Wu Xiaobo: Please waste your life on beautiful things.

Every father, when her daughter was 18 years old, had the urge to write a book for her. Now it is my turn to do this.

You should remember that from a very young age, I started asking you a question:

What do you like to do when you grow up?

The first time I asked, it was on the Costa Cruises that I went to Japan to play, the first grade of your country. Your answer is, the cashier in the game room. Those days, you are crazy in the game room of the cruise ship. After three and a half, you rush to ask me for change, and then go to the cashier to change the game currency. In your opinion, if you become a cashier, how cool it should be.

Later, I asked this question again and again. What do you like to do when you grow up?

You change your "ideal" again and again. Once I was a dolphin trainer. I watched Dai Jun’s program. I thought it would be particularly cool. Another time it was a pet doctor. It was probably sent out to the pet shop after taking a bath. I also remember cultural creativity, songwriters, flower artists, housewives...

In the fall of sixteen, you went to Vancouver after graduating from college, because I had a visa with your mother. You dragged two big boxes and ran to the airport. My mother burst into tears behind you. Tell her that this child will be independent from now on, she will have the right to choose the university, work and city that she likes, and of course, her favorite boyfriend.

In Vancouver, you have a good time, will take care of yourself, have a girlfriends circle, travel alone for the first time, and personally give your mother a sweatshirt with a hat, your grades are also good, the end of the year has a mathematics And other awards. Our family has been discussing which university to study in the future, UBC, University of Toronto or QUEEN.

After another year, I will take you to Taipei for a trip. On the campus of the University of Taiwan, I will walk along the long coconut avenue in the sunset. I ask you, what do you like to do in the future?

You suddenly said, I want to be a singer.

This time, you seem to be serious, as if you have been waiting for me for a long time.

Then, you talked about your own views on popular music, talked about the dissatisfaction with China's current star-making model, talked about some innovations of Japanese and Korean companies, talked about your own singer positioning and market space, you still 掏I showed my MV to my mobile phone. I first knew Bigbang. I know Quan Zhilong. I watched their MV. I felt like the Beyond and Wong Ka Kui I liked, the same Asian elements, the same urban back street. The same blue rebellion, the same fireworks-like idealism.

In your eyes, I saw the light.

As a father who has been dealing with data all the year round and relying on rational analysis, I remind you that if you follow the current results, you will be admitted to the top 100 universities in the world after two years, probably more than 70%, but popular. The singer is an uncertain industry that has too much relationship with talent and luck. You are only about 10% likely to become a second-rate singer in the future. You have to think clearly.

Your eyes don't seem to be free. You said, I don't want to be famous, I just like it.

I turned and said to the mother who was silent next to me, this time is true.

In fact, I agree with your answer in my heart.

When I was a child, no one asked me this question. From the first grade, the teacher arranged the writing "My Ideal", defended the PLA soldiers of the motherland, scientists like Einstein, or astronauts who traveled the universe. Now I want to come, this is the kind that adults want us to be. People, in fact, adults can not make it themselves.

The consequences are terrible. I remember one year, I went to Sichuan University to give a lecture. A girl stood up and asked me, "Mr. Wu, how should I choose a career?" She is a doctoral student in the Department of Physics. I asked her: "Why do you want to read physics and read a doctor?" She said: "It was my father and mother who told me to read." "So, what do you like?" She said: "I don't know."

Another time, in Jiangyin, Jiangsu, I met a businesswoman in her thirties and made a lot of money, but said she was very unhappy. I asked her, "So, what do you like?" She heard the problem, suddenly stunned, and then she shed tears. She said that I never thought about this problem. From a very young age, she followed her relatives to do business, from trafficking, setting up factories to speculating real estate, what to do, but she never thought about what she liked.

Today's 90s in China are the first generation of middle-class families in the country in the past 100 years. You have the right and the ability to choose your favorite lifestyle and work for the first time – they can even be interested only. It's about beauty, not about matter and reward, and even more, it doesn't have much to do with future, achievement, fame and fortune, as long as it is justified, as long as you like it.

Like, it is the premise of everything. Only if you really like it, you will invest in it, and you will not complain about these inputs, whether it is time, energy or feelings.

In this world, not every young person in every country, every era, every family has the right to pursue the future that he likes. So if you are lucky, don't miss it.

The next thing, in the eyes of others, is a special "Oolong". You have refunded the ticket you have booked to Vancouver and have gone through the formalities of dropping out of the Internet. I have found a Japanese-run music school for you in Shanghai. It has only 11 students and is the first time to enroll.

For the past year or so, you have been learning vocal music, dance, composing music and musical instruments in that school. It is said that it is very hard. You enter the piano room in the morning and come out in the afternoon. When you return to the dormitory in the evening, you will be scattered. Similarly, you finally know that turning "hobbies" into "professions" is not an easy task. In fact, I still don't know how you are learning, whether there is a potential for being a star, but one thing is certain. You are really happy. You have chosen the path you like to go.

"Life should be wasted on good things."

This is an advertisement for Taiwan's black pine soda, probably twelve years ago, I read it occasionally in an advertising magazine. Before I met this sentence, I have been driven by my profession and work. I don't know how big the radius of happiness in life is, what is meaningful, what is ineffective, I think, this anxiety must be entangled in all attempts. Young people who ask for the value of life. This ad slogan suddenly made me understand what it was. Life is a waste from beginning to end. What you need to judge is whether this waste is "beautiful". Later, when I did one thing, I asked myself, do you think it is good? If so, then do it. From here, we will resist the fate and enjoy life.

Now, I will give this sentence to my 18-year-old daughter.

This is December 12, 2019. I finished this column in the VIP room of the airport. You and my mother are next to each other. One is watching a circle of friends, the other is listening to music. Not far away, the workers are setting up a two-person high Christmas tree. They put colorful gift boxes. Hang up indiscriminately. We will send you to Beijing to attend a one-month training session for the Singaporean musician Xu Huanliang. In the middle of January of the following year, you will go to Hong Kong to accept an interview with an American music school.

To be honest, my 18-year-old daughter, I don't know what your future will be like, the gift box on the Christmas tree, whether it is empty inside, or really loaded with a chocolate.