Life is inherently meaningless, but how to get rid of nothingness is meaningful.

I graduated with a bachelor's degree in 1998 and was successfully admitted to graduate school. At that time, I was just a naive nerd, as pure as a high school student. I spent four years in a science and technology school like Tsinghua University that looked like a monk's temple. , the girl seems to be a tiger at the foot of the mountain, so mysterious that it makes me blush and my heart beats the moment I see her. What the future holds for me is "I'll tell you after I finish graduate school." Anyway, my grades are pretty good, and if I don't study, I won't study in vain. Pie in the sky, in the words of my brother. As Hong Kong marks the first anniversary of its return to the motherland, the Ministry of Education will select a group of undergraduate graduates to study at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology to strengthen education and scientific research exchanges between the two places. Of course, Tsinghua has to occupy a lot of places. Several talented people in the department went to the United States, so this cake fell on my head. It is indeed a good cake. There is no need to take G test, test, full scholarship, or even any other formalities. The school and the Ministry of Education took care of it, and I didn’t spend a penny. Later, the contact person at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology complained about the efficiency and cumbersome procedures in China. As for the troublesome process, I still don’t know anything about it.

Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

I came to Hong Kong in such a confused way. The University of Science and Technology, nestled between mountains and the sea, is as beautiful as a paradise, and its modern architecture is even more pleasing to our eyes. A buddy at the time said: "Damn it, it was made with money piled up in the barren mountains. Such material conditions make me satisfied." Later I learned that it was the most beautiful campus in Asia, but I didn't doubt it at all. It is said that the Hong Kong government felt that its advantages in trade and services were being challenged by China's coastal cities, and that technology was competitiveness, so it invested heavily in building this school and inviting scholars. It cost 40 billion Hong Kong dollars, equivalent to Microsoft's annual net profit. The organized visits, the professor's speeches, and the English training passed quickly, and the novelty and excitement at that time also faded away. Facing the green mountains and sea view every day, I finally became so numb that I couldn't feel anything. It can be inferred from this that there is not much point in marrying a beautiful wife, if it is not for showing off. Most of the professors are Chinese, with many from Taiwan and Mainland China. On the contrary, Hong Kong people are in the minority. Many of them got their PhDs from prestigious universities in North America. They come here for the high salaries. Their PhD titles are always linked to their names and photos. , study for a lifetime, of course Harvard and Stanford will be great. Full professors can get more than one million Hong Kong dollars a year, which is enough to buy a car a month, which is higher than the average American university. Knowledge is really valuable and fills us with yearning for the future. I once had dinner with professors and when we talked about the treatment of professors in mainland universities, they lamented: "Intellectuals are really being cheapened to a shameful level." We had nothing to say, and it was not my fault anyway. However, money is not easy to come by. Many teachers are in their early thirties and have not yet obtained the title of professor. They only have a few-year contract with the school. Other scholars are also constantly applying, so the pressure is quite high and the level of hard work is higher than that of company workers. Nothing less. Since it is important to do your own learning, training students must be put in the back row. Many teachers talked to us cordially when they first arrived, but then disappeared, and we no longer recognized them after not seeing them for a long time. Of course, graduate students have a mentor. As long as I don’t go to him, he will definitely not go to me. After class, I felt absolutely free, and it was very comfortable to be free.

Bernard Shaw said that there are two kinds of depression in life, one is that desire is not satisfied, and the other is that it is satisfied. This is indeed partly true. When I lived in this extremely beautiful place, where I could go to the store and buy things as I pleased without worrying about not being able to pay the bills, and spend my time as I pleased, in the first six months, I found that my mood was getting worse. Western architectural design takes the so-called privacy protection of individuals to the extreme. Once you enter the dormitory, you can hardly feel the presence of others. People in the same unit also have independent bedrooms. Everyone enters the room, closes the door, and is isolated. No one was too embarrassed to knock on the door. A group of people I met when I first arrived later found that I couldn't meet them at all, and they seemed to have disappeared. Living together was an uncle-like figure in his thirties. He could occasionally say a word or two, but he could never say much. Everyone seems to be living in different spaces doing research, and they are so busy that they don’t take care of others.

To be fair, for a mature researcher, if he has definite goals and interests, no longer has unrealistic illusions about life, and is ready to devote himself to scientific research, then this is really a good environment. . But as a young kid with blank eyes, I had a completely different feeling. The feeling of confusion and depression is really indescribable. I couldn't find anyone to play with, so I just opened and closed the windows, closed and opened them again, and kept drinking water, but I still felt uncomfortable. I miss the days when we would hang out with each other in the dilapidated buildings of Tsinghua University, and I miss the days when people would gather in the corridors just by shouting while holding a basketball, but nostalgia cannot solve the problem. It is a test to enter a mature and rigorous environment with a child's mentality.

After years of hard training in utilitarian education, I came along smoothly and found that I was completely fooled. After I successfully passed the exams again and again, I finally didn't know why I had to pass these exams that took up a lot of time in my life. This so-called outstanding student was just paralyzed by constantly trying to conform to the external standard of "excellence." My own vanity, but my true self has never existed or developed. None of the courses I took could help me solve my problems at the time, so what was the point of studying those differential equations every day? Are you still going for your parents’ smiles and people’s approval? The Tsinghua graduates who receive scholarships every year turn out to be such a monster: they don’t know what they want, and they don’t know what life is. They have no contact with society. They are in their early twenties, but they feel uncomfortable when meeting girls, and they know how to solve all kinds of problems. Various equations, but they can't solve my confusion. The road to master's and doctorate is right in front of me, but I don't know if I should continue like this. Is this state what I want? A person with a fairly good IQ becomes like this after years of hard work? This is a problem that has existed for a long time, but it was exposed too late. I believe that this problem will still be faced by many junior brothers and sisters. I believe that there are still many students like me in Tsinghua. When I see them discussing innocently: G 2***, TOK 6**, GPA 3.*, school ranking Top **, it seems that several years of hard work are just for a few numbers, and the ultimate goal in life is to go abroad. I can't help but worry about them. This is also the main reason that prompted me to write this article.

Many people have no real interest in doing research, but they spend all their energy to get an opportunity to do scientific research abroad, and they are filled with unconcealable joy, and they even have no real plan for life. If you don’t know anything about your own interests and go abroad for the sake of going abroad, you will have to face the beginning of depression after bidding farewell to your parents and fellow villagers. Students in Hong Kong are very practical. Most of them go out to make money after graduating from college and struggle to get married and buy a house in their thirties. If you tell a Hong Kong person that you are still studying for a Ph.D. at the age of twenty-eight, he will think that you are a failure. Will make money. The Hong Kong students who stay to study for Ph.D.s are those who really like to do research and do things in a down-to-earth manner. Their seriousness puts to shame our group of mainland students who are distracted and distracted.

Living in Hong Kong

It is said that Hong Kong is a small place. In fact, the area of ??more than 1,000 square kilometers is not small, but it is mostly mountains and there are not many places available. Many commercial areas were built in Tianhai. With a subtropical climate and a place full of mountains and bays, the scenery is certainly beautiful. Hong Kong's climate is 10,000 times more comfortable than Beijing's. It's not too cold in winter, not too hot in summer, and there's no obvious sense of four seasons. It’s just that the weather was a little damp in the first half of the year. There is a wet feeling all day long, which is a bit intolerable for northerners. The transportation in Hong Kong is extremely developed. The buses are never crowded and there are rarely traffic jams. However, the roads in Hong Kong are much narrower than those in Beijing, and there are no fewer cars. The layout and management are just better. It seems that Beijing is becoming international. Still have to work hard. This is a veritable shopping paradise, and things are not too expensive. Electrical appliances and clothing may be cheaper than in Beijing, especially international famous brands. Since there are no tariffs, they are definitely cheaper than in mainland China. So you don’t have to bring a lot of clothes, it’s cheap enough. However, services such as meals and haircuts, which involve employee labor and land rent, are several times more expensive than in mainland China.

Being able to travel to and from Shenzhen at will is also a major advantage of being in Hong Kong. You can easily go back and forth several times a day. Students studying in Hong Kong can enter and leave the country freely as soon as they get a Hong Kong temporary identity card and a stamp on their passport.

People often ask about Hong Kong film and television stars, but when I arrive in Hong Kong, I feel that those people are just wage earners, and behind them are more influential bosses. Once the bosses no longer want to support them, the stars will disappear quickly. New people will take their place. Seeing them singing and dancing hard is actually a necessity for survival. In the business society, it is an absolute driving force. Hong Kong's financial and information services are quite developed, and they are quite outstanding in the so-called first world. You can enjoy credit cards, telecommunications, and Internet services very cheaply. Therefore, some people are not used to it when they come back after staying in Hong Kong for a long time. The main reason is that In these aspects, there are of course other software reasons such as systems.

When it comes to school life, the material conditions are better than any domestic university, and even better than many schools in the United States. Hong Kong students rarely go to boarding schools, so the school is very deserted during weekends. Mainland students usually have exclusive access to school facilities, huge computer rooms, sports fields, and comfortable swimming pools, and they have many good memories there. The conditions of the student dormitories are good, and you can cook. It is cheaper than eating in the restaurant, so mainland students will never tire of it. They often gather in groups on weekends and enjoy eating. There are both Chinese and Western food in the restaurant. The Chinese food is mainly Cantonese. When you are busy, nutrition is the most important thing. If the taste is not right, you can only make do with it.

There are not many mainland students in Hong Kong now. There are about four to five hundred people in total. Each school has a student fraternity, which is a relatively loose organization and there are some opportunities to make friends. Movie screenings and dance parties are organized on weekends. When exams or papers are approaching, no one is in the mood for activities. Hong Kong students are easy to deal with. People who grew up in a mature society have a relatively simple and fun mentality. Unlike some mainland students who often over-plan their future and push themselves to the point of exhaustion. They are also gradually becoming interested in the mainland, although they often don't know about Hunan and Sichuan, and can only talk about Qin Shihuang and Mao Zedong. As long as you take the initiative to communicate with them, you can make many friends. Cantonese is not a barrier. Many people can understand Mandarin. Moreover, Cantonese is not difficult to learn, and you can make a lot of progress if you don't pay attention.

About job opportunities

Many people finally jumped to North America, and most of them continued their studies. In this sense, Hong Kong is just a springboard. There are not many job opportunities in Hong Kong. It would be beneficial to understand this on the first day you enter Hong Kong. There are also those who have returned to their motherland, and I am, so I am writing an article here. I saw many friends asking about studying in Hong Kong. As someone who has been there, I wrote this. If I can provide these friends with some useful information, I will be very satisfied. .

Last time I wrote an article and published it in the overseas student edition. Many friends wrote back to me and gave me great encouragement. I really never thought that my things would have an impact on others. The experience of studying abroad has taught me a lot. It is almost a process of rebirth. It is impossible to cover it all in one article, so I will write a sequel. Hollywood only makes sequels to make money. I have no intention of doing anything. , in case ppmm comes to me after reading it, it would be the best thing. I can expose every bit of "nasty" in my heart and talk about it happily.

Everything is empty

People from developing countries inevitably have a little more tension in their expressions, especially Chinese students studying abroad. There was no smile coming from the heart, and even the conversation seemed to have only one topic: What are your plans for the future? Every time you do something, ask yourself: Is it good for me?

To be frank, I was like this when I first arrived in Hong Kong. I just felt so helpless and rootless in a foreign country. I had to work hard and never waste any of my energy. The house, A car, reputation, status, and a beautiful wife, I want everything. I have to learn the things that can bring me the most benefit and do the things that are most beneficial to me until I succeed.

I was such a typical utilitarian at that time, and I still want to scold myself for it.

Mathematics points out that the maximum value of a function is often obtained at the most unstable point. People who pursue extremes will lose their inner balance. Then it will not be difficult to realize the profound mathematical principles. I quickly pushed my utilitarian mentality to the point of no return. I doubted what I learned and worried that I would become a nerd. I had no confidence in myself, could not find true friends, and could not find the fun that calms my body and mind. My heart is ups and downs every day. Finally I went to the student counselor. I won’t mention the stupid complaints, but I remember that there was a smile on his bearded face, and a tolerant and gentle light shone in his eyes. He told me that he found me interesting and it was the first time he had met such a frank student. "What's the point of those things? You doubt it very well." Then he took out the Bible and read certain chapters to me.

Everything is meaningless. It is actually a word from the Bible. That was the most shocking sentence I have ever seen, and it was also the most profound sentence I felt later. It is difficult for Chinese people to understand, and for Chinese students who have been nurtured in utilitarian education and lack personality education, it is like a bolt from the blue. Grades, offers, degrees, all kinds of benefits, what’s the point of calculating things every day? What would happen to the world if you died suddenly? The world will be just as gorgeous, the earth will rotate just as fast, and the solar system will change its position in the universe every day. The sea is still the sea, the waves are still waves, the same flowers bloom and fall, the tide ebbs and flows. Your relatives may shed tears, but the people around you will completely forget you within three months. Those are the people you once cared so much about what they think of you. If God exists, in his eyes, you are such a pitiful little bug. You have never been happy in the short years of your life, and in your most beautiful youth. The little thing about relationships is just out of lack of confidence in the future. On a day when the little mind is close to being extinguished, it still makes that stupid voice, the voice that keeps you busy and worries you: I want it, I want it too. The world is full of such little bugs. When one leaves, another one comes, doing the same thing, having the same little thoughts, and suffering the same torture. Then God lamented: vanity of vanity, everything is vanity. What has been done will be done again; what has been done will be done again. There is nothing new under the sun.

The past generations will not be remembered by anyone; the generations to come will not be remembered by those who follow.

------Ecclesiastes in the Old Testament

I was not preaching, and the counselor at the time was not preaching, but it made me immediately see my own insignificance and materialism. The vanity of pursuit, the foolishness of heart. Look at the student tutoring in capitalism. Isn’t it much better than what we have here? What has Ma Zhe helped us?

Don't worry

"Don't worry about tomorrow. The birds in the sky will not harvest if they don't plow, but God will feed them. The lilies of the field never worry about whether they can grow or not. Can it bloom as beautifully as others, but it blooms naturally, and it blooms more beautifully than the pearls on Solomon's crown. What are you worried about? People are much more precious than birds and lilies. God will. Ignore you? "

A friend told me that when he was waiting for an offer from a college in the United States, he often dreamed of receiving an offer from a college in the United States. He was so excited that he woke up and became even more depressed. He sighed, "I hope I will stay drunk forever." Never wake up again". Everyone will not be too surprised to hear such a story, so it is not difficult to understand the success in "The Scholars". People who get offers often have to experience more waking up moments when they go overseas.

Why is life so tiring? Life is so beautiful that even birds and wild flowers can enjoy God's gifts to their heart's content. However, these smart people with advanced thinking only let their thinking make them look depressed and sigh.

People often lament that Westerners smile so real and from the heart. When discussed, it comes down to the fact that they are richer and their society is more developed. But I don't think that's the reason. The reason is that they are closer to birds and wild flowers than Chinese students, and closer to the mentally retarded people in "Forrest Gump".

They are more naive and believe that the Almighty God will never abandon them, so they can think less about many problems, live more smoothly, and behave more cohesively in the team, because excessive selfishness cannot be shared by everyone. According to God, they can quickly create a Microsoft and a Dell, but you can look at Peking University Founder, Lenovo, and Sina in China. The management has more earthquakes in a year than Taiwan. Over the years, they have even rushed out of Asia. None of his ambitions were truly realized. Isn’t this the benefit that God brings to Westerners? Jesus said that you can be saved if you believe in me. Regardless of whether this God is virtual or not, he has actually filled a huge gap in human nature. Microsoft has proved his existence. Just like the virtual memory of a computer, although it is virtual, it actually plays a huge role. Chinese students always doubt whether this invisible God exists, and even privately ask, can he bring any benefit to me? In fact, the Chinese people don’t believe in anything but the benefits. Ever since the test of eight-part essays in ancient times, reading has been just for the benefits. Therefore, everyone lives in the melancholy of fear of no benefit every day, trying to seek benefits in the huge world system by relying on their own small thinking. God endured the tears and turned his back.

The helplessness of thinking

I do not advocate nihilism, although I tried my best to point out the vanity of material pursuits in my previous article.

As Sartre believed, life is inherently meaningless, but how to get rid of nothingness is meaningful. Wang Shuo's significance lies in smashing the meaningless false sublime, and Woody Allen's significance lies in constantly pointing out the absurdity of life. If everything is so ridiculous, how can we face 24 hours a day? But living is so simple, it is just a process, happening simply and naturally, so that any interference and attention are superfluous. Just like birds flying across the sky, wild flowers bloom quietly. Can you call anything now? Can you possess something? The meaning of everything lies only in the flow of time. Just like a fire, the burning process is called fire. Once the process stops, fire no longer exists. Human thinking is causing trouble. It is a two-sided thing. It does not always bring us benefits, although we have so much confidence in it. Thinking seriously interferes with the natural life process many times. It wonders whether a single state is good, worthwhile, conforms to the norm, and what it can bring to ourselves. Therefore, we quickly become unhappy and unstable. He could no longer enjoy that natural joy. Just like the person being photographed, his expression immediately became unnatural. The ghosts in horror movies may never appear, but people begin to chatter their teeth because they are tortured by their own thoughts. Friends who study computer science must know what it means when the operating system suspends a process. Why does human beings' stupid thinking need to be permanently resident in memory? How many problems has it really solved over such a long period of operation? Why not hang it when necessary and enjoy the nature of life? Understanding this will change your life. Thinking will make you fall into contradictions. Many times it is redundant. It is enough to experience it with your heart or even feel it with your pores. When you no longer judge, no longer distinguish, no longer compare, no longer weigh, you will immediately become harmonious. "Picking chrysanthemums under the eastern fence, you can leisurely see Nanshan Mountain." At that time, what else do you need to consider? "There is true meaning here, but I have forgotten the words when trying to argue." Even words are redundant, because words come from thinking. The Buddha's twisted smile and peaceful expression, even though he was sitting quietly, seemed to have leaped over everything in the world. He was sitting on the foundation of life, and there was no longer any disharmony.

When I was studying, I often went to the beach to listen to the roar, sit down and watch the sun set. That would be the best time of my day. When the sun went down, the sunset gradually faded away, but the waves were still gentle. As I slap the shore, the curtains surround me from all sides. In the silence, joy rises in my soul, and I feel the eternal power in the dark. It is hugging me tightly, and everything in the world is with me. , also held gently, I will never be alone, never sad, never despair, because the power has always been there, will always be there, I am its gift, my soul has never been the same as then The branches and leaves are luxuriant, and my heart has never been as peaceful and harmonious as it was then.

I don’t need to distinguish that kind of power, whether it is God, heaven, or the Tao taught by Lao Tzu, what does it matter? Discrimination is just a stupid thing the mind does. All minds are the same, so I believe that everyone has that harmonious state, just like the radio has that channel, but too many people have not tuned it. The sun, the sea, the breeze and the bright moon, the singing of birds and the fragrance of flowers, and the endless growth of species are such great gifts. We can only feel them in our short life, but too many people never think about them. They have given all of themselves to their pitifully few brain cells, and their souls to that poor CPU, making narrow calculations and judgments all the time, so they will struggle and be anxious for a long time, only seeing 85 points and 85 points. The difference between 90 points, the difference between a monthly salary of 5,000 yuan and an annual salary of 100,000 yuan, the difference between a good school and a bad school. So words like "depressed", "shameless", "unlucky", "unhappy" and "anxious" began to pop up on our lips, just like the error messages on broken computers.

I didn’t plan to write much more. Inquiring into the fundamentals of life is already a heavy subject. It just makes students who have a lot of studies doubt themselves and add to their worries. It's better to say more funny things and laugh a little more every day. Not long ago, I met a girl from Peking University and said that the previous article I introduced about Hong Kong was very practical, but the subsequent articles became increasingly difficult to understand. It is understandable that not everyone thinks about these issues like me, especially As a girl, if she says "very good" and "so warm" a few times a day, she will be living a good life. There has never been a female philosopher in ancient and modern times, both at home and abroad. However, this student from Peking University whom I have never met is waiting for my sequel. Thank you, xmdl (A Bianyu), I don’t want to disappoint you. This article is written for you.

The girl mentioned in the humanities book we read asked me what was the biggest gain from studying abroad. My answer was that I gained more knowledge. Just like someone who has been in a small place for a long time and comes out to see the sea, the harvest is huge. So I gradually learned a true attitude of humility, and more and more recognized that what I can understand and realize is only a small part of this world. There is too much space outside the scope of my brain. From this point of view, each of us has too much pride in ourselves, and we do more or less stupid things every day, arguing about blind men and elephants. controversy.

I think a lot of the humanistic literacy of students at Tsinghua and Peking University comes from the humanities books in the library, because most students who like reading bring books back there to read. But those books were mostly produced in the 1970s and 1980s, and they were basically eunuch-style books castrated by a knife named Ma. I am not afraid of offending people. How to castrate? For example, "Generally speaking, religion is an idealistic and wrong worldview, which is used by the ruling class to paralyze the majority of the people of the ruled class..." From now on, if you know this, why don't you read Sakyamuni and Jesus? , reading Lao Zhuang, I feel like a eunuch with a strange yin and yang. In the red years, the saber was invincible, including Confucius to Sun Yat-sen, from Zeng Guofan to Chiang Kai-shek, but few could escape because they had "class limitations."

But when I arrived in Hong Kong, I saw a lot of books from Taiwan and a lot of books from Hong Kong. It turns out that these books are not like those written by eunuchs. They are not even less masculine than books with the surname Ma. They can be read to make people forget. Food, hey, pity them for being castrated. These were all things that were beyond my mind before, so I immediately knew that I had to be humble. People are always greatly limited by their experiences and environments. They don’t even realize that they are restricted and isolated without choice.

As for Jesus, from our perspective, he was a complete failure. He had no wife, no son, no house, no property, no status. In the end, he had to be crucified. He just wandered around. When helping people who are suffering, he always sees the outside of the world with his spare vision, because he has also been to higher dimensions.

Zhuangzi still seems to be the most romantic and free-spirited Chinese. He is synonymous with detachment, and he is also an ant in high-dimensional space.

Read them and experience the shock of wisdom from another dimension. Although you may not be able to change the helpless reality, you can profoundly change yourself. Although you cannot get rid of the heavy body, you still have no choice. The earth lives on a flat surface, but the mind is free. Willing to raise your soul?

Everyone is unique, and we can only be ourselves. As Rousseau said, I am insignificant to the whole world, but I am everything to myself. In fact, we are only important to ourselves. If I die, few people will keep their memory of me in three years. If I am in pain, few people will have real sympathy, because it is too difficult and everyone cannot Understand my consciousness. Therefore, we must be independent. To live is to be ourselves, the unique self, to find the inner perfection and harmony, to realize the sentence without choice: I am who I am. Simply because I am not and can not be anyone else. But when we are educated, the purpose of education is to teach us to forget ourselves and become a standard person, isn't it? From elementary school onwards, we have to evaluate the three good things, set a model, learn from Lei Feng, and learn from Lai Ning. Teachers always see our bad habits and ask, "You are not in line with the behavioral norms. Isn't it shameful?"

How much more freedom are we when we get to college? We still look at others, models, and so-called successful people. We still live surrounded by standards that require us to forget ourselves. When we go to BBS, it seems that everyone has the same tone. GRE 2400, got an offer from a cattle school, and signed a famous university. A foreign company found ppmm, awesome, envious, and cool. History has reached the 21st century, and the people of Peking University and Tsinghua University have only one face left. They recruit many new students every year, and only one is left.

Is the comparison meaningful? As a unique being, as the master of everything, why do you have to compare everything with others to find meaning? Why do I have to take the G test when others take it? Why am I depressed if I can't get 2200? Why do I have to learn computer science when Billgates is successful? But how different we are from others, can these differences be easily ignored driven by some desires?

Is worship meaningful? Do celebrities need to be pursued like that? Does China's bad team need so much attention?

When we pour our hope into it, they make more money, live more arrogantly, and disappoint us even more. We are giving love to the rich. There is so much love, why not give it to us? To give more people who need love, why not give it to yourself, your unique self?

When we worship ourselves, love ourselves, pursue ourselves, and pay attention to ourselves, we will all become stars. In this way, blind obedience will not happen, and heckles will not happen