I want to prove that the idealistic path is open
Cao Fengze | Tsinghua University
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In the blink of an eye, it has been almost half a year since I came to Africa. In just half a year, I have a solid understanding of what the four words "idealism" really mean. Looking back half a year ago, I happily left Tsinghua and came to Africa with enthusiasm, bent on contributing my "lifelong learning" to the people of Tanzania with clean and abundant electricity, and contributing to the community of human destiny. My idea is very simple: since I was admitted to Tsinghua University in 2012, from undergraduate to doctorate, I have delayed my youth for nine years in this small square world in Haidian District, Beijing, and if I don't break through in the wind and rain, my youth will end. The eldest husband was born between heaven and earth, how can he live in the five entrances for a long time? I wanted a life that wandered the world, and I definitely didn't want to settle down the day before I died. As for getting promoted and getting rich, that is really a secondary thing that cannot be asked for again. I used to complain to my friends that I was like a wild dog on a leash, and the diploma was the chain that kept me. The day when this chain was broken by me, you see me rushing out, just like the tengu in "Tengu", I swallowed the sun, I swallowed the moon, I am me!
Finally, the chain broke, and I rushed out as I wished.
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I imagined as much as possible the difficulties that might be encountered in a long-term job in Africa. What doesn't eat well, doesn't live well, all kinds of infectious diseases, life is boring, and so on, and so on. But reality is always simpler and more real than I thought: all that I think about, in fact, is not hard, the only and most frustrating hardship, is always the work itself.
It should be admitted that we have indeed done a rather honourable job. The hydropower station we are currently building will become the largest hydropower station in sub-Saharan Africa when completed. Tanzania is a very respectable country, the political situation is stable, people are hard-working, and very patriotic, but like other less developed countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America, they have long been suppressed by an unjust international order, and it is difficult to pool financial resources to promote industrialization. In order to build the hydroelectric power plant, the Tanzanian government has done everything in its power to make Tanzania's industry take the most difficult step from zero to one. As a Chinese, we have also had the era of advancing courageously against the hostility and oppression of the whole world, and seeing this moment, just like the moment at that moment, how can we not make people's blood boil.
It's just that when it comes to the specific work, the painting style becomes as if it is not the same thing. The compacted concrete barn surface has not been cleaned up, and someone needs to be arranged to brush the plastic skin that has not been brushed off before; the drainage pipe is blocked and needs to be opened; how to deal with the night shift truck driver who drank wine; two trains pulling materials arrived at the same time, should first pull cement or volcanic ash; there is a crack in the corridor, does this crack matter? If this doesn't matter, does it matter if the crack on the other side does it matter? Of course, there are also "big things", such as whether the thickness of the steel protection layer should be 5 cm or 10 cm, we and the supervision unit have ripped the skin for a week, the two sides are talking about swords, and even the screws of the conference room table have been loosened. We explored a hundred euphemisms to replace the less polite "Are you teaching me to do things?" "Another friend asked me if I was lonely in Africa, laughing to death, I didn't sleep enough, where I had time to be lonely.
Is this still idealism? Let's not talk about ideals, all these work seems to be incompatible with any "ism".
Dams that continue to rise
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The life of an idealist is never cool, and the idealistic path is never heroic.
"But that's idealism, that's idealism!"
The essence of the idealist is a kind of human being, not a god, who cannot lift two mountains with his bare hands with his flesh and blood, one in The East and one in the South.
Idealists wake up in the vast majority of mornings, and what they need to face is not "repaying the monarchy with a death in danger", nor is it to go to the stage and shout "no kneeling", but the endless prevarication at the negotiating table, the complicated and trivial financial problems, the system design of the series, the cooperation with all kinds of people, the struggle, the cooperation and struggle, the thinking and labor, labor and thinking that do not see the day after day.
Even counting the days with your fingers and passively surviving those difficult times is not a skill. Rather, in the midst of day-to-day hardships and failures, it is an idealist to think non-stop about how to work, how to solve the millions of problems that are neither cool nor heroic, and never stop.
The non-wise have a heart, everyone has it, and the sage can not lose his ears. Pifu is angry, three minutes of blood, anyone can, not difficult, but also useless. What is really difficult is "do not mourn", is to insist on doing one thing, is to make all the efforts and sacrifices valuable.
Something a little romantic, often happy. And special romance often means special hardship. But it is also this special hardship that makes a special romance.
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Industrialization is an awkward process. To get electricity, first you need to have electricity.
At a hydropower station site, construction site, material processing, transportation, every one is a bottomless pit that swallows up electricity all the time. Every gravel that reaches its designated position passes through the mouths of at least five electric tigers. Even each of our Chinese, by Tanzanian standards, is a walking electric tiger. We turn on the air conditioner for a few days, which is the electricity consumption of a Tanzanite for a year.
My camp uses electricity that Tanzania is already stretched. Blackouts are perfectly normal, coming ten times a day eight times a day. A power outage during a meeting cannot even interrupt the speaker's train of thought for a second, otherwise if you have to be stunned for a while every time you stop the power, it will never end.
The fatal thing is that the pump that supplies domestic water also needs electricity. Sometimes the dishwash is half washed, the bath is washed halfway, and the water and electricity disappear at the same time. Helpless, wait. Sometimes Chinese foremen weary night shifts, covered in oil and full of cement, find that there is no electricity or water. Then wait, wait, wait may come.
This is already the best condition that Tanzania can give us.
Industrialization is a humiliating process. Every time I put on foam and suddenly stops watering, I can't help but think that if the dam doesn't work out, the tens of millions of Tanzanians outside our site, those who live in grass huts without electric lights, wells or even glass, may never have a chance to know what it's like to be covered in foam for the rest of their lives. In turn, I can't help but think that some countries have overdrawn their national strength to the limit and struggled to take the first step of suffering, while other countries can cut off trillions of labor fruits around the world with their fingers, so that hundreds of millions of people can lie in 24-hour 17 ° C air-conditioned rooms for free, and suck corn syrup into their stomachs continuously.
I think back to myself half a year ago, cowering in a greenhouse protected by layers of civilization barriers, complaining endlessly about my own gains and losses. How ridiculous it is to stand idly by under the protection of layers of modern technology.
Industrialization is an absurd process. To change this absurd order, it is necessary to have people like steel.
I hope this includes me.
In 2023, as far as our eye can see, it will become a lake
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There are a lot of people who persuade me. They said that I had a "good hand" and that there was no need to live such a life of being covered with foam and other water.
It is indeed "not necessary". However, I studied so hard, took the exam, and obtained this "good hand" in the original intention of having more choices, not to make the road narrower and narrower, and then I could only take the "optimal path" for personal interests. Such a boring and lightless life is like purgatory to me.
Since I have been able to eat and dress warmly, I think I have the right to devote my extra energy not to eat more and dress warmer, but to do something that I think is more meaningful, to take a more magnificent path.
That is the path of idealism. It may be bumpier and more dangerous than other roads, but I firmly believe that it is not a dead end, and it will work.
I would like to use my experience to tell those young people who also have ideals and talents, but who are disciplined by the outside world that "only one road in the world can be opened by egoism, and other roads are dead ends, so you must abandon your ideals and take this egoistic road that must be compared":
There is not only one way in the world where egoism can go.
The idealistic road is feasible.
This article was originally published in "Tsinghua Little Five Ye Garden". The article only represents the author's own views, welcome to share, media reprint please contact the copyright owner.