Xiping Monument

Three years ago in the Forest of Steles in Xi'an, I stood in front of the remaining stones of the "Xiping Stone Classic". The stone cracked into several pieces, and the official script was broken like broken bones. The commentator said that what Cai Yong established was copied outside the Imperial Academy and the world copied it. It was the first official version and the first time the words were locked with stones. The old man next to him shook his head: "It can't be locked. Within a few years, Dong Zhuo burned down Luoyang." I thought, the monument was broken and the words were flying, where did they go? Scattered into ashes, or buried in the bones of future generations, waiting to be awakened? So there is Lin Mo. A scholar who studies ancient books has a bad stomach and has ink on his fingers. The world he fell into was full of characters - hundreds of schools of thought were able to fight, Buddhas and demons fought for copyright, and classics were added and deleted. What he brings is not the system, but the contract, copyright statement, pinyin, and punctuation. These are common in modern times, but under the "word is magic power", each one has the right to define. Buddhists say you plagiarize, demons say you are inefficient, Confucians say you are messy, and Taoists say you are meddlesome. Does it look like your hot search? Copyright, algorithms, tradition, and innovation all grow new meat under the shell of myth. Don't think of Datong as a utopia. The stele reads "Everything in the world has its own characters". I want to say: everyone has the right to speak. Contention is not chaos, monopoly is the disease. Great Harmony is not about a thousand people singing at the same time, but a thousand people singing individually and still listening to each other. It is written to all those who write, to those who copy tablets, those who write keyboards, and those who argue in the comment area. Don't be afraid of making mistakes or being refuted. Every word of yours will be debated for five thousand years. The broken characters on the stele changed, and if they were written down, they would become Datong. ——Author Early autumn 2026