I identify with the China of Ba Jin (巴金), the China of Lao She (老舍), the China of Fu Lei (傅雷), writers who paid with love or their lives for the words they thought mattered. I don't know who killed that China: Was it Mao's 1984 or Deng's Brave New World? Or perhaps I am grasping at ghosts as they all once did.

I don't know if I have the fraction of courage they had, even though some consider them to have compromised for most of their lives.

I also don't find much solace in the "Western" Internet and the Chinese Internet, which both seem filled with shallow consumerism, short video prompts, and are partly engineered to favor state power and surveillance. I know there are communities of people in both the "West" and China that choose learning over conformity, insight over performance - but it's hard to find that. Perhaps, one day, a Nostr with enough usage and bridging between communities can bring that feeling again.

读书人手无缚鸡之力，却天生傲骨，敢以死明志