Chapter 8 Wu Xiaobo: The University Called "Sorrow"

Text/Wu Xiaobo (Finance writer, visiting scholar at Harvard University, publisher of "Blue Lion" financial books. He has published, "Crossing the Cornfield", "Extraordinary Marketing", "Exaggerated Mission", etc. Among them, he was rated as "influencing the Chinese business community" One of twenty books".) I don't know if there are "universities" in China today. The "university" in my heart is a place like this: there are the messiest beds in the world, the cheapest bars, the loudest bathrooms, every window has broken glass, and under every bed there are sneakers that haven't been washed for half a year and socks, every piece of grass has a condom accidentally lost, every row of bookshelves has torn pages, and everyone wears a look of "the world will rise and fall, who else but me", with pride, Some are stubborn, some are immature, and more importantly, they are always full of inexplicable sadness.

Every year, a group of people rush in like flowing water in this place, and some people are discharged like flowing water. It is said that they took away knowledge and maturity, and left their sorrow here. Sometimes it is a legend, sometimes It is a poem, sometimes it is a text.Like every tree, every classroom, every desk, and every poster window here, they constitute the true tradition and soul of the "university". Xu Zhiyuan, who was born in 1976, published this book in the second year after leaving his university, and now it has become a sad reading book for many Chinese college students.Although the rush of time is diluting all the memories, however, the mumbling self-pity and the youthful look make all the people who are in the "university" and those who have had those sad days Heart pounding.Among the writers in China today, there are very few works that have been remembered forever like this book, and can still be reprinted without revision six years later, and are popular.

Just like Xu Zhiyuan’s positioning for himself, he is not a fictional writer. When he entered university, the heat wave of the Internet had just swept across. To quote Bill Joy's words, "We are heading towards a dead end, and various technologies are driving human beings to death." In a sense, this is a great business century that makes people excited and sad at the same time Xu Zhiyuan, who majored in microelectronics, is obviously not immersed in the worship of new technology, nor is he lost in the sorrow of humanities. He wants to travel through it and find a way of thinking that is inseparable from this era.He said in the preface, I hope to use words to express an attitude towards life, to explain a certain reason, and even to prescribe a certain path in a somewhat rough way.After reading this text six years later, we will find that he has actually been walking in this goal.

In Xu Zhiyuan's book, he wrote about many sad young people, such as "my friend" Hu Shi, Li Ao who was "forever young and energetic", Liang Yuchun "lazy senior brother", Yu Lian "a young man from the frontier province", and "Watching in the Rye". Holden, "Actor" Hemingway, "the most dissolute in Europe" Casanova, these are some charming, once sad young people, reading Xu Zhiyuan's description of them, we seem to see ourselves in the sun The shadow under the shadow, re-touched the once vivid and deadly sadness. This is a young man with the magical power of words. In this work, he has shown an astonishing breadth of knowledge and language talent. It is in line with my understanding of Xu Zhiyuan. Since we became friends four years ago, every time When we meet, there is always a book or a few books between us, and many conversations often start with such opening remarks: what book are you reading recently?

The book, the author of the book, and the characters and world described in the book helped Xu Zhiyuan embark on a path of ideological exploration.In fact, young readers of today are more familiar with his experience after publishing this book.He founded a magazine that only published a few issues, worked as the content director of a website, and then entered a weekly financial newspaper "Economic Observer" with the concept of "rational and constructive". He started at the age of 27 At this age, he became the editor-in-chief of this newspaper. In this place, he wrote a large number of refreshing social observation works. He flew to Europe and the United States to visit well-known economists, university professors, and editor-in-chief of the newspaper. Face-to-face discussions on every hot topic are experiences that young people yearn for.This sad young man has been watching every turmoil in the world with worried eyes, and he rarely sees cheers and impulsiveness in his words. He always faces all the news with a restrained spirit event.Now, he has left the newspaper that made him famous, and has become the editor-in-chief of "Oriental Entrepreneur", the publisher of "Life" magazine, the columnist of FT Financial Times Chinese website, and the founder of One-Way Street Bookstore. In fact, many identities have always pointed to a spiritual direction.Among Chinese public intellectuals under the age of 30, few have such rich opportunities as him.

His writing has been tainted by people, but more people are obsessed with his narrative style and observation posture as if poisoned. In fact, Xu Zhiyuan has never fully expressed a major point of view, as if he In this book published in 2001, he never gave any youthful answers. He always puts forward a proposition, and then quickly complicates and benchmarks it with his own knowledge and expression. This is very much like a busy game. Hunter, he was always able to spot an unfamiliar forest and then call people together with a loud voice. In the past two years, Xu Zhiyuan is on the road to becoming a great writer.He ran around various cities and villages in China with propositions one after another. I was so happy to see all of this. When he walked through the streets and alleys of Fenyang, Three Gorges, and Wuxi step by step, he was considered a Connected to the atmosphere of this country.Once I talked to him about Naipaul—the Nobel Prize winner who returned to his motherland, India at the age of 36, and finally became the most competent describer of that country with the "India Trilogy"—his eyes rolled The window became very bright, and I seemed to read his dream suddenly.

I re-read his new book on the plane.I found that although I was so far and far away from those green college years, I could still read the faint and tumultuous sadness that I had in those years from Xu Zhiyuan's charming words. I seem to have returned to that place called the university, and I smell the scent of youth that is about to evaporate.