My wife told me in a choked voice on the phone that the little girl next door, whom we had watched grow up, had said goodbye to this fucked-up world by jumping off a building a few days short of her twelfth birthday. I didn’t even know what to say for a while. I don’t even know what to say. I’m not writing this down, and I don’t know what the point is. But if I don’t, I know that my conscience will not be at rest.
When those stories that were once only in the news really happened to me, I even felt so unreal that my mind was blank for a long time.
I imagined over and over again the circumstances under which the shy girl who asked me softly, “Uncle, is the fat girl home? Life hasn’t even started yet, but it’s already so decisively shattered. How much untold misery and depression must have been experienced by a little girl who is normally afraid of even cockroaches before she made up her mind to face death!
The little girl and my daughter, Fat Girl, are the youngest children, only one year older than Fat Girl. Our two families moved into the same neighborhood at the same time, living in the same unit and on the same floor. To what extent are we familiar with each other – we keep each other’s keys at home and can go to get them whenever we forget them. Both of us can leave them at home when we receive the delivery.
Because of their similar age, the little girl and the fat girl grew up together and went to the same kindergarten. The fat girl even keeps her own set of dishes in her house, and the two girls probably spend more time eating together than with their parents.
Her parents, like all middle-class Chinese families, are her father, who works hard to earn money, and her mother, who is a full-time housewife. The couple, like most Chinese parents, had high hopes for their little girl from an early age, including dancing, drawing, music, and learning to read and write. In elementary school, they paid a lot of money to be able to choose a school. In middle school, they moved far away to buy a house in the school district in order to continue to choose a school. After the move, the little girl came back with her mother once to clean up, and just like that, she came back with her homework.
If I were to find the culprit, it would be my good neighbor who forced her daughter into a desperate situation with her own hands.
The little girl is shy and extremely obedient, but she has ordinary talents. From the time she started elementary school, her parents arranged a full schedule of remedial classes all year round. The idle fat girl went to play with her, and ten times out of ten she was doing her homework, never daring to disobey her parents. But even so, her grades were mediocre, far from her parents’ expectations and requirements. Every time she came to see the fat girl for a break – usually no more than half an hour – she could hear her mother shouting: “Come back and do your homework” …… Every time the little girl fled like a frightened bird. She once said to the fat girl in private, I envy you so much, Daddy often takes you to play, I never.
To put it bluntly, our generation, or with it our predecessors, all come from the same educational system that can only produce mostly useless products, a system that doesn’t really care whether you are happy, whether you can really become a man, or even whether you can learn the truth, all it cares about is that all products must be in the same mold. There can be no thought, there can be no creativity, there can even be no humanity, just docile obedience.
Yes, you are reading this article, and you may be just one of the “qualified” products in the scrap line. We have never considered our children as individuals or beings, but as a kind of private property of the family, so we often impose on them all the devastation we have endured in the name of love and in the name of “it’s for your own good”. It does not matter what the child thinks; what is important is that she must conform to the ideas of her parents, who exist as tyrants in the family.
The pressure of survival, especially for those parents who have struggled tirelessly to make it into the productive class, makes them unconsciously subscribe to such psychedelic chicken soup as “winning the starting line” and “jumping the dragon’s door”, piling their unattainable dreams and unfulfilled aspirations on the next generation, who are not different from them in nature.
As an adult, haven’t you experienced enough of the shameless reality of this country’s struggle for blood and relationships? You are the starting line for your child! How can you be so naive as to expect your child to win at the starting line when you have spent your entire life trying your hardest to win? How the fuck is it possible to live a standard life of a leek and expect your child to turn the world upside down and live a life that is only found in the TV show!
No matter how much we don’t like to admit it, most children are just ordinary people who have an ordinary life, and that’s what our generation has decided. It has nothing to do with children at all.
However, I can’t bear to judge my neighbors harshly because I know that the pain and suffering the truth has given them will never end. I used to lament from the bottom of my heart that I would never find such good neighbors, quiet, warm, helpful, and impeccably nice people. But emotionally I was indeed filled with hatred and could not forgive. Many of the unacceptable tragedies in this world come from good people. I have never seen them arrange any activities for their children other than studying, and the only thing that makes my ears perk up is the phrase, “Go home and do your homework.
Of course I hated myself. I even thought I might be part of the persecution. Many times, when a tired little girl escaped from her mother’s supervision, knocked on my door with trepidation, and asked me if the fat girl was there in a very insecure tone, I only advised her to look for the fat girl without having the time to talk to her. Even though I felt sorry for her, I never asked. Many times I privately disagreed with the way she was raised, but in the Chinese style, I only dared to talk to my wife and never confronted my own neighbor. She was left to wither in the cold and cruel prison of her own family. Perhaps in her weary little mind, all the adults had a selfish look on their faces and never cared about the thoughts of a living being.
When I look through the pictures of the fat girl today, many of them are with little girls. Two happy faces with goatee braids playing together, but now they can’t be reunited. I don’t even dare to let the fat girl know this news, because I know she won’t be able to accept it. It might even destroy her view of the world.
I’d like to say today, readers, if you have the determination and ability to get your child out of the cesspool, then just give her a new start in a different country! If you don’t have the strength or the means, be a loving human server and your children may not have a successful future, but they will have a childhood to remember and a family they can count on.
Let go of the kids who have nothing left to live for but homework, and don’t continue with these fucked-up tragedies. If our life is a failure and painful, let the failure and pain end with us. Give your children a way out, a little hope, a life of their own, an unexciting but optional life.
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