To understand a society, you cannot look at just one class—you must examine multiple classes and observe their development over decades.
There is a British documentary called *The Up Series* (originally *7 Up*), which is Zhou You’s favorite. This documentary was created by a British director, selecting 14 children from the upper, middle, and lower classes. It began filming when they were around seven years old, revisiting them every seven years, all the way until they turned 63.
The first time Zhou You watched this documentary, he was still in college. After finishing it, his entire worldview shifted. A person’s life was condensed into just a few hours. Watching it, a sense of melancholy rose within him: *Wild geese leave cries behind, people leave names behind. No matter what, they have a visual record preserved in this world. But what about me? What will I leave behind?*
No matter how much time passes, this documentary will endure in the history of film—or rather, in society itself. Thinking about it, if he had no wealth and lived like an ant every day, what would be the meaning? What would be the joy?
Now that he had such an opportunity, could he afford to waste his time?
With nothing to do today, he rewarded himself by revisiting *The Up Series*.
*Dragons beget dragons, phoenixes beget phoenixes, and a mouse’s son knows how to dig holes.* This is an old Chinese saying, but it holds true worldwide. A person’s class at birth determines their future and which class they will end up in.
Since the documentary was filmed every seven years, Zhou You watched it every few years. Each time, his insights were different. As he grew older and gained more life experience, his understanding deepened. Life always has an invisible rope manipulating you. That rope is called fate.
The Chinese say: *Accept your fate.*
Zhou You used to not believe in fate, but after struggling and fighting in society for so long, after countless attempts to defy destiny and countless failures, he ended up battered and bruised. Eventually, he had no choice but to reconcile with society and with himself. The way he reconciled was by accepting his fate.
*Everything is determined by fate, with nothing left to human will.*
Seeing Neil reminded him of himself. The middle class is the most anxious and the most pitiable. Their ability to bear risks is very low. One wrong step, and their class status slips. They appear to be the backbone of society, but in reality, they are just the filling in a sandwich.
The upper class rarely falls, and the lower class rarely rises, so they almost never experience anxiety or unease.
In *The True Believer*, it mentions the disenchanted. Who are the disenchanted? They are people who cannot find satisfaction in real life. Our first instinct is to think of those at the bottom of society. But in truth, the strongest sense of disillusionment comes from those who once had something and then lost it. The lower class never had anything to begin with, so there is no loss.
Take that joke, for example: two peasants fantasize that the emperor plows with a golden hoe, eats from a golden bowl, and has two steamed buns per meal. Pitiful, isn’t it?
In *The Up Series*, when people drop out of school or make mistakes, those from the upper class have a strong ability to recover—they have resources to patch things up and eventually get back on track. But those from the middle class slide straight down, ending up at the bottom of society.
Education is still the way out for ordinary people. Nick is the only one in the series who achieved class mobility, moving from the bottom to the middle class, eventually immigrating to the United States and becoming a university professor. Nick was thoughtful even as a child. In the documentary, his speech was very mature. When talking about a field trip, he said: *I think people are ridiculous. They like coming to the muddy countryside. Not me—I want to go to the city, where it’s clean and bright.*
There were also those with ambitions higher than the sky but a fate thinner than paper.
Lynn, from the lower class, came across in the video as someone with strong opinions and a fierce sense of pride. She worked at a mobile children’s library, handling book loans for kids. Zhou You instinctively felt a closeness to people in her line of work. If Lynn had had a good education, she might have been able to continue her studies. But her pride ended up hurting her. Her life seemed full of unfulfilled ambitions, yet she wanted others to respect her, forcing herself to keep going. She lived a bit twisted and died at 58.
Zhou You felt he was the same kind of person as Lynn—unwilling to seek others’ sympathy, with a strong sense of pride. Even though he knew class differences existed, he didn’t believe he was inferior. He lived a bit twisted too.
The most carefree person in the series was Tony. He grew up in London’s East End, the lowest of the low—rude, ill-mannered, and prone to fighting. As a child, he dreamed of becoming a jockey. The most失落 time in his life was when that dream shattered. Back then, he looked nothing like his childhood self—listless, as if he had become much quieter. But after accepting his fate, Tony was still Tony. He became as carefree as he was as a child—that boy who fell down, got up, and kept running. His life was colorful in its own way. Even though he ended up driving a taxi, he remained as free and natural as ever.
*At three, you see the child; at seven, you see the adult.* In a stable era, there is some truth to that.
Watching them go from children to young adults to old age, he couldn’t help but think of Dangnian Mingyue’s final story about Xu Xiake in *Those Ming Dynasty Things*:
From a worldly perspective, Xu Hongzu was a strange man. He didn’t take the imperial exams, didn’t seek an official position, didn’t settle down and start a family. By many people’s standards, he was a failure.
I know many will say that this kind of life is absurd, unconventional, abnormal, missing a screw, mentally troubled.
I think those who say such things have eaten too much and have nothing better to do. You only live once. How you live is your own business. If you’ve muddled through your own life without living it well, and then have the nerve to criticize others, then get lost—as far away as possible.
Before this, I’ve talked about many things—many rises and falls, many kings and generals, many inevitable changes, many shifting winds and clouds. But this one thing, in my opinion, is the most important.
Because I want to tell you that so-called eternal glory, lasting fame, and everything else—it’s all just dirt. First it becomes dung, then it becomes soil.
If you don’t understand now, you will in the future. If you don’t understand in the future, wait for another future. If you never understand in your whole life, that’s fine too.
And this thing I’m finally talking about—it surpasses all of the above, at least in my view.
But I thought about it for a long time and couldn’t find the exact words or phrases to express it. In the most infuriating way to put it, it can only be sensed, not explained.
Yet I’m not that infuriating after all. After reading through countless books and still finding no words, I finally came across a fitting phrase in an unremarkable, seemingly worthless reading material.
It was a desk calendar—one that had been sitting in front of me for who knows how long, never flipped through, long expired.
I know that heaven placed this calendar on my desk. It watched my daily efforts over the years, my persistent perseverance. It waited quietly, patiently, for the end.
It waited for the day when it would all be over, when I would finally open this calendar that had accompanied me all along but had never been opened. On it would be the final answer.
I opened it. On this calendar was written a quote from a famous person, without even making clear who that person was.
Yes, this is what I wanted to say. This is what I wanted to express through Xu Xiake—a closing statement that can look down on all kings and generals, the most perfect one:
*Success is only one thing—to live your life in your own way.*
New book, new author—curious to know where my readers found this book?