Lately I have been deeply struck by the idea that ‘education has a delayed effect,’ and I have kept pursuing it. Pursuing it really means looking back at the texts in my old Chinese textbooks, revisiting the poems and prose I was once made to memorize, and recalling things I have read that correspond to a feeling at a particular moment. Words and phrases I know so well now echo repeatedly in my ears. Never before have I felt that what I once learned held such value.
What does it mean to truly read? Why are we still asked to read and understand, even when everyone knows the young cannot yet comprehend these works? These passages, sometimes turbulent as waves and sometimes still waters running deep, seem to whisper—so why can they move so many people to tears? And when can we truly understand them? When can we comprehend the lives of sorrow and joy they hold?
—When experience writes the same story in the book of your own life; when you work hard to arrive at a truth, only to discover that you knew it long ago; when what you see and feel awakens your memories.
Then you understand the stories in the books, the authors’ joys and sorrows, and your own life…
Wang Bo: gifted but unrecognized, wandering and disappointed, talented yet overlooked, of lowly standing and unable to fulfill his ambitions.
How much he resembles some of today’s disappointed idealists. Describing ourselves as ‘a lowly, three-foot life, a mere scholar,’ what great thing could we possibly accomplish?
When failure leaves you unnoticed, when you are full of ambition yet unable to realize it, if you once read the Preface to the Pavilion of Prince Teng, might you find comfort in ‘Mountains and passes are hard to cross—who pities those who have lost their way? Meeting by chance, we are all travelers far from home’? A foreign land, and all of us strangers; people who have lost their way, with no one to ask after them. The word ‘traveler’ says everything about the feeling of wandering; the word ‘foreign’ deepens the sense that you struggle to belong. You are a ‘guest,’ not a ‘host’; an ‘outsider,’ not a ‘colleague.’ If sorrow is heavy upon you and you are far from home, alone with yourself, might you see through a thousand years at a glance and meet the eyes of Wang Bo on his journey south, across time and space, and feel some consolation?
But that is not the end. Think carefully back to Wang Bo at that moment; imagine what he would do. His choice was to use the Preface to the Pavilion of Prince Teng to prove himself to those around him, to prove that ‘With age, resolve should grow stronger—how could a white-haired heart change? In hardship, be firmer still, and never let your soaring ambitions fall!’ He tells himself and everyone else, ‘Though the Northern Sea is far away, a soaring wind can carry us there; the morning has passed, but the evening is not too late’—it is not too late to cherish the dusk! Might this suddenly stir you, too, making you feel that your story is not over yet?!
My high-school chemistry teacher once said something that left a deep impression on me: ‘The moment you think it is too late is, in fact, the earliest moment!’
Does this bring to mind what Tao Yuanming wrote on returning to the countryside? ‘I realize the past cannot be undone, and know that what lies ahead may yet be pursued. I see that I have not wandered far from the path; I recognize that today is right and yesterday was wrong.’ Let the past be past. Whatever it held, what lies ahead can always be pursued. Today is when you begin—not yesterday, not tomorrow. In English, the word for the here and now is ‘present’: it is the present moment, and also a gift!
So what will you do? Remain dejected, or receive the present as a gift and ‘ask a traveler about the road ahead, regretting the faintness of the morning light’?
When you reach this understanding, when you meet the deep feeling behind the words, take comfort from it, and draw encouragement from it; when you once again read this poem or this essay slowly and carefully, education is truly complete.
Beyond the Preface to the Pavilion of Prince Teng and Return Home!, which have left particularly deep impressions on me—because I used to encourage myself every day with ‘what lies ahead may yet be pursued’—there are other texts, too.
Watching Snow at the Mid-Lake Pavilion: everyone knows it because we had to memorize it in middle school. Yet it somehow feels distant, because we have forgotten it. I only remembered it when a friend posted about it on WeChat Moments.
Zhang Dai was another man weighed down by sorrow. The Ming dynasty had fallen; his country was lost, his hopes defeated. What could hurt more deeply? Watching Snow at the Mid-Lake Pavilion was written in this way, beginning, ‘Across the lake, the sounds of people and birds had fallen silent.’ How cold; how still. This time, let us set aside that perspective and simply ask why a man as sorrowful as Zhang Dai would still seem to have the leisure to visit the mid-lake pavilion to watch the snow, and then write a whole essay about it.
There is one interpretation I particularly like: it is an act of recording! People who are sad and burdened, who carry something etched deep in memory, often feel a need to record it deeply. Perhaps they fear forgetting that sorrow. Perhaps they do not want to let go of the past, feeling that becoming optimistic would betray it—betray the Ming dynasty, betray themselves!
There is a comment on Xiaohongshu about Watching Snow at the Mid-Lake Pavilion that I particularly love:
What is Watching Snow at the Mid-Lake Pavilion really trying to express?
I think what Zhang Dai perhaps wanted to say was: as long as I still remember it, it has not truly disappeared.
Resist forgetting with memory; resist time with words.
Perhaps this is the deepest meaning of literature.
Whenever you are sad, unable to forgive, when something is etched painfully in your heart and you find yourself in your darkest hour, might you remember Zhang Dai and pick up your pen, too? Might you write passage after passage of deeply felt words, tell a story that once made you weep bitterly, and then tuck it away in the deepest corner…
Likewise, after witnessing the warmth and coldness of human relations in modern society, you might meet Kafka’s gaze and remember The Metamorphosis, remember Gregor, cast out of his home. When you see someone stubborn, utterly unwilling to listen to others and trapping themselves in their own cocoon, might you recall The Man in a Case and that absurd Belikov? When friends meet again and you see how differently two people’s lives have unfolded, might you recall the words before the parting in Cross-Country Snow: ‘Saying it doesn’t count’? As you strive and strive again, working to climb higher, might you be guided by the Preface Sent to Ma Sheng of Dongyang?
I watched a video on Bilibili in which a creator read Li Si’s Petition Against the Expulsion of Guest Advisers in front of the White House. Once again I marveled at Li Si’s writing, and I was also profoundly struck. Not because the act was so odd, but because, amid the present circumstances, someone was willing to bring wisdom from a thousand years ago into the present, carefully find its correspondences, and look at today through that wisdom accumulated across centuries. This is human wisdom, humanity’s wisdom, reaching from a thousand years ago to today, benefiting each of us, giving each of us something to understand, and connecting our hearts. Many of us once memorized: ‘I have heard that officials propose expelling guest advisers; I humbly consider this a mistake. In former times, Duke Mu sought men of talent, obtaining You Yu from the Rong in the west and Baili Xi from Wan in the east… Thus Mount Tai does not reject soil, and so achieves its greatness; rivers and seas do not turn away small streams, and so attain their depth; a ruler does not reject the multitude, and so makes his virtue known…’
If you are interested, we can consider how this relates to the changes taking place in our own age.
After more than two thousand Chinese characters, what I still want to express is my amazement that the Chinese texts we once studied—or other subjects, or books we have read—carry so much weight. An examination cannot contain it all. Like Hemingway’s iceberg theory, the part that remains calls for us to reflect, to live, to experience, to draw our own conclusions…
I will not repeat the views on education’s delayed effect found on Xiaohongshu or other public accounts: that revisiting an old place is itself like marking a boat to find a lost sword, because the place remains while the people have changed and the world has long since transformed; or the joy of Fan Jin passing the imperial examination, and so on. They are all profound and have given me much to reflect on. I have written this essay from my own feelings and thoughts.
Finally, I will end with a comment beneath a post I once read, one I particularly like. It is beautifully written:
Reading plants seeds in the depths of your heart. When the right wind, rain, thunder, lightning, dew, and earth arrive, they take root and sprout. Some blossom; some become only leaves swaying in the wind. As you walk alone through the world, something stirs within your heart, too. You may smile faintly; you may let out a quiet sigh. The wind of childhood and youth has reached you, carrying a familiar scent…
At this moment, education is complete.
