The Light-Plated Gap

That day, I just finished a long meeting. There is still the astringency of coffee between the lips and teeth, as well as the invisible dust after the verbal exchange. I stood in front of the glass window and looked at the traffic below like a silent river. At that moment, a huge sense of strangeness seized me. We wear well-pressed clothes and speak beautiful words, but what is going on inside is the oldest fight. This jungle made of steel, glass and virtual signals is no different from the wilderness thousands of years ago. Then they came. Wei Linna, Chen Guoming, Li Jing, Zhang Jiawei... They are like shadows rising from the deep pool of memory, and their outlines gradually become clearer. They are me and they are not me. She is the woman in the conference room with her makeup intact, but her fingernails dug into her palms; she is the middle-aged man holding an old tea cup, with fatigue and insight hidden in his eyes; it is the young man who once believed in light, but is now looking for meaning in reports and data; it is the genius who lives in a pure world built by his own code and is ignorant of the world. If you are reading them, maybe you can catch a glimpse of your own reflection at a certain moment. What I write is not about winning or losing, but what kind of lice are crawling underneath the gorgeous robe of rules. It's how the transparent glass of ideals breaks out into lines in the corners of reality. When numbers become the yardstick for measuring everything, when the right to speak becomes a new weapon, people's hearts are still swirling in those eternal propositions - desire, fear, perseverance, and loss. Wei Linna's determination, Chen Guoming's silence, Qin Hai's dealings, Li Jing's fission, Zhang Jiawei's alienation... These seemingly opposite choices may all live in your body and mine at the same time.