I can't die, because I have to write history.

1

there is a teacher in the Berkeley history department named Michael Nylan. The Chinese name is Dai Meike. It is characterized by a super love of people.

if you speak no more than five words, you will be attacked.

go to her house, and I say hello to her, "Hi!" Professor-"

" No. No! " She jumped up excitedly. "you can call me Michael or Professor Nai Leng." I know that in China, you call your teacher 'teacher'. But in the United States, this is not appropriate. You can either use the first name or use the last name plus appellation. "

I have nothing to talk to at dinner. "isn't Michael a man's name--"

"No. No! " She cried excitedly. "who says Michael has to be a man's name?" Michael can also be a woman's name! Although this situation is rare, it does exist. My name is Michael. But I am a woman. "

. A good explanation of what is meant by chatting.

the cold-resistant teacher is used to having dinner and reading at home on Tuesday night. There are always a bunch of strange awesome people together. Benjamin is a 40-year-old Egyptian student who worked as a stray singer in China before he came to Berkeley. Lucia is a Yale undergraduate whose speech I never understood. Trenton can accurately quote the sealed Zen documents from Feng Zen Book to Li Le Zhi to Dunhuang manuscripts to the "three represents" and the scientific concept of development. Oh, and the warriors of Zhihu, the great god. If you don't sing, then you will open your mouth in Latin, Greek, French, and German. Zhihu 130000 fans are not bought.

I don't remember what I read at the family dinner. I just remember that I was a carpet, run over by the gods.

one semester, the cold-resistant teacher taught a course with a Jewish historian, Sima Qian, and Josephus. It was fun, too. I can only see that the teacher Nai Leng is happier and happier with one against the ten, and against the students with the help of heaven and earth. Being in the classroom is like seeing Huashan talking about the sword, swishing through the side of the sword. A loser like me who can be killed in five words is of course instant cannon fodder. Some people can last up to ten words. Some people can last up to twenty words. Some people speak fast (Lucia) or loudly (Benjamin) until they finish what they say. And like Trenton, the cold-resistant teacher has been blushed with sufficient textual evidence that he has nothing to say.

indeed, they often argue about how many moles Liu Bang has in his thigh.

English is poor, academic is even worse. Sit in silence most of the time. He was attacked as soon as he opened his mouth. Anyway, I just live a very depressed life.

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2

I majored in literature. I think history has always been a misty feeling. When I was at Yale, an archaeology teacher asked me how to understand history. I replied, "History is, first of all, a narrative." Only the history that is narrated, there is no so-called real historical truth. "

the teacher's pupils were dilated, his face flushed, and he said to me in a suppressed tone, "I think there is a historical truth." Although it is often hidden in appearance. The purpose of history and archaeology is to restore the historical scene by various means. Although we can never touch it, we still try our best to reach it. To get close to the truth. "

even now when it comes to historians, the image that comes to mind is still a white-haired old man who stretches out his hands to the cliff and dies to reach the other side.

Sima Qian is a very bad historian by the standards of later generations. The historians who came from Sima Qian took the actual records as the standard of history and tried to be objective. When you read those historical works, you don't have to worry about the life fate of the historian at all. Except for Historical Records. There are no words in the twenty-four histories that are so full of questions, sighs, doubts, struggles, contradictions, pain, joy, and sadness.

the time when I was in class with a cold-resistant teacher was a time when I was very depressed. I chose the topic of suicide, almost naturally. The texts discussed are the biographies of Boyi and the Preface to Tai Shi Gong, as well as the five hundred martyrs of Guan Zhongtian. According to the biographies of Boyi, Uncle Boyi died without eating Zhou Su and asked why a good man did not end well. The preface to Tai Shi Gong says that you can't die because I want to write history. If one talks about going to death and asking for benevolence, there is no complaint. One says that I will not die and that Sheng Shengde and the family of meritorious servants dare not give way to the boy.

only then did I have a chance to read the preface of Shi Gong carefully. Because one of the most boring and boring charges bears the heaviest and most painful humiliation. No warmth, no cure. Convince yourself over and over again to live, to live. Guarding a crippled body and an unfinished book.

carry pain and humiliation and write it down word by word, stroke by stroke. I am very conscious that this is not a book that can be published. China's censorship system has a long history. It will not be seen tomorrow, it will not be seen next year, and it will not be seen until death. Endure hardships and endure humiliation, until death can not share the slightest bit of fame.

in the worst suffering, a writer, with unparalleled sobriety, writes a book that cannot be seen.

how sad and lonely it should be.

such desolate loneliness is too easy to arouse the resonance of historians of later generations.

I am at odds with the cold-resistant teacher. But I thank her for her enlightenment. Her devotion to Historical Records infected many of her students. I remember that time when the class was coming to an end, she suddenly recalled her early bumpy job-hunting experience. When she was studying for her doctorate at Princeton in 1976, she did not work as a Chinese teacher at all; her mentor completely ignored her, so she had to go to Cambridge to find Lu Weiyi to finish her studies. After graduation, he drifted for a long time, then taught in a liberal arts college for 15 years, until he was hired at Berkeley in 2001. You can imagine the hardships of being a pioneer and a woman.

she sighed at last and close the book gently.

"Learning is a lonely and frustrating road. In those frustrating moments, for countless days and nights at a loss, I read these words under the lamp and said to myself,' it's all worth it.'"

3

Reading Chinese history often makes me feel desperate.

is just too dark. It's too dark. The thick-skinned and dark-hearted man is called the king, and his loyalty to the liver and courage is not a good death. At the end of the life of extermination, leniency, and forgiveness are suppressed for life.

this is the question issued by Sima Qian in the biographies of Boyi: Yan Hui is empty repeatedly, but he never gets tired of chaff and dies early. What is the reward of heaven as a benefactor? The thief is not worthy to be killed in the day, but the flesh of the liver ends in longevity. What is virtue?

perhaps it is in this cross-examination that Chinese historians are born with the ultimate motivation for history: don't be suspicious, know right and wrong, hesitate, do good and evil, virtuous and inferior, exist and perish, inherit the world, make up for the malpractice and abolish-- it is up to me to carry out the trial that the Tao of Heaven cannot complete.

when discussing Sima Qian's interpretation of Confucius, Li Huiyi said:

Sima Qian provided another perspective and characteristics for Confucius' basic task as a historian: memory, the continuation of tradition, the definition of culture, refusing to let greatness fall into oblivion. (Wai-yee Li, "The Idea of Authority in the Shih chi," Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, vol. 54, no. 2 (Dec. 1994), p. 361)

inherit, extend and carry forward. The cultural definition of blood writing and the national backbone was provoked by white bones.

"refuse to let greatness fall into oblivion."

4

when I read Historical Records, many times my eyes filled with tears. I will imagine the way he holds the pen, the way he weeps, and how he writes ancient Chinese characters one by one in the residual lamp of the cold wind. I would like to ask him: are you still in pain? I want to hug him. I want to tell him: do you know? You did it. You are great and immortal.

but he won't know.

but, but, at that moment, I thought, did he come back to life through me?

the great things he recorded, the lost greatness, were they resurrected through me in the moments that appeared in my mind?

it seems that at that moment, the writer and the reader, the writer and the person being written meet each other and are happy with each other. Sima Qian and Confucius were reunited in the narrow path of time.

while Sima Qian and I are giving meaning to each other.

his pain will be comforted by me. My confusion will be confused by him.

give meaning to each other, relieve suffering for each other, and find redemption for each other.

those who have died will be resurrected through us. When we die, we will be reborn through rebirth.

the rock is like spring water, and the blood is like flowers. Such a continuation and silence. We are freshmen each other. For each other's resurrection.

achieve the common greatness and immortality of our civilization with the smallness and shortness of our individuals.

 I saw that in front of the cliff, in the dark, he stretched out his hands to reach it.

the world is as dark as it can be. This life is as desolate as it can be. But I won't die. I want to live. I would like to embrace and praise this ancient civilization and "refuse to let greatness fall into oblivion".

in front of his hands, justice and virtue shine. The light penetrates the dark fog of history. Infinitely bright and bright. The quilt shines on all things. It silently confirms to us that all this darkness, suffering, and loneliness is worth it.