Chapter 11 Zou Bo: those brave young people

Text/Zou Bo (Former design director and writer of "Economic Observer", recent book "Books and Portraits - A Personalized Reading History".) Have the courage to use your ingenuity —— Kant Different from Xu Zhiyuan, Peking University always has only a vague impression in my mind. In the late autumn of 1997, I went to Peking University for the first time—I had graduated from an ordinary university in the south at that time, and I resigned after working in an agency for a year—I walked on the campus of Peking University with a little restraint, cleaning the shoes on the ground like a small employee. Falling leaves, I still remember the "rustling" sound at that time, the campus was very quiet.I really hoped to meet a few troubadours and campus singers, but no one showed up. Some people were studying by the Weiming Lake, but they looked mediocre from a distance.Around four o’clock, I stood for a while, suddenly missing my parents, I began to wander around restlessly, more and more hungry, like an absent-minded ghost... Later I may have passed Yanyuan, I was almost knocked down by the bicycle of a family member's child on the small road, and I may have torn up the phone number of a GRE training class on the bulletin board in the triangle, and finally left the south gate before sunset.

There was no wind in the evening, and I plunged into the nearby McDonald's and plunged back into my own life... Three years later, I got to know Xu Zhiyuan because of my work relationship, and now we are very good friends.I read Xu Zhiyuan's articles about the past of Peking University one by one. When I first read them, those overly specific details, places, symbols, and names created a huge psychological gap between us, and something even emerged in my heart. An indescribable hostility, a strange memory of youth towards that strange person—clearly, this young man with a much stronger will than I was declaring loudly, even domineeringly, his long adolescence, and the confusion that made him proud. Life, declaring those soul-stirring things dissolved in the unnamed lake... His tone was surprisingly excited and excited-this really surprised me!

I only felt this tone again later, in Fichte's "Essential Features of the Present Age." In 1804, also in late autumn, young philosophers delivered 17 speeches entitled "The Fundamental Characteristics of the Modern Age" to the people of Berlin. Sensitive, bold and powerful, "speaking the spirit of the times with a haughty attitude" (Hegel). Here is a small incident: this spring, I read Li Wan's "Flowers in May" by chance, and I was deeply moved. I said in a letter to the author: "..."Flowers in May" Helped me rediscover my teenage years - I found my teenage years in someone else's teenage years, so "May Flowers" hit me right away..." But there's another kind of Articles, or souls that are quite different from yours - you can't resonate with it like you read "Flowers in May", you can't be touched tenderly, because what you see in it is a life you never had , A completely different life-you cannot accept this kind of article in a moving way, your heart will either be shocked or stung.

At this time, I was gradually able to distinguish what the estrangement and hostility that arose when I read Xu Zhiyuan’s articles—I was naturally silent, and I instinctively felt that this completely different young man talked too much and was too talkative... In the city where I live, I can see the river flowing eastward from the window seat. The sultry and humid life makes me often fall into myths and fantasies. …The viscous climate has blurred most of my memories of adolescence—maybe it’s a boring excuse, but I can’t remember it anyway, my youth…I continued to read Xu Zhiyuan’s article, and he talked about life in Peking University. The clearer and deeper memories and the more exciting memories make me feel more and more uneasy. He is messing with my mediocre past with his own life and his idealized youth life.In a panic, I clumsily dug out those fragmented memories about Peking University, the short trip that day—but that was just an ordinary day at Peking University, Weiming Lake was like a silent sea, without saying anything, There were poets, singers, pretty girls who didn't show up, and they didn't tell me anything, and it frustrates me.Throughout my teenage years, I was depressed: I never seemed to catch up with those important growing up events, the teenager's search for the soul, the night walk in search of an affair, the magical appearance of the spiritual guide, the unbridled sexual fantasies under the sun, the innocent poetry meeting and Farewell to the innocent poems...

During his tenure as a librarian, Borges once said quietly: "The gentlemen in the library, who was not wandering in the world when they were young?" The selection seems to be a metaphor for this sentence and a metaphor for Xu Zhiyuan's writing status from 1998 to 2000: he was lost in reading while lingering in his youth; he was either on his way to the library or on his way back to campus; sometimes he moved his youth to the library , sometimes move the library to the exile of youth... In this simple cycle, the brave boy is building his youthful utopia. When I read this, my hostility towards this guy who graduated from a famous school suddenly disappeared. , not at all.Those specific words: whether "Yanyuan", "Weiming Lake", or "Kong Qingdong", their specific meanings suddenly disappeared, and the clear impression of Peking University and the familiarity with geographical symbols became no longer important.

I think this young man's kindness and enthusiasm are stronger than his arrogance - while he was writing, he ran in the dry summer in the north, telling all the children who passed by, the children in the north, the children in the south , awake children, sleeping children, "Look, where is our youth buried..." When Kant evaluated the student of Fichte, he said: "He is a person who is dedicated to the truth. When he feels that he has a vocation to improve people's morality with the power of language, he can't argue with saying everything. The truth of things.” It takes courage to speak the “truth of things” at a young age—loved, lived, fought—those brave young men!