Text/Wang Xiaobo
Now there is a saying that "Chinese civilization will save the world" is quietly emerging among some cultural people, which reminds me of the bold words of our youth: we must liberate two-thirds of the suffering people in the world, and then liberate all mankind.
For most people, it's just talk, and I've had the opportunity to put it into practice.
In the 70s, I was in Yunnan Province, just a step away from the border, opposite Burma, and I only had to walk for half a day to join the Burmese Communist guerrillas. Quite a few of my classmates had already passed away – one of my female classmates had already passed, which was a big stimulus for me – and I was thinking about whether I should go or not.
In the past, it was possible to liberate the suffering people in Burma, and then to liberate the other two-thirds, but I felt that something was wrong.
One night, I smoked half a Chuncheng cigarette to consider whether I should go over, and finally came to the conclusion that I couldn't go.
The reason is: I don't know these sufferers, I don't know what they're suffering, so I don't know if they need my deliverance. What is especially important is that people did not ask me to emancipate me, so it would be self-inflicted to rush over like this.
In this way, my sanity prevailed over my feelings, and I didn't do this stupid thing.
My elementary school teacher had a comment on my behavior when I was young: wilted. I don't admit this bad word, but "wilting" is undeniable.
I never said a word in class, and when I was asked, I rolled my eyes. People like me have such a strong salvation complex, let alone others.
Some students went to Inner Mongolia to join the queue, bent on lifting the lid of the class struggle and liberating the local people who were persecuted by the "Inner People's Party," thus making the common people restless. As one of my classmates put it, we were "very hated."
As for the female classmates who went to Myanmar to fight, she was the most reluctant to mention this matter, and when she talked about Myanmar, she said: Is it okay not to talk about this?
It seems that she has not liberated anyone in Burma either. It seems that the unrealistic salvation complex is not beneficial to others, but it is still somewhat useful for oneself - it is useful for dissipating sorrow and boredom.
In the "Cultural Revolution", there is a Red Guard poem "Dedicated to the Warriors of the Third World War", which writes that two Red Guards fought to the United States in order to liberate the world, and "comrades-in-arms" sacrificed on "the gorgeous steps of the White House" in order to cover "me". Of course, this is a blind romance and cannot be taken seriously: such a casual attack on someone's presidential residence is bound to meet with opposition from the American people.
From this, it can be concluded that the desire for liberation can be divided into two kinds, one is true liberation, such as Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi, and the revolutionary martyrs of the mainland, who really fought for the liberation of their own people.
There is also a kind of false liberation, mainly to satisfy one's own emotions and insist on rescuing some people. This liberation I call blind romance.
I can give an example of blind romance when I was thirteen.
At that time, I fell into a period of philosophical speculation, and began to think about the future of the whole universe and the meaning of life, so I became an idiot, and although my homework was good, it was very unpleasant. When the teacher saw me like this, he criticized me, and when he saw that I didn't look like he was listening, he pinched me a few times.
This teacher is a woman, in her twenties, beautiful, and the object of my unrequited love, but she did hurt me. This puts me in a love-hate relationship. So I used to have weird daydreams, imagining her falling into the water and being rescued by me, and imagining her falling into the fire and being rescued by me.
I think the first half of the dream shows that I hate her, and the second half says that I love her. I think the teacher can forgive me for my disrespect: no matter what the dream, she was not choked by the water, nor was she burned by the fire, and I rescued her in time—but my teacher himself must not be happy to fall into these dangerous realms.
For this kind of daydreaming, I was pinched by her a lot more. I think that's how it should be: the rescue of blind romance is a kind of lust. If a student has this kind of thought about the teacher, he should pinch it.
Sexual immorality directed at individuals, while indecent, is like the same thing. For the world's obscenity, I don't know what to say.
Chinese Confucian scholars have always taken it as their mission to relieve the world from hanging upside down, and they don't know whether they really want to save or be blindly romantic.
More than 50 years ago, Liang Rengong said that the whole world must be saved by the spirit of Chinese culture, and now some people are saying it again. This is actually very similar to the Red Guard's thinking.
It's just that the Red Guards only want to use force, so they rush to the door of the White House when they are romantic, and the scholars are educated, so they think that in the future, the world will become disorderly, and they will rely on Chinese culture to rebuild a new global order.
Admittedly, there is a chance that the world will become disordered – it may have been hit by an asteroid – and that it will be up to Eastern culture to save it. Either of these possibilities exists, but what do you always want to make others unlucky?
If the world is really "hanging upside down", it would be good for you to rescue them, but now it is still upright, and you have to hang people upside down in your imagination in order to save them, this is sexual immorality.
I don't respect this idea. I only respect people like the late Chen Jingrun's predecessors. Senior Chen only took it as his mission to solve Goldbach's conjecture, and although he did not finally solve this problem, he did something anyway.
My own ambition is to write good novels, and I've been doing that. Mr. Li Ao scolded the Kuomintang, saying that they masturbate Taiwan and the mainland, and I want to borrow this remark, no matter whether I can do this or not, it is much better than masturbating Chinese culture and the world all day long.