There may always be such an "Old Song" around us.
He may be sitting in the cubicle next to you, he may exist in the corner of a family dinner, or even, in some moments when we don't want to look directly, he is a vague reflection of ourselves in the mirror.
This is a story about "self-deception" and "spiritual victory". The protagonist, Section Chief Song, is an allegory for the little people of our time. He used handwritten "achievement lists" to carefully weave lies one after another, and the primary audience and most devout believer of these lies was himself. He disguised "junior major" as "graduate student", boasted "archivist" as "core supervisor", and cleverly interpreted all rejections and failures as the shallowness of the world and the tragedy of his own unappreciated talents.
There is a battered copy of "The True Story of Ah Q" on his desk, which is undoubtedly a huge metaphor. Mr. Lu Xun's Ah Q used the "spiritual victory method" to struggle to survive in numbness; while our old Song Dynasty practiced this method into the information age - he used expired chocolate, absurd blind dates, and wanton tampering with past love history to continue to feed his illusory and huge self-esteem.
Intent: To satirize contemporary success studies, academic worship, bureaucracy, and the marriage and love market