Is there a value that allows us to settle down?

knowledge is power. May you still believe tomorrow.

WeChat moments have been scanned by articles about Tsinghua graduates leaving Beijing because they can't afford to buy school district housing. At first, I thought it was a grumbling post. In any era, there are scholars, especially young ones, who have no choice but to sigh for their inability to control their destiny. Unexpectedly, this topic caused a wave of national anxiety and panic, and overnight we all became Sisyphus, and it was absurd and futile to spend our whole life.

can knowledge still change fate? what is the purpose of studying hard and making money? The collision of ideas reflects the value orientation of different classes and ages. Most of us are just ordinary people, and it is becoming more and more difficult to overcome or break away from the original class. People are generally confused, lost, do not know what to believe, and what to do, wrapped in the torrent of great changes of the times, but can not grasp a life-saving straw.

on the way to the psychological counselor course in Fudan every Friday, I pass a very magical scenery on Line 4: near is a low, dilapidated old house, a little farther away is a piece of high-rise commercial housing, the farthest is the Oriental Pearl, the World Financial Center, and the Shanghai Center. Today, I looked at the scenery outside the window and thought that I bought a school district house to go to Fudan. Even if I went to Fudan, I couldn't buy a school district house. Once any dilapidated house nearby was demolished, I could go directly to the United States to invest in a school district house in Australia. (yes, if you have seen "Beijing meets Seattle", you will know that there is no utopia in the world, and school district housing is a global problem). Then why haven't you died of despair? As a young man who has read books, a young man who is teaching, and a young man who believes in knowledge, my heart is also turbulent and confused.

my grandparents both grew up in school and worked as teachers in a small town all their lives. Foreigners have public knowledge, but they seldom care about the growth of their children, while grandma hopes that their children's educational level will always remain high enough to teach primary and secondary schools. When I was a child, I felt that she was not only happy that I could read and recite poems, but also very taboo to talk about the thoughts and feelings in literary works. When I was in junior high school, once at the dinner table, my grandfather and I talked about Lu Xun in the text, and my grandmother knocked on the bowl with chopsticks and ordered it to stop, even though the era of walls with ears and self-danger had long passed.

when she grows up, grandma wants everyone in my family to be obedient, and don't have any special ideas. For a long time, I couldn't understand why she always insisted that I would stop studying when I finished college, and always asked my sister and me to teach in an indisputable tone. Now, I understand that behind this simple and rude way of holding everyone down the same track, there is deep fear and vigilance. For grandparents, knowledge is originally a family belief, but the phrase "knowledge changes fate" is a family disaster, which is pitiful and sad. They, who were born at school, taught and educated people, would not have thought that one day they would suddenly become sinners because they had read books. They would have to admit their mistakes in prison, and they would not think that one day their children would no longer have the opportunity to read because they had read books.

Uncle and uncle spent his youth jumping the queue in the countryside. Later, my uncle almost became an actor in Wuxi Opera Troupe because he liked playing erhu. Later, he taught English by himself on the radio and taught English in a small town. He is a bit of a loafer and cynical man. He is very clever, but he has never done anything with his heart. I think it has a lot to do with his delayed youth. My second uncle became a worker and married a rural wife. My mother was the youngest. She was admitted to the county with excellent grades in the high school entrance examination, but she was not admitted to Nanjing Post and Telecommunications School because of her poor family composition. She was admitted to a normal school in her hometown. Not going to college is my mother's biggest regret. I remember that the year I graduated was the centenary of the Chinese Department of Nanjing University, and the college gave each of us a degree robe embroidered with the school badge. My mother likes that dress so much that she wears it at home and asks my father to take a picture of her.

in my memory, my grandfather in his later years was always sneaking around when he bought books and books and was infatuated with reading and talking about books. He was delighted with my study in the Chinese Department. Grandma moved into the apartment for the elderly after Grandpa died. In the apartment for the elderly, because she has read books, can draw traditional Chinese paintings, and can play the organ, she is a different old lady. Once the TV station went to interview her, she was happy.

from my grandparents, I learned what traditional readers believe. Reading is not for change, if you have to give it earthly meaning, it may bring you pain: in ancient times, failing to pass the imperial examination was a disgrace, and in the Cultural Revolution, intellectuals themselves were evil. So what is the purpose of reading? Reading is to make you a "person", a standing, uppercase, plump person, a person who can fly freely. Knowledge is a kind of power, and only by taking the pursuit of knowledge as a belief rooted in the heart, will we not be swept away by the torrent of the times.

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Shanghai Metro Line 4, a random photo of the scenery, 2017.3.17

and my grandparents are illiterate farmers. I can't tell my grandparents' family history like their family history, because they are the palest and most ordinary group of people in Chinese history. Their previous generation, the previous generation, is like the crops in the field, silent and nameless, growing savagely.

when I was a child, I didn't like to go back to my grandparents' house, not because the conditions were bad, but because life in the countryside made me feel monotonous, ignorant, and boring. I can't imagine how my father was admitted to college from such an environment that didn't love reading, but I also admired my grandparents. They should not know what reading is, but I believe they believe that "reading changes fate", otherwise they would not have tried their best to support my father at the age when it was difficult to eat. Father is lucky, he is the eldest son, there are two sisters, two younger brothers, who have not read a book. In such a family, people who have read books are respected. They all like to call my father about big and small things up and down the family, even includingChildren volunteering for the college entrance examination.

with my grandparents, I understand what farmers believe. They are at the bottom of society, and they can only believe in things that can change their fate. In ancient times, there were peasant uprisings. In my father's time, I lit a kerosene lamp to participate in the cram school for the college entrance examination. In this day and age, I don't know. Maybe it's a hard-seat ticket to Shanghai. And the largest proportion of Chinese traditional social structure is farmers, most of us are born in rural areas for three generations, almost lack money, almost lack knowledge. It is already difficult to establish a relatively stable and unified value among the increasingly polarized offspring of these people.

Dad took the college entrance examination three times and was admitted to Suzhou University in 1980. One of the scenes he likes to tell me about his daily life is that at that time, someone would give up his seat when he wore the school badge of Soochow University and took the bus. Now whenever I see the media report that migrant workers would rather squat in the subway for fear of getting their seats dirty, I think of this.

some people in Zhihu said that college students at that time could become social elites not because they were admitted to the university, not because "knowledge changes fate", but because they were allocated university graduation bags. They mastered the rights and resources of Chinese society in their youth. I do not deny that this sentence is partly true. But first of all, bag distribution for young people at that time, there is no choice, such as rolling dice, no one will know where their tomorrow is. It is said that a pair of young students in my father's class were deliberately separated because they adored each other. One was assigned to the southernmost part of Jiangsu, and the other was assigned to the northernmost part of Jiangsu. It took many years for lovers to get married. The peasant son like my father, who was also the monitor, was thrown to northern Jiangsu without hesitation. Secondly, human development not only depends on your starting point but also the meaning of life can not be measured by money and status. After so many years, some of my father's classmates have already left their assigned posts and cities, some have gone to sea to start a business and fly all over the world, and some have chosen to end their lives because they are unhappy. Why should we attribute the life path of that generation to a choice that we had no choice in when we were young?

Mom and Dad experienced what "knowledge changes fate" in their youth. In the memory of my parents' youth, it was a time when everything was revived, full of waste and full of vitality. A song they like to sing is "Young Friends come to meet":

"in another 20 years, we will meet

how beautiful the great motherland should be!

the sky is also new, the earth is also new, the spring is brighter,

urban and rural areas are brighter everywhere.

Ah, dear friends,

who does it depend on to create this miracle?

depends on me, on you,

on our new generation in the 1980s! "

I grew up listening to this song, and I gloriously belong to the new generation in the 1980s. Forty years after the resumption of the college entrance examination, I grew up in a knowledgeable family and was lucky to have received almost the best higher education in China, but in my youth, I encountered an era when knowledge is no longer the power to support you to forge ahead. I remember when I first bought a house, the loan manager called me and said, "your salary is too low, your level belongs to low-income people, your parent's income is too low, and they are about to retire." we don't think you can afford to repay the loan. " Perhaps what she stated is an objective fact. For me, this passage is unforgettable not only because of the arrogant attitude of the speaker but also because it stirs up sadness in my heart: this era does not respect knowledge, it respects money.

My Master's roommate teaches in the best middle school in Shanghai. Once she called me and said helplessly that the students were dividing liberal arts and science subjects. According to the results of the college entrance examination over the years, the school calculated the proportion of liberal arts and science students who could achieve the best results in the college entrance examination and asked the headteacher to do the students' work. Persuade those students who choose more science to go to the liberal arts.

Yes, we are all exquisite egoists, we pursue interests, we ignore interests. But then comes the more and more confused students in the school and the young people like me in the society. No wonder my student always told me in his freshman and sophomore years that he didn't know what he liked and why he chose this major. In his junior year, he always asked me, "teacher, do you think I should take the postgraduate entrance examination or go abroad or look for a job?" But how can you ask me in your life? What I can do is analyze every situation of going abroad, taking the postgraduate entrance examination, and working, and then throw the question back to him for his own choice. At the same time, I found that many young students are no longer focused on reading, probably because they have fully realized the benefits of money because their youth is experiencing tickets and houses to change their lives. No wonder when my students choose their majors, they look at employment rather than interest, and when they graduate to look for a job, they look at salary and underestimate their majors. I don't know how such a beneficiary will teach his children. Then when his children grow up to be young, what does my lovely China believe and where do they want us to go?

if we look into the origin of the two sentences "knowledge changes fate" and "knowledge is power", we will find a subtle difference. "knowledge changes fate" is said by Li Ka-Shing, while "knowledge is power" is said by Bacon. The former is only a methodology, while the latter is a kind of value. Li Ka-Shing has said many famous quotes, most of which are about ways to change fate. Bacon also has many famous quotes, casually listing a few: "Reading makes a man a perfect person." Reading makes a full man, discussion a ready man, notes accurate, history-wise, poetry witty, mathematics thoughtful, science profound, ethics grave, logic and rhetoric argumentative. Whatever you learn becomes a character. " Reading is not for eloquence and refutation, nor credulity and blind obedience, but thinking and balance. " So if you think you go to Tsinghua just to buy a school district house, buy a school district house. Just to go to Tsinghua University, you, who are too young and too simple, just find a methodology and do not have a value. Camus wrote in The Myth of Sisyphus: "one must imagine the happiness of Sisyphus," because "the struggle for heights is enough to fill one's heart." Do you believe that?

when I was writing this article, a colleague asked me what I was writing. I asked him a piece of nonsense. I said I couldn't afford a house in the school district. Do you still believe in knowledge? As a researcher who often comes out of the laboratory in the wee hours of the morning, he replied, believes in knowledge, but doesn't believe in the knowledge economy. The answer is sober and wise.

all kinds of jokes became popular with the news. There is a joke that goes like this: "taking a taxi to Tsinghua University and talking about someone buying a house a few years ago is a winner in life." The taxi man listened silently for a long time and said, "my family has divided several apartments, but I just drove. You are the future and hope of the country. If you graduate from Tsinghua and Peking University, your goal in life is to buy a suite in Beijing." instead of thinking about the future of this country, then this country is hopeless. "

at first, I thought the joke was really funny. Granaries can only know the etiquette, food and clothing can know honor and disgrace, there is no poetry and distance, I can not afford to buy a house and think about the future of the country, the hope of the country? But think about it again, I think this taxi man is right, he is not "short-sighted", he knows what the purpose of higher education is. "to live widely in the world, to establish the right position in the world, and to walk the road of the world; if you succeed, you will follow the people; if you do not succeed, you will go your own way. Rich and noble can not be masturbated, poor and humble can not be moved, powerful and indomitable "is the big man in Chinese culture. And if there is no kind of values that can enable the Chinese people to settle down, it is the beginning of a real loss of hope.