The two stories that Mo Yan told were much more sincere than those in "After the Wave" two years ago

01

On May Fourth Youth Day in 2022, Station B invited Mo Yan and wrote a letter to young people entitled "Don't be blown down by the wind".

This letter is very grounded, Mo Yan's narration is soothing and sincere, I suggest you see and feel it.

Speaking of the Youth Day video of Station B, many people should first think of "After the Wave" in 2020. That video became a phenomenon-level hit at that time, with more than 10 million hits on the B station alone, more than 1.2 million likes, and also helped the B station out of the circle, causing a heated discussion across the network.

However, "After the Wave" also caused great controversy at that time, and the core question was: Who can the so-called back wave in the video represent?

The content of that video looks quite tall, the young people in it play surfing, play photography, play skydiving, go to heaven and earth, explore the unknown, to discover the world, coupled with He Bing's impassioned speech "Rush, back wave", which should be inspiring for young people, but unexpectedly a needle of chicken blood goes down, many people are very rejected.

"There is fire in the heart, and there is light in the eyes", this is the appearance of the young people described in "After the Wave". However, the embarrassing thing is that the "fire" here may be more appropriately translated as "fire gas".

A cruel fact is: in 2020, the number of fresh graduates of colleges and universities reached 8.74 million, and in May, half of them did not know where to work; 996 has indeed become a "blessing", because outside the big factory, how many people still want 996 and can't help it; think about the high house prices, many people are only one step away from lying flat.

At this time, you talk to me about "rushing", and I think about how not to be photographed on the beach by the times.

Therefore, "After the Wave" is not about the back wave, but more like the sequel to the "front wave".

02

This time, Mo Yan shared two of his own stories with the young man.

One is about the Xinhua Dictionary. I never imagined that Mo Yan, who ate on words and finally won the Nobel Prize in Literature, dropped out of school in his childhood, and most of the Chinese characters were taught by himself from a dictionary.

The second story is that when Mo Yan went to fight grass with his grandfather when he was a child, suddenly a strong wind came, blowing only one of the grass they hit, but the car was still there, and people were fine, a little bit of Hemingway's "The Old Man and the Sea" flavor.

The two stories that Mo Yan told sounded very ordinary and not tall at all, but I felt that they were much more powerful than those shown in "After the Wave".

Mo Yan once said that before the age of 20, he had been in a trough. In the countryside for more than ten years, I have not eaten a few meals of full food, and I often take wild vegetable dumplings to fill my hunger; before graduating from primary school, I dropped out of school and ran to the barren grass beach to herd cattle and sheep, wanted to read, could not find a book in a radius of dozens of miles, and accidentally got a copy of the "Xinhua Dictionary", immediately regarded it as a treasure, and helped him through many difficult moments.

In 2012, Mo Yan said in his Nobel Prize speech that during the days of herding cattle and sheep, he was bored, he often lay on the grass and made up stories for himself, and many of the later novels were written by him at that time, and most of the words he used to write novels were taught by himself from that dictionary.

Mo Yan's letter to the youth first made me feel the respect of an elder for young people.

Notice that just from the title, Mo Yan is talking about "not being blown down by the wind", not "don't be blown down by the wind", he is very calm about his two small things, one does not mean to preach to young people, and does not preach such things as suffering makes success, as many so-called "successful people" do.

Speaking of which, although "After the Wave" is filmed about today's young people, it seems to have nothing to do with everyone; Mo Yan and many young people today have been separated by at least two eras, but his story is sincere and realistic, without the slightest sense of separation from the times. What does it say? "Truth has its own power".

Last year, Mo Yan opened a WeChat public account, and his public account profile was: "I want to chat with young people." In the weekly Monday update, in addition to the headlines, there is also a reserved column dedicated to communicating with readers and answering various questions from readers.

For example, last week, someone in the background asked: "Do ordinary people need lofty ideals?" Mo Yan replied very sincerely, he felt that people need ideals, but what is a lofty ideal, there is no standard answer.

03

One of the theme words in Mo Yan's speech is "gale", which is appropriate today. The economic environment is getting worse and worse, and for many young people today, as soon as they graduate and enter the society, they face a headwind situation that is rare in recent years.

If you want to choose the most popular words on the Internet in the past two years, I think the top ones should be "inner volume" and "lying flat". Gone are the days of rapid growth of the fiery cooking oil, and many people face the dilemma of unemployment after graduation. I heard that last year, the number of graduate students was as high as 4.57 million, an increase of 23% over the previous year, and the admission line was so high that it was almost rolled into the sky.

A few years ago, the biggest vision of young people is how to join the Internet factory after graduation, the offer of the big factory is still a thing worth showing off in the circle of friends, in the blink of an eye, the attraction of the big factory is no longer, and the popular mantra of young people has become "the end of the universe is the examination of the public".

In this context, it is undoubtedly offensive to blindly advocate to young people to "rush", to struggle, and to only paint a big pie. Whether the youth of an era can "rush" depends on individual efforts, but it is also necessary to consider the course of history.

For many of today's post-90s and post-00s, life is generally beautiful - born in the era of peace, did not suffer from material poverty, did not experience any ups and downs, their growth is accompanied by the popularization and integration of the Internet, science and technology seems to have been progressing, everything looks good.

Everything may seem like a matter of course, but if we extend the time a little longer, it is easy to see that peace and prosperity have always been extravagant existences in past history.

Liu Qing, a political science professor who came out of the circle from "Strange Story", shared a history: On New Year's Day in 1900, Westerners were very optimistic, believing that at the beginning of the new century, the power of modernization would bring brilliant prospects to mankind. But within a few years, the First World War broke out, then the Second World War, followed by the nuclear crisis, the Cold War, and the repeated economic crises, which are not over today.

Crises are often accompanied by the state of a generation of young people. In the 1970s, the U.S. economy was in recession and various social problems continued, and the younger generation in the United States became the "Beat Generation"; at the end of the 1980s, Japan's economic bubble burst, development stagnated, social classes solidified, and many of their descendants became "Heisei abandoned houses" that accompanied the rise of Japan.

In the final analysis, young people are easy to be passionate, but they are also the most susceptible to the trend of the times.

In the second story shared by Mo Yan, the weather suddenly became strange, the wind came in a flash, and Mo Yan was blown to the ground, relying on his hands to cling to the cow tendon grass, so that he was not blown away by the wind. Grandpa's back was stretched into a bow, fighting against the wind, and although the car failed to move forward, it did not take a half step back. Until the wind receded, the two stood where they were.

Mo Yan said: "In this sense, we have won. ”

This story is really like a metaphor for our time today.