur scholar" all my life, but this is my true inner thought, not a joke. Many of my classmates and friends do academic research, but they are far less free than I am; the root cause is that, influenced by their environment, they cannot maintain an independent personality.

During the Cultural Revolution, scholars such as Zhou Youguang, Ji Xianlin, and Fei Xiaotong were locked in "cow sheds" and subjected to labor reform. Their living conditions were worse than today's prisoners', and they were frequently subjected to deeply humiliating struggle sessions, yet they maintained an optimistic mindset and an independent personality. They were both broad-minded and wise, so they lived long and happily, and each made some scholarly contribution. I hope my next fifty years will measure up to them.

I am glad that at my age I have seen the essence of life, completely freed myself from external bonds and entanglements, and can plan my future more freely than in my youth. Whatever I encounter in my remaining years, I do not think I will dwell on it long. My life will always be spent in the ivory tower, and always in an idyllic pastoral. I am content; nothing could satisfy me more.

Today is Children's Day. Every year on this day is the children's festival and also a good time for us old folks to become children again. No matter how many storms come, as long as we want it, we can always live as happily as old urchins. On this festive day, in a moment of good cheer, I improvised a quatrain: Born an old urchin, die a merry ghost; this stinking carcass — whoever wants it can take it.

Let me explain the last two lines: I have already made a will that, when I die, my useful organs will be donated to those in need, and my not-so-useful remains will be donated to a medical school as a specimen for future medical students to study anatomy.

Though I respect people of all religious beliefs, I myself am a steadfast atheist and take my own funeral lightly. I hope my organs and remains are put to good use and not wasted. This also saves my descendants the trouble of sweeping my grave. If, when they are troubled, they can read my articles and live as freely and at ease as I do, I will be satisfied. That is the best legacy I can leave them.