Lin Song was often criticized for not doing housework. “Sigh, when it comes to anything, you just can’t rely on others.” “Tonight, you’re making your own dinner.” “Believe it or not, I’ll spill the coffee in your cup! All you know how to do every day is make coffee for yourself.”
When Lin Song was little, the leftovers on the table had to be covered with gauze food covers to keep the flies away. The now-extinct fly swatter was once a must-have in every home; almost everyone had one.
The fly is an insect highly adapted to cohabiting with the human environment. Flies in the wild, due to an excess of natural predators, have already evolved into another species. Humans and flies have lived under a common social structure for thousands of years, never abandoning one another.
Nowadays, there is less and less “accumulated” garbage in the cities. All domestic waste is transported daily to designated landfills on the city’s outskirts. The frequently emptied trash cans in the city can no longer provide a reliable foothold for flies. The flies’ living environment in the city is becoming increasingly narrow.
On a boring summer vacation afternoon, a fly would buzz incessantly around the head of a drowsy, sleeping Lin Song. He remembered that he hated flies; their irresistible harassment often made him forget beautiful dreams.
“A person who doesn’t dream doesn’t need dreams for protection. Dreams are there to keep you from going completely mad. A person who doesn’t dream isn’t necessarily a strong person.” “A person who doesn’t dream thinks of himself as highly rational. But in fact, he is only pretending to be rational with great hypocrisy. You fear madness, yet you long for it. Often, you think you’re feigning madness, but you’re actually performing it. Feigning and performing are two different things.” “Can a person who doesn’t dream change?” “Is there a need to change?” “I don’t know.” “Actually, you know best. You fundamentally refuse to change.” “…” “You are in flux every day. Why do you still need to change?”
In his interviews, Chen Chuanxing says everything off the cuff. What a fucking contrarian.
Perhaps the world of the future will be artistic, visual, virtual. The reality is, Lin Song’s ability to dream has dried up.
An apple fell on Newton’s head. He pondered why the apple fell down instead of flying up, and thus discovered universal gravitation.
If a peach had fallen on Confucius’s head, he would have pretended nothing happened. He would neither have raised a hand to soothe his aching head nor bent down to pick up the peach on the ground. He would have worried that others might mistake his noble, raised hand for an attempt to steal the peach. This is the so-called “Don’t adjust your shoes in a melon patch or straighten your hat under a plum tree.”
If a peach fell on Lin Song’s head, it would depend on the peach. If it were an ordinary honey peach, something that couldn’t catch his eye, he would quickly dodge away from the peach grove to avoid being hit again. But if it were a plump blood peach from Xiaochang, then Lin Song wouldn’t be polite. He’d pick up the peach, put it in his bag, and even grab a few more from the tree while he was at it.
As for this business of casually picking peaches, the Jianwen Emperor, Zhu Yunwen, also had his methods. Shortly after the death of the Hongwu Emperor, Zhu Yuanzhang, Zhu Yunwen began his campaign to eliminate the feudatories upon ascending the throne.
For Zhu Yuanzhang’s many sons, the title of vassal king was, in a larger sense, merely a welfare title. Moreover, the title was not automatically hereditary. After a vassal king’s death, the consent of the reigning emperor was required for the eldest son by the primary consort to inherit the title. Sons by concubines had no right of succession. If a title became vacant, the emperor could reclaim the fiefdom for other purposes.
The young Zhu Yunwen perhaps felt uneasy thinking about his uncles, the vassal kings, stationed on the frontiers, recalling how they had fought alongside his grandfather in numerous campaigns. And so, he brazenly moved to eliminate their power.
During the Hongwu reign of the Ming Dynasty, vassal kings held no administrative jurisdiction in their domains. All government affairs were managed by officials dispatched from the central government. The kings possessed only their domains in name and a limited personal guard, and they could not interfere in local governance. This was a system of military enfeoffment with built-in precautions, not equivalent to a true “decentralized government.”
Zhu Yuanzhang’s intention in dispatching the vassal kings was: establish princes to guard the borders, forbid them from interfering in governance, use kings to check other kings, and use ministers to control the kings.
The powers of the vassal kings were strictly circumscribed by multiple checks and balances. Zhu Yunwen’s rush to eliminate them was truly a nonsensical way of stirring up trouble.
Look at what Zhu Yunwen did in the first year of his reign: the Prince of Zhou was accused of treason by his second son and was demoted to a commoner; the Prince of Xiang was falsely accused of treason and, unable to prove his innocence, immolated himself and his entire family; the Prince of Qi was imprisoned in Nanjing; the Prince of Dai was imprisoned in Datong; the Prince of Min was demoted to a commoner and exiled to Zhangzhou.
After Zhu Yunwen began his campaign with the full weight of imperial authority, he met with little resistance. That is, until he issued secret edicts to arrest the Prince of Yan, Zhu Di, a man who was “meritorious and without fault.” To protect himself, the Prince of Yan rose in rebellion. Zhu Yunwen reported to the Imperial Ancestral Temple, stripped Zhu Di of his clan status, and demoted him to a commoner.
Three years later, Zhu Yunwen vanished without a trace after setting fire to the imperial palace. The Prince of Yan, Zhu Di, captured Jinling (Nanjing) on June 14th and ascended the throne on June 17th.
In an ancient society built on the authority of the imperial clan, one could not easily offend the aristocracy. Moreover, when you lack effective capabilities for offense and defense, you cannot rely solely on so-called ancestral laws to maintain order.
Looking at the operation of human history over thousands of years, the principle is actually quite simple: the driving forces of society are all intertwined. The reason so many people make their own lives so unbearable is simply because of their own ignorance.
Having finished the coffee he made, eaten two croissants and a banana, Lin Song put on his shoes to go for a run. Walking onto the sun-scorched street, he seemed to hear a vendor’s cry that once drifted through the streets and alleys of Hankou: “Authentic mala braised eggs! Three for one yuan! Tastes great!”