I met Cai Chun Pig in 2015, when he was the same age as me now.
That fall, my eldest son was diagnosed with autism by Professor Guo Yanqing, and I was bored in an 80s rental house on Zhichun Road in Beijing, washing my face with tears every day.
The weather in the north is very good, and when I open my eyes, I will see the lime powder falling off the walls of the house churning in the sun, causing me to "click" and cough from time to time.
Seeing that I was depressed, Rice pushed Cai Chun Pig's WeChat signal to me and instructed me to learn from him. I searched for his news and almost finished reading his Weibo. Finally, I added his WeChat, chatted for half an hour, and the last question was: Autistic children can't take care of themselves, if we die, what will he do?
His answer shocked me very much: "A dead man, what else do you do?" ”
For 7 years, we didn't talk much, but every time we were always very speculative. On many controversial topics, both have a rare consensus. His second shocking remark came from january 18 of this year, when I interviewed this article, he said:
"When I mentioned Xihe to my friend, I said he was a stupid B. His brain is really not good, I don't need to cover up. ”
He also said he didn't like his public role as an autistic parent. He also wants to drink more pure coffee, write better scripts, and make more money in half a hundred years. Autism needs to be faced more than him.
Whether other parents agree with him or not, few will deny that Cai Chun pig is a funny and kind person. Such a person deserves happiness. The following is the conversation between Pippi Dad and Cai Chun Pig.
Interlocutor:
Cai Chun Pig, film and television drama screenwriter, father of autistic boy Xihe, author of "Daddy Loves Xihe" and "Daddy Loves Xihe 2", which has been widely concerned by the media.
Pippi Dad, a former media person, has written many articles.
01
Transition to directing
I want to make money
Pippi Dad: I often see you speaking in the circle of friends, "it's another undignified day", it seems to be sitting in the café every day, nothing is written, do you also drag the manuscript?
Cai Chun Pig: Drag, why not drag.
Pippi Dad: I'm an old patient too, and I feel like I have the same attention deficit as a child, but writing has to be focused, which is too painful. But I am also afraid of society, and other work cannot be done...
Cai Chun pig: It's okay, a lot of writers are like this. I also found that they all have some Ass temperament, do not like to go with the flow, are accustomed to facing the truth of life and society, and write very well. I like them a lot and there are some things I have in common with them.
Pippi Dad: Well, there are many disadvantages to Aspen, but there are also many benefits. For example, writing things, Ass may rarely care about filial piety, human feelings, what they find, what they think is going on, just write. Extreme or stupid, outsiders casually comment.
Cai Chun Pig: Haha, understand and understand.
Pippi Dad: What have you been busy with lately, are you still holding back the manuscript in the café? In the past two years, the epidemic has been noisy, and everyone has not had too easy life.
Cai Chun pig: I have transformed into a director. There was originally a movie to be made the year before, but it was delayed due to the epidemic. The script is very good, invited a first-line film actress to star, she is very interested, is delayed again and again, missed. But in May of this year, we are ready to launch this project. Two days ago, I was in Changsha, Hunan Province, looking for some new things, and also looking for actors and creators, and also looking for the local government to see the scene.
Pippi Dad: Is it an autism theme? I found that Xihe's story had been made into film and television copyright before...
Cai Chun Pig: Not autistic. As for what the subject matter, this can not be said first, because this movie has to take the commercial routine, take the theater line, according to the contract I have to keep it secret.
Pippi Dad: Totally understood. So what do you think is the difference between being a director and doing fashion magazines and talk shows before?
Cai Chun pig: For me, the road of being a director is particularly difficult, because I am not from a science class, I have no resources, and I have few friends in the circle. When I suddenly switched to directing, it would be a little more difficult than others. So it took me three years, and every time I saw the light, I stopped.
Pippi Dad: So you have been tossing and turning in the past two years, and your income has not been affected?
Cai Chun pig: These two years have been particularly difficult two years, I relied on a little savings from before, and the book I wrote About He sold a copyright, in terms of economy, let me eat and drink without worry, it is impossible to be very rich. Of course, if there is no income for two or three years, anyone will be very stressed.
I'm going to get a little bit better this year, and I sold a script to a star, and he's going to start it this year, so I'm probably going to have two or three projects this year.
Pippi Dad: You sell the rights to a celebrity, will he sign it to you?
Cai Chun Pig: I will sign it.
Pippi Dad: Sign this "Cai Chun Pig"?
Cai Chun Pig: Right.
02
I work hard
My son will be able to get better in the future
Pippi Dad: Do you work every day at home or in a café?
Cai Chun Pig: I can also be at home, but I basically stay in the café, especially idle.
Pippi Dad: Do you often write "an undignified day" because you didn't write something and felt unseemly?
Cai Chun Pig: Yes, almost. You see that other people's age are busy, doing something, and then you find that you haven't done anything this day, you're almost 50 years old, you don't have time to experiment, and you think you have to do something.
I was thinking that if the things I did were to be really good for my children, I had to work hard to do them. One is financially, leaving him enough money; the other is to do things, a little bit of fame, and will also protect my son, and it may be better in the future.
Pippi Dad: I agree with you. Sometimes, we work, such as writing, not simply to have an income, but we all need certain circles, and once we leave these circles, the degree of socialization regresses, and it is completely finished, which is also my feeling for several years.
Cai Chun Pig: It is still necessary to have a little sense of existence, a little influence, so it will always be better.
Pippi Dad: You used to do fashion magazines and you did a great job at very well-known TV stations. Earlier in my career, did you ever work as a journalist like Rice and me?
Cai Chun pig: I should actually be a journalist, but the journalist I did is not very orthodox, that is, entertainment. I worked as an editor and journalist for Harper's Bazaar for several years.
Pippi Dad: So you're fashionable yourself?
Cai Chun Pig: I am a very earthy person.
Pippi Dad: That's pretty awesome. Let's talk about Xihe. Is Xihe still in that special school? What is his current situation?
Cai Chun pig: He is now in the fifth grade of primary school, almost the sixth grade. He stood out from the crowd inside because he was tall, 13 years old and more than 1 meter 7, especially tall among his classmates, and then he belonged to the one with the lowest intelligence in it.
Pippi Dad: How much is the monthly tuition fee for that special school?
Cai Chun pig: It seems that there is no tuition fee for this, and a little food fee will be charged every month. He has a very good life, and every time I go to his school, I have a lot of feelings, I have never been to such a good school in my life.
I was particularly envious, the first time I sent him to school, I looked at the playground, looked at the classroom, and thought if only I were going to school here. I went to junior high school, and then I went to a vocational high school, and the vocational high school is also the vocational high school of the children's school, just a playground, two teaching buildings, and nothing else, so I am particularly envious of Xihe They have such a good campus.
Pippi Dad: You didn't go to college?
Cai Chun Pig: No.
Pippi Dad: The campus is so good, is there anyone bullying Xihe?
Cai Chun pig: Special schools are different from ordinary schools, and the children in them basically have no ability to bully others. Hurting others, bullying classmates also requires a lot of intelligence and ability, they do not have this ability, but there will be some bumps and injuries in daily life, such as some scars on the legs. Later, Xihe Grandma went to accompany her to read, and it was much better.
Pippi Dad: How often do you and Xihe see each other?
Cai Chun Pig: He comes back every day. I had a very fixed schedule at that time, I told people that I had to be home from 6 to 6:30 p.m., and then I didn't usually schedule activities on Saturdays and Sundays. From six o'clock to more than 9 o'clock, I accompanied him for two or three hours. I showered him and then he shitTed me to wipe his ass, cut his nails, accompany him to buy snacks, and it was fixed every day. I love being with kids, I love it.
03
There are only seven or eight words in a lifetime
Pippi Dad: I often look at the various feelings sent by your circle of friends, I feel that Xihe's ability and thinking are still stuck in a few years ago, when he was very young, there was no big leap forward, but you often find some surprises.
Cai Chun pig: Yes, he may stay at two or three years old and three or four years old all his life, and then he may use seven or eight words in his lifetime. But just these seven or eight words, he is very good enough.
Pippi Dad: What are the seven or eight words?
Cai Chun Pig: It's very simple, and it's very general. For example. When he was unwell, he called it "stomachache," a word that summed up all the discomforts in the body. He also mastered more than 20 other vocabulary, all about various names, just like the cross-talk menu. He was going to eat lollipops, eat chocolate, drink milk, and he remembered all of them.
Pippi Dad: Can he tell the difference between lollipops and chocolate? If you ask him what this is? Can he answer?
Cai Chun Pig: Most of them can answer, but he doesn't want to say it. You ask him, he seems to know, but he answers with particular difficulty.
Papa Pippi: Yes. My older son is a little milder, but sometimes it's easy to ask him questions, but he's irritable.
Cai Chun Pig: Right. They may think in their hearts, silly B always ask me these questions? They were very reluctant to answer, and they didn't want to hear questions.
Pippi Dad: Every autistic parent has to go through the painful "novice period", when you came out of Xihe's book, it was far beyond the "novice period", until now, it is also completely accepting the child's situation.
Cai Chun Pig: I'm okay, in fact, my own outlook on life and the world view are like this for everything, not just about children, but all my things. For something good or something bad, I'll wait for it to happen and I'll accept it.
And then for example, this thing, I think within my ability, I can make it possible to make some small changes, or I can control it, I will control.
If it exceeds my ability, I don't think about it at all, a bit like later I look at philosophy, an ancient Greek school of what. I belong to such a person, everything is like this, Xihe this autism, of course I don't like to accept it, but it happened, I immediately accepted it.
Pippi Dad: The reason is very simple, but it is really difficult to do it. Because autism has a lot of genetic factors, some adults may accuse each other of bad genes, and I have also found that many parents' personality and behavior also have some autistic traits, and some parents will be bored with their children. Don't know if you are experiencing these problems?
Cai Chun Pig: Xihe's mother is a person with personality, and this is definitely true. I'm looking for someone to marry, especially mediocre, and I won't look for one. I have to find interesting people, so this is my subconscious, including the original love affair, the girlfriend I am looking for and so on are interesting people.
I don't think of Xihe as my son, but as an independent person, I see a child me, a man who put all my shortcomings on him alone. The longer I get along with Xihe, the more I realize that many things he is doing now, a lot of behaviors, in fact, I have been doing. A lot of behaviors and actions are very similar to mine.
I have a strong, but a very distinct autistic traits, some of which I know myself, I am almost 50 years old, I know very well, but I can say that the social side of me can be more balanced.
Pippi Dad: My own feeling is that I have not fit in since I was a child, and I didn't know why before.
Cai Chun Pig: I also have a point that I don't fit in. When I saw Xihe when he was four or five years old, it was especially similar to when I was four or five years old. Now that I'm back in my hometown, I'm not particularly gregarious with my parents, I'm not very intimate with my siblings, so I drink a little alone and walk out the door.
Pippi Dad: I'm the same way, maybe people will think we're weird, but that's not bad. Many times, I also see a lot of traces of me in my two sons, but there are some gains or very happy feelings.
Cai Chun Pig: Yes. Your autistic traits are also more obvious, I can see it.
04
I will not have a second child
Pippi Dad: Recently, a hot topic in the autism circle is "The Lancet", it is recommended to list severe autism from the spectrum, rice and millet public accounts have also been reported, this news you should see, right?
Cai Chun Pig: Yes, I saw it. I also feel that it should be separated, because if the spectrum of autism is too broad, it is easy to mislead society's understanding of this group. In fact, for the same lineage, the difference between the good degree and the difference in degree is too large, and the help they need is also very different.
But if it is confused, it is not good for severe autism with a poor degree, and it is actually not good for a group with a good degree. This may be because the understanding of autism in the past was not very clear, and it was not well classified.
Divided according to whether it is severe or not, it is not the same thing as whether it is typical autism. The personalities of these children are far more than theirs. So for this division, I agree.
Sometimes I can't explain to many people, they say that autistic children are not very talented in some aspects, but the vast majority of autistic children do not have genius. People like to hear the story of a genius, and they don't want to hear the stupidest and most difficult, so this should be indignant.
Pippi Dad: I also appreciate ingredients. For example, your family, including class and income, can decide that Xihe gets better care, even if he is seriously ill, he lives a relatively decent life, and most of the seriously ill children, the survival situation is easily particularly poor.
Cai Chun Pig: I've seen some of them, and it's miserable.
Pippi Dad: What is the reason for the misery?
Cai Chun Pig: Objective and subjective. Objectively, economic conditions are one aspect, and sometimes economic conditions are a decisive thing. tmd you just don't have the money, you don't have the ability to take care of him, what's the way?
But there are many more aspects than economic conditions. I've seen a lot of good work, I've been in contact with a lot of families, they have ordinary children, they have autistic children, they send circles of friends, you never see them have autistic children, you don't even know they have such children. So, are they really good to this kid?
They may be doing a good job financially, but let me put it this way, the autistic parent in my circle of friends, if he only sends a picture of his ordinary child and never sends an autistic child, this kind of parent I will block him.
I think my biggest luck was not having a second child. If I had a second son, and he was particularly clever and clever, I might not be able to really dislike Xihe. I have no choice now, so I only like Xihe as a child.
Xihe has been very lucky in the 13 years since he was born, he grew up in the ocean of love. I don't care about his flaws or his mental retardation or anything, I don't care about these things.
Papa Pippi: I need to talk about that because I happen to have two kids. When I got married, I made up my mind not to have children, and later because of his mother's expectations, I wanted two children, although the eldest had autism, but I really saw both children as the same, and even more pity the boss. I don't have any obsession with succession, so I don't care about favoring the smarter and more capable.
Cai Chun Pig: What I said above is based on a universal human nature, I put me in an ordinary human nature to consider this matter, so like the new and tired of the old or like the good and dislike the bad, are very selfish and normal things. Because I did not have a second child, when I judge, I can only use the universal regularity of human nature to demand myself.
(For reasons of length, the first half of the dialogue will be pushed today, please see the next issue for more content!) ）
The author | PippiPa Editor| Grapefruit