The tune that has been stuck in my head lately is California Dreaming. The confused, clamorous period is finally over. The American-style fantasy of a life — growing wild, lurching left and right, never resting, never at peace, wandering everywhere — seems to be coming to an end. In the end you have to face a long, boundless life: a Cthulhu-like leviathan you have never once given your serious attention.
Yes — you are still young. There are too many temptations to sink into, too many setbacks to endure, too many moments of drifting in confusion, too much blazing feeling with nowhere to put it, too much deep melancholy with no one to tell it to, too strong a craving for fame, too much dread of the endless wilderness, too much contempt for the prosperous yet dead-quiet pigeon coops of the metropolis, too much deep remembrance of a hometown that is yellow as fallen leaves yet green as midsummer, unable to keep a secret. But all of this clamour will finally disperse. Life is not a pot of flame boiling forever; life is a savour worth slowly and repeatedly tasting; life is tidying up the room and quietly enjoying the artistic hour of leisure; life is earnestly making and treasuring friends, and speaking freely with those around you; life is really working hard, giving the profession that sustains you a commensurate share of your time.
Uh — I can’t keep this up. My details are still too thin. This whole historical-theological way of laying out scenes and moods really is infectious.
In homage to Gua Shu Di Luo La, legendary investigator of the American East
Trump has just finished his victory speech, in the assembly hall next to Mar-a-Lago.
Since July, the Republicans who helped Trump to victory have all taken the stage.
In his speech, Trump said he would make the Republican Party once again the "party of common sense for the people".
If America could still take the money idling in the financial system and put it back into manufacturing,
if America still had outstanding engineers and an industrial workforce that was no longer ageing,
if in America you could still see children on the roads of white neighbourhoods, and children playing freely in Black neighbourhoods were not abducted,
if America could manage all this without hurting the Black middle class that finally got rich in the 21st century, with cars and homes, living like human beings,
and at the same time could look after those unsung heroes who once shed their blood for this country, whatever ideology they hold;
if America had not collapsed in the middle of the country, if the towns around St. Louis were not littered with decay;
if America were not mired in two wars, Russia and Ukraine, Palestine and Israel;
if America had not, over a full twenty years, sent nearly a million people batch after batch to front lines far from home, to die meaninglessly — even clownishly — under snipers' fire and random shelling;
if America had not, by carelessly provoking regional powers, driven everyone in the world who loves peace, development and friendship to the opposite side,
then I would say: the joy and happiness of a Trump rally would be the beginning of America becoming great again. In that moment, this old man in his seventies might really be able to create something in American society.
But there is no "if".
It is my seeing white-haired old professors vow confidently that Harris would win easily;
it is my seeing reporters backed by the Democrats, at the scene of Trump's victory speech, broadcasting with great passion;
it is my seeing, in front of Washington Square, LGBT girls and pastors wailing for justice;
it is my seeing, in the disaster zone in Charlotte, the numbness and the anger of victims who spread rumours even as they suffer.
it is my seeing those young pro-Palestinian progressive students, ignored by everyone in their daily lives, living in disarray;
it is my seeing those dark-skinned brothers and sisters who serve people like air itself, and are ignored.
Some people are lovely, some are honest, some are full of wisdom, and some cannot even control their own emotions.
Trump's victory was never the end of the world. Americans are forever frightening themselves.
Trump may not know that there is a kind of bird in this world with no feet. All he knows is that, when he had JD Vance give a short victory remark,
he could no longer recall Howard Stern, could no longer recall the winner of the first season of *The Apprentice*, and could not even remember when he first met Ivana;
he probably also cannot recall what it felt like the first time he used money to work an American version of the miracle of Wang Duoyu courting Xia Zhu, and took Melania into his arms.
Can he still remember how he felt when his elder brother drank himself to death?
Can he still recall the scene of his father — before he ever set foot in commercial real estate — taking him hunting and fishing at White Plains?
From that America of the 70s and 80s that pulled itself out of the mud, the America that made Chinese people at the very beginning of Reform and Opening Up so envious and so astonished,
the America that China — poor and weak for a hundred years, standing up on its own independent strength — both feared and envied, has finally come to this point.
As we listen to a billionaire abandoned by his own circle, running off to preach "common sense" to ordinary people,
as we watch most mainstream media hosts visibly slacken, all talking at once, arguing over things they do not fully believe in their own hearts,
as we gradually get used to the sound of police sirens in the downtowns of big East Coast cities on a night like this — I very much want to ask one question: how are we to understand the America of today?
What are we to do with this pursuit — a century-long pursuit, no less — of taking America as our teacher?
For those who do not much like America, will they now draw their sword and look around, hearts at a loss?
For those who love America, will their defences break at this moment?
For those single-mindedly set on a decisive showdown with America, will they do the foolish thing of saying "here is a sword, now let us duel"?
And for those who worship America as a god, will they stoop to that abject posture of "please, please just go back to normal — I will do anything for that"?
How should we regard America's change at this moment? I do not know.
In the recorded sound, everyone hears confusion and noise.
In the city where I am, the great marches of 1967,
because of the passing of a great man, the whole city fell into a sea of fire.
That became a "fire of the phoenix" that let America rise reborn from the ashes — but the phoenix that was born was hollow long ago.
The death of the old America became the true character of the American empire's real rise.
They have bred, across the whole world, far too many people who are docile and settled, who ask nothing of the world, who numb themselves with entertainment,
and who at the same time, because of the ideology that inevitably comes attached to that entertainment, become the most steadfast enforcers and managers of this imperial system.
So much so that under this twisted imperial system, more and more people around the world fall mentally ill.
But in any case, America back then had the capacity to pull through. And now?
So at this very moment, for Americans, the long 1960s are over.
As for ordinary Americans, they should thank fate and their vague, insubstantial Creator for giving them a chance at redemption and a possibility of returning to glory.
But God never favours only one nation,
and for us ordinary people watching from the sidelines, perhaps only one question is left: "What's the date today? What time is it now? How much longer before you go?"
When you go, could you leave behind some lesson we can learn, so that we know you once came to this world?
Scipio Aemilianus’s reflection on the ruins of Carthage
This was once a great people, standing upon a vast land, commanding broad seas. And when danger came, they showed astonishing wisdom and courage, more resolute and more steadfast than many a vast empire, and yet they still could not escape destruction. Of the Assyrian, Persian and Macedonian empires that once blazed in history, which one could avoid such an end? I fear exceedingly that one day my own homeland, Rome, will meet the same fate.