Fan Meizhong's Self-Important Life, and How He Sees the World | "Ten Years" Part 4

For most of his life, Fan Meizhong has been fighting what people call mainstream values.

He grew up in a remote village in Neijiang, Sichuan, and was the first person from that village admitted to Peking University. He arrived haloed with promise. He has been a marginal figure ever since.

He believed he was fit to teach only the exceptionally gifted, and that an elite secondary school in Chengdu ought to hire him. Instead he settled for a private school in Dujiangyan staffed mostly by foreign teachers, facing every day a roomful of students he called "the trash of the industry, pure dregs."

For years Fan Meizhong believed life had no meaning at all, and lived in a state of dread. That included 2008.

At 2:28 p.m. on May 12, he left his students behind and became the first person in the school to reach the soccer field. Ten days later he wrote on his blog The Moment the Earth Shook: A Firsthand Account of the May 12 Wenchuan Earthquake《那一刻地动山摇——5·12汶川地震亲历记》: "At a moment of life and death like that, only for my daughter would I even consider sacrificing myself. Anyone else — even my mother — I would not have looked after, not in those circumstances…"

The marginal figure was pulled straight into the center of public attention. The name "Fan Paopao," Run-Run Fan, has been attached to the Sichuan earthquake ever since.

Fan Meizhong can look callous. He attacked the "goodness" and virtue the authorities were loudly praising at the time, but he believes he stood for something else: the force of the truth.

For most of his life, Fan Meizhong has been fighting what people call mainstream values.

He detests the gaokao and opposes the machinery of constant testing.

He has no use for special-grade teachers, whom he regards as another word for stupidity and mediocrity.

Before this, he had at most stirred small ripples inside education circles. This time his defiance ran into the first disaster of that scale China had ever faced. Grief and the need to place it had nowhere to go, and not one grain of sand would be tolerated.

Fan Meizhong enraged everyone.

As Sichuan closed ranks and chanted "Sichuan will not fail the nation," Fan Meizhong says, "I threw a lump of shit on their beautiful, shining image."

Ten years on, Fan Meizhong is certain he won that fight. More and more people have come to understand the man once held up as the earthquake's cautionary example, because the exemplary ones have been falling from grace one after another.

Two opposite roads, one destination.

Yet look at the decade he has actually lived, and it is hard to say he won.

Compared with others who became famous overnight because of the Wenchuan earthquake, the quake seems to have left no "after-effects" on him. Beyond a brief burst of exposure, it opened nothing. He is still a label that education circles, Sichuan and secondary schools keep at arm's length; even publishing a book ran into one obstruction after another.

Fan Meizhong retreated into the small circle he started in. A smaller one, in fact.

In 2015 he quit Guangya School and went freelance, parting from state-system education for good.

He left Dujiangyan and settled in Chengdu.

Chengdu is the "lowest-grade city" he can accept: far from the political center in Beijing, yet at the center of China's peripheral cities. It lets him stay on the margins and keep his pride.

This is his usual comfort zone.

In March 2018, one of his students introduced us, and we reached him. At 9:30 on the morning of March 9 we met in a café near Sansheng Township in Chengdu. He wore his trademark black-framed glasses and a gray sweater, and was reading a literary classic.

He is 45, full of energy, and says whatever he likes.

"Very few reporters come to me now, because everyone who wanted to interview me has, and the shelf life of a news story keeps shrinking. It was odd that they interviewed me for so long back then, because smartphones hadn't spread yet in 2008. If they had, news would have turned over much faster and the story wouldn't have stayed hot that long, been hyped that long. After that it was just the yearly May 12 retrospectives, when someone would come and interview me.

My story ran into the second half of 2008 — mainly the three months from May to the Olympics on August 8 — and then it thinned out. That was normal enough. People shouldn't fix on one news event or one news figure for that long anyway, because everything worth digging up had been dug up: my life, my values, my views. I used the chance to lay out my values in full. I don't want this society's values to be shaped only by the mainstream class and the class with power — I can shape this society's values too, can't I? We can't live by the values of a small minority. We can state our own values and make them part of what shapes society's values.

At first I didn't want to give interviews. If I hadn't, the whole thing would have blown over. Then I thought, no. There were two reasons. First, I had to state my views, because you know how people's view of a historical event hardens — my episode is already a historical event. If you don't speak fully at the time and shift a lot of those views, the thing sets in people's minds as time passes. By the time you try to shift it, nobody is interested anymore. So you take advantage of the moment and say everything while people still care, so they hear your values and where you stand on these questions.

Second, it was a chance to set out my values on every front, because I have my own views on Chinese society, on life, on ethics, on politics, on all of it. Write in an academic way in ordinary times and nobody reads you. Since everyone was willing to read at that moment, I spoke my mind in full, hoping to have some effect on others. That's why I ended up cooperating fully with the media.

You know, most Chinese people — our culture has a terrible side, though of course this nation also has a very great side; that's a fact. The terrible side is that we don't much value truth, and that is very, very bad. Why don't we value truth? One cause is an authoritarian society. Another is that we love to stress 'goodness.' Stress 'goodness' and nothing else, and you kill people's urge to speak the truth, because truth conflicts with 'goodness,' with the bright and the beautiful. But without truth there is no light, no beauty, no 'goodness,' and people forget this, because they so love to stress 'goodness.' So any statement of the truth can be accused of being 'not good,' and in that situation people become very unwilling to say true things. That's a large problem for this nation, and that's why I wrote that piece in 2008 — it also came out of my own thinking. I don't like how falsely Chinese people live. You're plainly this way in daily life, your real thoughts are this way, so why, in front of a camera or writing an article, can't you say what's actually inside you? A teacher complains constantly in ordinary life, then faces the camera and says, 'We are engineers of the human soul, we must love these children with everything we have,' while off camera the same teachers grumble, 'We only make 3,000 to 5,000 yuan.' Why can't you say that in front of the camera?"

On Fan Meizhong's remarks, a Ministry of Education spokesman said in 2008: "We may do without nobility, but we cannot permit shamelessness."

The Party secretary of Peking University's history department said: "Peking University is ashamed to have such a student. If he were expelled, we would approve."

The principal of Guangya School once told Fan Meizhong that, because of his remarks, the Dujiangyan education bureau and the city government had decided that all donations Dujiangyan received would be taken in centrally by the Ministry of Education — with nothing going to Guangya School.

"Chengdu's Huaxi Metropolis Daily would never come and interview me. Because to Sichuan's education officials, its press and publishing officials, its propaganda department, my episode is a disgrace to Sichuan. They have a beautiful, shining image of Sichuan to protect, and me — I feel like I threw a lump of shit on that beautiful, shining image. They find it awkward, they find it galling; that's their mindset. Which is strange, because they never cared about the truth in the first place.

My episode was never such a terrible thing. Their values make them see it as a terrible thing. In fact my episode was an honor for Sichuan, because when everyone is lying, one true statement is the precondition for anything good. They don't see it that way, because their heads are already broken. So Sichuan's media will absolutely never interview me — and if they did, I would certainly say things they wouldn't want printed.

What drove me to write that piece was exactly a contrarian disgust at that kind of propaganda. I wanted to give you something not so beautiful. I knew those things were fake, but I also didn't know what the real things were.

I only knew the real situation at Guangya School, not anywhere else, and I couldn't just talk nonsense, so I could only talk about myself. At the very least I wasn't heroic and glorious, and that tore open the curtain of beauty and light. At the time people had lost their reason; under the enormous shock of the disaster, people lose their reason.

Ten years on, everyone has cooled down, and raising it again may make people clear-headed and willing to pick at a lot of questions. Why did so many buildings collapse? Was anyone held responsible? Now that everyone has cooled down, go back to promoting sacrifice and tear-jerking stories and no one listens. Cool heads call for cool reflection. They certainly don't want it raised again, because raising it drags up problems that won't be dropped. They talked their way past it then; it isn't so easy now.

People's attitude toward me has shifted a great deal. Some, of course, will never shift. A person's values form mainly before high school, or at the latest before the end of college. After college they're very hard to change, so expecting everyone's views to move because of this incident is impossible. But a sizable number of people did change their view, and that is quite rare.

When I went on Phoenix TV in June 2008, that already turned a lot of people around. Maybe a year or two later, once everyone had cooled down, quite a few more turned. Take the Tan Qianqiu story, which turned out to be fabricated. He was the earthquake's positive exemplar; I was the negative one. Tan Qianqiu taught at Dongqi Middle School in Hanwang Town, Mianzhu. They dug open the site, found several students beneath his body, and said he had heroically saved them. That was pure fabrication. When they dug the site open, he may well not have been protecting anyone; the building may simply have come down and pressed him onto the students. There is no evidence he shielded them on purpose, but the reporters turned it into a heroic rescue.

Later the school's former principal wrote a letter exposing it, and the Southern Metropolis Daily reported it. Then word came down that no one was to write about it again, because the former principal had personal motives too — his relationship with Tan Qianqiu was very bad. The story was forced back down after it surfaced, but plenty of people already knew. And unflattering things about Lin Hao came out later as well.

In the Yushu earthquake and other quakes since, there have been teachers who ran out too. Plenty of people cursed them, but it couldn't stir up much, because my case came first. People's tolerance and understanding had widened; they see the problem more clearly."

Fan Meizhong talks fast. You never need to draw him out; the only difficulty is finding a decent moment to interrupt.

He is fond of the phrase "of course." "Of course" generally does one of two jobs: after a statement of fact, it introduces a concession; or it hardens the tone, marking something as plain to all.

Of course, Fan Meizhong almost always uses it the second way, and usually to describe his own excellence.

"I rated myself very highly back then. Of course, I still rate myself very highly now."

"My moral level was far above the average person's — and of course I still think I'm far above the average person."

"I don't think my overall state is as high as I imagined; but of course, objectively speaking, I'm still much better than most people."

"I don't think the earthquake made much difference to the course of my life. Without it I would still have resigned from Guangya School, because Guangya's students are, as a group, the trash of the industry, basically pure dregs. You can't even hold a class.

Guangya did give me privileges. If the students wouldn't listen, I could simply not teach, and my pay was on the high side among the Chinese teachers. But for a person, drawing a salary without teaching left me feeling I hadn't earned it. I took the money and did nothing.

Second, I work not only for money but for a sense of accomplishment, for the pleasure of work. People need the pleasure of work; it is the main source of happiness. So I would certainly have resigned, and then raised my child and done scholarship, because the main direction of my life is lecturing and studying the classics. I'm a genius at scholarship — not merely able, a genius — certainly better than the great majority of Harvard professors. With 1% of the effort I'd do better work than they do, and I'm honestly not bragging. Philosophy, literary studies: a little effort from me beats them. I'll boast about that, and I'll boast about it to anyone.

Because of that I know what I should be doing, so I would certainly have resigned; Guangya drained my energy. But right now I have almost no time to read. My wife's home school is nearby, and I drove them over this morning. At noon my child comes home for a nap, and from the moment she wakes up until she goes to bed at night I'm with her. I get two hours each morning, often not enough to finish an article, never mind read. When the children are older, most of my energy will go into scholarly research. So the course of my life stays the same either way.

I'm not a person the outside environment pushes around; I follow the voice inside. In one sense I'm an ordinary person, in another I'm not. My inner self is fairly strong. I pay little attention to other people's comments and opinions.

So the earthquake wouldn't have changed the course of my life. But it did change my views.

First, the earthquake lowered my estimate of China's intellectual world, its world of ideas, and the quality of ordinary Chinese people. I hadn't thought they were that stupid. Oddly enough, that improved my state, because the reason I used to be in such a bad state was that I thought China was terrible, I was desperate to change it, and I couldn't. Afterwards I became calmer: if China's intellectuals, its ordinary people, its thinkers could all be that stupid about my case, then there was no point in my heart racing. You realize that Chinese people's state of awareness and capacity for thought is even worse than you imagined, and you see more clearly how long China's transformation will take. After that I actually felt more at peace.

Second, my understanding of myself. Before 2008 I rated myself very highly — and of course I still rate myself very highly. Not just my ability; I'm a genius at scholarship, for instance. I even felt my moral level was far above the average person's — and of course I still think I'm far above the average person.

But after 2008 I found that at the decisive moment, in a sense, everyone returns to an amoral state. Not a state that destroys morality — the most instinctive, most authentic human state. In that sense I'm no better than anyone else in any way. It isn't that I'm worse than the average person. It's that I used to think I was far above the average person, and it turns out I'm not so bad either.

Put it another way: the day everyone is starving with no food, they will all grab. That's the state. I wouldn't be the one saying, 'I have plenty, you eat, I'll starve.' With no food, I'd grab bread like everyone else. At bottom we're all much the same, however different we may look day to day.

Both of those things made me better. The second gave me a sober estimate of myself, and my anger at other people eased. For a long time my anger at ordinary Chinese people, and at intellectuals, was very strong — moral anger. Why are you all so awful? In ordinary life, take teachers and civil servants: you live inside lies and behind masks. I felt everyone had some moral problem, and it made me furious.

Later I saw that my own state isn't as high as I imagined. At bottom, at the level of instinct, the differences between people aren't as large as I thought. You see more of your own limits, you understand others better, and you grow calmer inside."

In June 2008 word spread that the education authorities wanted Fan Meizhong's teaching certificate revoked. In an interview, Fan Meizhong said he had never held a teaching certificate at all.

The system's standards for assessing a teacher do not interest him.

"No public school in China is going to come asking for me now, and I wouldn't take a full-time job anyway. If I were willing to teach, I'd really be suited to teaching students with real talent. In Chengdu they're concentrated at Chengdu No. 7 High School, Chengdu Foreign Languages School, schools like that. But if I offered to teach there they mostly wouldn't take me, so I don't go looking, and I never have.

Going and asking puts me in the weak position. If I'm to teach at a famous school, they have to come to me. Only by coming to me do you show you recognize my value — I'm very good. If I go looking, they treat me as an ordinary teacher, which is pointless. At a school I would demand certain privileges. Not special treatment: by privileges I mean not sitting through office hours, teaching my own way, choosing my own material.

I also won't accept testing students every few days, and I won't accept being judged by gaokao scores. That's the kind of privilege I mean. Submit a résumé and I can't demand any of it. Come to me and I can lay it all out.

If they came to me on their own, those Chengdu principals would be really something. But don't expect principals of Chinese public schools to be outstanding — they are destined to be mediocre. I expect nothing from them.

Even without the earthquake they wouldn't have invited me, because they're a bunch of mediocre principals. The earthquake didn't make finding work harder; finding work was already hard, because I don't care about the gaokao. In their eyes I was not a good teacher before the earthquake or after. It's only that before the earthquake I was well known in online education circles, because I'd written a lot about education — and none of that had anything to do with their gaokao. I never entered teaching competitions. I take none of the in-system routes. I don't even have a teaching certificate, let alone a special-grade rating, while they sometimes take pride in 'landing a special-grade teacher.' Special-grade status says nothing about ability.

Overall my life now is much better, because in the internet age I can teach online, write, take tips from readers. At my age I do carry some weight in the field, in the circle and even in academia. Adults are willing to hear me lecture on Zhuangzi and willing to send their children to listen. So the road widens and my income improves. Of course not the way people like Lin Hao gained. My income has nothing to do with the earthquake; it's what my own ability naturally yields when offered to society. I wouldn't say I'm rich, but a basic life is relatively comfortable."

After the earthquake, 20 provinces and cities were paired with the worst-hit parts of Sichuan to fund reconstruction; Shanghai was paired with Dujiangyan. By the end of August 2010, all 117 projects Shanghai built in Dujiangyan were finished, at a cost of 8.25 billion yuan.

People said the disaster area had "leapt forward twenty years."

In return, from September 8, 2017 to May 12, 2018, residents registered in Shanghai could tour the Dujiangyan scenic area for 15 yuan on presentation of an ID card, against a standard ticket price of 90 yuan.

"'Twenty years forward' is a fact where infrastructure is concerned, where streets are concerned, but it doesn't make the earthquake a beautiful thing. However large the leap in infrastructure, it is only material. It cannot bring back the dead or soothe the wound in a person who lost family. How are people to weigh material progress against lives lost, to price wounded minds against new buildings?

Second, those twenty years of progress were not the product of quality development. They came from heavy use of our centralized system to move other places' resources here by force. So it isn't the outcome of normal economic or productive growth; it is pure accumulation, pure consumption investment.

Taking Shanghai's money and investing it in Dujiangyan proves nothing. It only shows one place's things being carried off to another place by force, and the process wasted a great deal.

In economic terms, Dujiangyan built plenty of housing and infrastructure, but Dujiangyan's industry and commerce can't keep pace with that artificial injection. It isn't natural economic expansion, so a lot of the housing stands empty. Infrastructure nobody uses, homes nobody lives in.

A sizable share of Dujiangyan's housing has no one in it. Some people were moved down out of the mountains, but they can't possibly fill that many homes. Almost nobody pays attention to the waste. Shanghai put several hundred billion yuan into Dujiangyan — that's Shanghai taxpayers' money, taken away by force, right? People rarely think about it. Call it 'the whole country as one chessboard' if you like, but Shanghai taxpayers' money was taken without anyone asking them. And once taken, it wasn't used well. So we can't sing the praises of infrastructure bought at the price of a catastrophe like that.

By that logic we could stage one big bombing, flatten a city, then rebuild — it would certainly be far better than before. Should we praise that? Obviously not; it might kill a million people. The thinking is plainly ridiculous.

Second, how should we understand 'twenty years forward'? A city, our values — after decades of China sprinting to catch up with Western modernization, we've formed the idea that the newer and grander the infrastructure, the better. Do you think Americans believe the more old buildings knocked down the better? An old house, a city growing at its own pace: why must it be torn down for a very tall building? Is a very tall building necessarily progress?

I live near Sansheng Township in Chengdu now. I own nothing in Dujiangyan; I never treated Dujiangyan as home, because Dujiangyan is too small. Not only in population — its cultural life is too thin. In Dujiangyan I couldn't find one person to drink tea and talk with, not one person to exchange ideas with. Chengdu is the lowest-grade city I can live in in China. I don't mean material modernity, I mean spiritual needs — being able to talk with people, exchange things. Chengdu is my floor. In Neijiang, Mianyang, Deyang, I couldn't last. That's my limit.

When I left Guangya in 2015, Dujiangyan's 2.5th Ring Road was already up, and very shiny, all of it tied to earthquake reconstruction. None of it meant anything to me, because those people still only know how to play mahjong. And what I care about — they call it 'infrastructure twenty years forward,' but what about people's ideas, people's quality? Did any of it move an inch? So the judgment itself is low, a very cheap way of seeing. You say China's high-speed rail, China's railways, are built better than America's, so China must be more developed than America? That's a very bad way of thinking.

I don't make a point of going back to Dujiangyan. When I do go it isn't nostalgia; a friend happens to visit, or the kid wants to go up Mount Qingcheng and play and drink tea. It's not that I taught there for ten years and want to see Guangya, see Dujiangyan again. I have no such feeling. I have no attachment whatsoever to Dujiangyan or to Guangya School.

Since the earthquake I feel people have grown more practical. Moral sentimentality and the inflated stuff have thinned out, including among intellectuals. Before 2008 I moved in intellectual circles a fair amount, including events in Chengdu, and that utopian strain — utopias pinned on ideas in your head — is fading. That's a good thing. Chengdu used to be full of Altos; the cars keep getting better, and ordinary residential compounds are full of Mercedes and BMWs. I feel people care more about their own lives, and their lives are getting better.

I think Chengdu has changed a great deal in these ten years. Chengdu's standing image is a city of leisure. For me personally, two things have changed. Life in Chengdu has grown busier and busier. Why? Because China's development is moving from the east to the west. Isn't Chengdu at the head of the new first-tier cities? With everything happening in the south of the city, the pace for a large share of Chengdu people has become fast and busy, not the old leisure.

Second, a large share of Chengdu people go on playing mahjong, but some have started to move toward self-education and lifelong growth: signing up for a class here, a class there, taking courses online. I think that's a good thing. As Chinese society grows more materially prosperous, coming out of that short stretch of poverty when they had nothing but money, some people begin to look for the meaning of life, for spiritual substance, for their own growth. That's what I've felt most strongly over these ten years. For Chinese society to get better in the end, every individual's spiritual quality has to rise first. So chanting 'China marches toward prosperity, democracy, civility and harmony' is useless. The growth of each individual, including change in education, is very slow growth."

In 2012 the Central Radio and TV University Press published Fan Meizhong's Wild Grass of the People《民间野草》, in which he reads Lu Xun's Wild Grass across 15 essays.

It is the only book he has formally published in the past ten years.

He began reading Zhuangzi in 2011, and calls Zhuangzi the turning point of his life. He finished the manuscript long ago but has never been able to publish it "legally." He believes the book deserves far more attention, since the Zhuangzi readings on the market are simply not serious and he himself represents "the highest level of Zhuangzi scholarship today."

"Now the moment I want a book printed, no publisher can put it out, so I printed two myself, one on education and one on Zhuangzi.

I badly want these books to reach readers, since I believe I represent the highest level of Zhuangzi scholarship today and they could help a lot of people. The Zhuangzi studies already out there haven't understood him at all, have they? So I'm not about to give in. I want mine read, so the fakes are exposed.

Some publishers think my books are a bit niche, but some people very much want to publish them; one editor thought the writing was excellent and wanted to do it. There was no real risk, because I formally published a book after 2008 and nobody made trouble for the publisher or for me. But the leadership of this publisher calculated in advance that trouble might come, weren't sure what the propaganda department thinks of me, and wouldn't take any risk at all.

Freedom of speech is narrowing, but what makes me confident is that I studied history, and I think this is a countercurrent. History is the tide. As Sun Yat-sen said, 'the tide of history rolls on, mighty and vast; those who move with it flourish, those who resist it perish.' No countercurrent holds. The Qing court didn't want to give up power either, and in the end it fell. Mao Zedong wanted the Cultural Revolution to run forever on his terms, and when Deng Xiaoping took over he had to change course, because without the change China would have collapsed. In that sense history advances through the struggle of different forces. The Communist Party loves this line: the future is bright, the road is winding. Now it's my turn to say it.

I studied history, so I look at the whole long river of it, and I'm very confident. China's dependence on openness is now indispensable. Chinese rule depends on the economy, and Chinese economic growth depends on trade and connection with the world — raw materials, markets, technology. Close things up too far and those are cut, and once they're cut the economy collapses and the rule can't be sustained.

And with today's network technology you can always get through the blockade; whatever you want to see, you can see. That part doesn't worry me at all. Besides, turning a Little Pink into one of us is easy, while turning us into Little Pinks is impossible. When I taught in Hangzhou I had students in grades nine and ten read Li Shenzhi's Fifty Years of Storm and Change《风雨苍黄五十年》 — he was a Communist Party elder and wrote a piece of reflection — and they turned. Why do I have that kind of power? The power of the truth. So Little Pinks convert easily, and we don't convert at all.

Second, are there really that many Little Pinks online? I doubt it. Some are just wumao, the 50-cent commenters, who want to speak up and dress themselves as Little Pinks. So I don't think it's that frightening. And Chinese people with a bit of money take their children traveling all over the world; they see foreign things. People have gotten used to a car in every household and holidays across the country and abroad. In a few years, less than ten, they'll want a better car and a better life. Whatever you do, only an open society can be rich, right? A closed society cannot be rich. The moment you let their material life slip — Little Pink or not — the discontent arrives. 'I used to drive a Mercedes or a BMW, and now I can't drive at all.' However pink he is, he starts opposing you. I think that's the key factor."

Fan Meizhong and his family now live near Sansheng Township in Chengdu's Jinjiang District, also called "Sansheng Flower Township," the city's main flower-growing district, known for its scenery.

He, his wife and their two children live in an 80-square-meter apartment. He earns a living teaching online and tutoring children in Zhuangzi at home each week. The income is hardly steady, but in Chengdu it buys a modest sufficiency — "I wouldn't say I'm rich, but a basic life is relatively comfortable," he says.

Material things matter little to him, because even penniless he would still consider himself a cut above.

Sansheng Township is also called a paradise inside the Chengdu city limits.

"I've only really been in good shape these last few years. My bad state before had nothing to do with the earthquake. I used to live inside a very empty, very dark state, feeling life was meaningless, and that included 2008; I was still in it, because my metaphysical questions were unresolved. Even teaching at Guangya School I was not in good shape. I simply felt there was no point in living.

Two things changed it. One is family and children. I married in 2006, but after my second child arrived I was with him every day, and family life had a large effect. The other is that I read Zhuangzi all the way through, and it settled many of my metaphysical questions completely.

Before that I couldn't answer them because I hadn't come to know the truth. In Christian terms, it was not knowing Christ, not knowing God. For me it was being without the Dao. I belonged entirely to the self, shut inside my own ideas and my own inner life; the relation between you and the Dao, with truth, with heaven and earth and the universe, had not been reached.

It sounds abstract, but it's a real process in a life. Without that inner experience we're like a butterfly that never breaks out, bound in the cocoon it spun itself. I'm a person with very strong self-awareness. Self-awareness is an important stage of growth, but the self also closes and binds the self, while the health of the human mind rests on connection with all things — your relation to other people, your relation to nature.

Human beings became independent of nature and also came from nature; sever that relation and the spirit goes wrong. And humanity as a whole is a spiritual community as well. Lose a genuine relation with others — not a surface one, since being in the same company makes us a community of interest, not a real relation — and the spirit goes wrong too. That's why Christians go to church: to become a community under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, which is healthier. At bottom it means walking out of the self.

I've already written some readings of Zhuangzi. In 2013 I wrote more than 100,000 characters and had covered a tenth of it, then stopped, because my thinking and the reserves of my life were spent. Zhuangzi's thought is vast and deep; it is the core classic of Chinese culture. From 2013 until now, five years, I still haven't written, so I had to put it down. This isn't something I can carry on by reading a few monographs on Zhuangzi. Work like this depends on the growth of the soul and on lived experience. If my experience hasn't grown to a certain height, I can't keep writing, so I set it aside.

Five years is certainly not enough. In this fast-food age anyone can write an article a day, but I hold to high-quality writing. Write a poem and you may spend ten years waiting for it. Truly great poets spend ten years practicing, living and thinking for one poem. I dislike this era's fast food and low quality, so I hold to the quality of the writing. To me, one book in ten years is not low output at all. Some people write one book in twenty years, and it is the kind worth reading, the kind that survives once the noise dies down.

These three years since I resigned, my main occupation has been the children. My second child was born twenty-odd days after I quit.

My wife runs a home school and teaches our eldest at home; she's busy every day. One parent has to take charge, and my wife has basically never done the child-minding.

When I have time now I read a little and write a little, but there is very little time, because the children take too much of my energy, and the eldest is ten, so I often take him skating. Now and then someone invites me to give a talk, but not often. Many people want to invite me and don't dare, because a lot of people in education circles have long-standing worries. Even a principal who wanted to invite me was afraid someone would use it against him. Many people in education circles are still very stupid. Teachers are among the stupidest groups in this society, primary and secondary teachers especially, which is absurd.

I give a Zhuangzi lecture every week, and I gather a few children myself and teach them literary classics at home. I teach online as well; in the second half of last year I gave twenty Zhuangzi lectures online. This year they've asked me to run a reading group, to lead people through Dream of the Red Chamber, Tang and Song poetry, Lu Xun, Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

I don't feel financial pressure in Chengdu. Doing what I like doing suits me well.

Honestly, my income is a bit higher than it was at Guangya. There it was maybe a little over 9,000 yuan a month, perhaps 100,000 yuan for the year. Now I take on a few children and make tens of thousands of yuan a semester, plus talks and online teaching. Making that money is easy.

Of course income is a private matter. At least in Chengdu I live fairly easily, because the apartment is paid for. With two children I may have to trade up: I'd planned on two bedrooms and two living rooms, then the second child came and suddenly it doesn't feel like enough.

We're in a little over 80 square meters now. In two or three years I'd like to move to four bedrooms and two living rooms, around 120 square meters. It isn't a must. I have somewhere to live, and moving is no great pressure. At worst I sell this apartment and buy another, which would be more than enough.

For me, keeping basic life going should be very easy.

I have no plans this year. I probably won't take a job for the rest of my life. I certainly don't want full-time work again, because I've tasted freedom. I won't do the kind of work where you have to show up today.

I'm 45 now and my second child is three. When he turns 18 I'll be 60. I'd planned to drive to every county in China, combining historical geography with a road trip, but after he was born the plan was shelved. I may not finish it before I die, but it's still the plan.

And traveling the world: the ruins of the Roman Empire, the Amazon, the two poles — I still want to see them. I haven't been to the United States. American imperialism is worth a look. We know a lot from books, but we aren't like your generation; few of us went to university, and few have been to America."

Cover image and interior images from unsplash, sohu, rhschool, yikuaiqu, ifeng