I have written many observations and reflections through the framework of mìnglǐ (命理), or Chinese metaphysics. It’s a method—an extra lens for reading the world and the self. I find it acceptable, sometimes elegant, but I never approached it with spiritual ambition.

What passes down in our traditional culture is often not essence, but debris. The parts that now thrive are rarely the finest. That’s not only due to cultural thresholds, but also pressure, distortion, and fear. The harder it becomes to speak, the more only the convenient or corrupted voices remain.

We are the mother-tongue exiles. This shared awareness has often made me question myself.

Was I writing out of principle, or out of fear?

Publishing in Chinese—regardless of topics—the first question was always:
“Is this safe?”

I felt myself dissolving into my narratives. Every word grew bent under pressure. Every sentence, a small, desperate act of survival.

And I cared.
I cared too much—because this fatigue might shape my entire destiny.

Mu Kexin was a fifth-grade student in Changzhou, Jiangsu Province.
On June 4th, 2020, after her Chinese class, she climbed over a fourth-floor railing and fell to her death.

Her family later released a note: her final essay had been criticized by her teacher. The assignment was a review of The Monkey King Fights the White Bone Demon. The teacher, known for gaslighting and bullying her students, told her to “focus on a concrete example.”
She then wrote in red pen across the top: “Convey positive energy.”
Mu Kexin refused. She didn’t rewrite the essay. She leapt—to defend her voice.

Her death remains the most devastating moment of clarity I’ve experienced in recent years.
She was still a child—and yet already, she was forming her own beliefs through her writing.
But she, too, had tasted what it means to be in exile from one’s own language—
and she had tasted it too soon, too deeply.

She simply had a perspective.
She held to her interpretation of a story.
She was clever, radiant, brave.
And for that, she died.

In such a system, how could we not be a society of the illiterate?

The greatest form of filial piety (xiào, 孝) seems to be the suppression of the self.
Be obedient. Be considerate. Don’t think too much. Don’t stand out.

That’s what parents tell you.
That’s what society expects from you.

We even have a word for when a child begins to resist this pressure: “rebellious phase”.

But what we call rebellion is simply the first emergence of a self.
Children begin to recognize that there’s an entire sky behind the curtain,
and that they, too, can choose its color.

Teachers and parents cry out in grief:
“You’ve changed!”
“You’re not obedient anymore!”
“You’ve hurt everyone by becoming a person!”

That childlike self is very much like the branch mǎo (卯): a luminous green plant—deep-rooted, pure, gentle, honest,
carrying a dauntless momentum.

The first stirrings of independence are always precious. They are not a flaw, but the most radiant part of any human life.

Most of us didn’t become ourselves in childhood.
We were not allowed.
We’ve spent the rest of our lives searching—
through books, through silence, through pain.

And even now, the landscape is barren.
We speak in tongues we no longer believe.
We build “culture” atop collapsed syntax.
Tyrant dreams of conquest and nationhood, when their people cannot even find wholeness within their own speech.

The opposite of extremity is not balance.
It is another extremity, not yet seen. Even I may be a prophet.

I wish us luck.