Overall, the country is getting better and stronger. If people’s vanity didn’t exist, it wouldn’t be so strong. Looking back from the 1990s to now, in the families I have interacted with, everyone’s life has gotten much better than before. At the same time, there are more wealthy individuals. In the process of market-oriented economic development, an increase in income inequality is inevitable.

The issues of social stratification and blocked upward mobility that are commonly discussed are systemic problems in the world today. The contributions made by our party regarding the basic welfare and social security of the people should be recognized. Life will get better and better; if you don’t want to buy a house, you can rent one. There are also issues with unequal distribution of educational resources when it comes to children’s education, sometimes requiring trade-offs. Do you prioritize better job opportunities and work environment or more time spent with your family? Don’t impose your own ideas on others, including your children and family. Sit down and have a good talk; life will always get better.

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Thirty years old

30 years old

I’ve turned 50 this year, and I never thought about it before. I thought, “This is an old man.” Now I realize I really am an old man. This is what I looked like at 30. Didn’t feel very young or handsome at 30, but looking back now at 50, not bad at all. What’s the biggest life feeling at 30? Looking back. I think it’s subtraction; the keyword is subtraction. In a sense, experiencing and thinking about things, writing them out and leaving them behind to start fresh on a new blank page – like going for a run. But for me, doing subtraction, whether from myself or as a reminder to all of you, was truly very important at 30.

I’m currently guiding students at United College. I often remind them that before 30, you need to work your hardest on addition – try everything, because you don’t know how many possibilities you have, and you don’t know what opportunities fate will bring. It’s not about knowing how to do it, but some people in their twenties relentlessly pursue various additions, but forget subtraction, forget that there’s a time when you need to subtract. I think around 30 is a very important period in life – after doing a series of additions and running around everywhere, it’s crucial to do a subtraction. Otherwise, it will be too late. Why should you subtract? Not everything suits you, not everything is for you. You shouldn’t do everything.

Eight lines bind you, how far can you run? They may restrain each other

Cheap

When I turned 30, I was promoted exceptionally – in academia that would be a professor, and for a journalist, a senior reporter. I was recognized at 29, and such things are rare now, but it started to bring about a huge confusion. When I worked on the Sydney Olympics in 2000 and received a lot of applause, I suddenly felt something wasn’t quite right. I began asking myself, what do you really want to do? What needs to be discarded? That year, I made a very important subtraction – I stopped my program for a year, without appearing overseas. Someone advised me that in the hosting profession, if you don’t appear on camera for just a month, it’s manageable, but six months and people will forget you. I said, “My face must be pretty cheap.”

That year, we started developing new programs. After going through a period of pain and joy, I took a full year off in 2001. Everything I’m doing today is really thanks to the subtraction I did back then. At that time, I could have done so many things – sports, E, lots of other fun stuff, producing, etc. But I said no. I realized I could only do news, and that’s what I should be doing most. So, I was the producer for three programs at the time, and I quit them all overnight, which led to who I am today. I simplified things. Just a few days ago, chatting with colleagues, I said that one very important decision I made in my late 20s wasn’t about having many options; it was about focusing on news. It’s like a deep well – there were opportunities for promotion, possibly to become deputy director, but I turned them down and returned to the foundation of an ordinary person.

Undergraduate student

Up until now, I’ve been a senior-level cadre with China Central Television, and not even definitively graduated with a bachelor’s degree. You understand our system, but I rejected it. I just wanted to see how far a bachelor’s degree could go. Why can’t someone with a bachelor’s degree continuously learn and lead graduate students? Yes, now I supervise graduate students, 11 every year – this is the result of a subtraction. I think that’s certainly a reflection on looking back. Also, when you’re young, it’s especially easy to feel in your struggles that you deserve everything. If anything is missing or any matter has a flaw, I feel particularly uncomfortable.

Everyone here should learn to subtract, meaning that around the time you’re approaching 30, when I watched the Olympics in 1996 at age 28, I came up with a sentence: Imperfection is an important part of perfection; there’s no such thing as perfection in this world. In Zeng Guofan’s long novel, he actually wrote a very important sentence: What is the best state of life? Zeng Guofan wanted to name his study “Hall of Seeking Absence,” meaning that a flower is at its best when it hasn’t fully bloomed, and the moon is at its best when it isn’t yet full. But for ordinary people, they will think this is a defect, not perfect enough, not reaching the extreme. The best way to ruin someone is to have them pursue perfection and reach the ultimate.

The flower is not fully open

This world isn’t like that. A flower is at its best when it’s not fully bloomed; once it’s in full bloom, it’s close to falling. Once the moon begins to be completely round, it’s close to slowly waning. So I feel this is a very important boost and revelation for my 30th birthday; looking good isn’t about being 40. But I feel more relaxed, freer. Why am I no longer in a suit and tie, no longer black and white, but starting to ask about happiness?

Forty years old

40 years old

There’s a Chinese saying, “forty is the age of questioning,” but thirty is subtraction and forty is confusion. It’s not really about questioning; I think in this era, most people are confused at 40. My midlife crisis came early, starting around thirty-six or seven, when I began to question whether everything I’ve done has value.

Does it have meaning? Do I even know what happiness is anymore? This book was born out of this confusion. When you turn 30, you’ll realize that many of your goals for happiness are tied to material possessions. The idea behind “establishing oneself by 30” refers to having education and a solid foundation. You need a car and a house; otherwise, the mother-in-law won’t agree to marry her daughter to you – it’s very materialistic. But “40 not confused” is difficult. I think ancient people probably had a shorter average life expectancy than now, so they condensed it into 40 years before reaching wisdom. I feel like I’m still confused at 40; material things haven’t brought me the happiness I thought they would. That’s also why so many people ask me when I turn 40, are you happy?

Is that book titled “Waves of Happiness”? It’s a question mark, representing the confusion in my heart. The birth of a midlife crisis – at 40, you need to answer so many questions for yourself. Around 40, you should chat with yourself more often and read a lot of things to find answers for yourself. I’m very grateful that I entered the world of Tao Te Ching in my late thirties. As I mentioned in “White Talk,” when you reach 40 and still need to think, if the surrounding environment doesn’t change, especially the soft environment – you leave home with a pleasant mood, only to find chaos everywhere, traffic lights being disregarded, fake products, and vaccines…

I said that these past few days China has been battling two typhoons, one invisible and one visible. The invisible typhoon is the vaccine, which impacts the dam of our inner security. The other typhoon – China rarely sees typhoons land in Shanghai, but that’s beside the point – what you need to think about next is this: you’ve improved yourself, you have many answers, but if the surrounding environment doesn’t change, will you be happy? I have eight characters that I feel are particularly weighty: we currently have a moral deficit and a loss of humanity. This is the biggest deficit and the greatest loss. Just a few days ago, not far from here, I witnessed two cars collide; actually, the collision wasn’t that serious. The responsible party should have taken responsibility because he hit another car and told them to pull over to the side of the road. The other person also slowly agreed to move over when the car in front suddenly sped off, and no one stopped him.

Will he be a responsible father? Will he be a responsible son? Let alone how can he be a responsible citizen, and he might be your colleague—that’s the moral deficit and the loss of humanity. This will inevitably affect you. No matter how great you are, unless you stay at home, but the problem is that even staying at home doesn’t prevent your children from needing vaccinations; if you deliver food, the food delivery itself could have problems!

So, how can a Chinese person learn to transform from an ordinary citizen into a citizen – this is likely an important question for me personally, at the age of 40, and also for society

If 30 is about subtraction, and 40 is confusion, I think the word I’d give myself for 50 should be curiosity. 50 is awkward, neither rooted in the village nor having a shop to go back to; you can advance and make gains, or retreat and just drift along. You can lie on what you’ve achieved for 10 years, and it seems possible to drift into retirement.

I recently read a book, and it had a very interesting passage stating that truly successful entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley are often in their fifties and sixties – quite different from our concept. Just like China shouldn’t treat all volunteers as solely youth volunteers, so too should it not view entrepreneurship entirely as a young person’s pursuit. Last week I did a program about recruiting retired elementary and middle school teachers who will receive an annual subsidy of two or three hundred thousand yuan to teach in rural areas – and they must be excellent teachers. I said this is precisely pioneering the concept of re-employment after retirement, and it’s not just charity. However, reaching 50 still feels quite a distance away. How do we move forward?

Fifty years old

50 years old

More importantly, for people around 50, there are two challenges. The first challenge is yourself: Are you still curious about many things? What’s your worldview like? I think my greatest gain at 50, or how I’m living right now, is treating each day with kindness. When you were 20, it was easy to live for tomorrow; when you’re not careful at 50, it’s easy to dwell on yesterday. But I work hard to restrain myself, neither living in the future nor the past, but treating each today with kindness. People at 50 shouldn’t always say “tomorrow” or “yesterday was so good!”

I think the best thing to do today is watch a concert disc of Tsai Chin. She said something really good: “Every time I look at photos, I think that two years ago, I looked so beautiful,” but in those two years, I never thought I was beautiful myself. That sentence has quite a flavor. When I was 30, I didn’t think so; I thought I was handsome then and had many flaws. But looking back now after 20 years.

I was once young too, I used to have so much hair. So cherish every day you have now, and it would be wonderful to see you again in two years.

Just like what Shitein said, when my legs could no longer walk and I was sitting in a wheelchair, I missed the days when I could run and play basketball every day. It was very painful to reminisce about those times every day. A few more years passed, and I developed pressure sores while in my wheelchair, making me feel terrible all over. At that time, I constantly missed the days from a few years ago when I felt no pain and could quietly sit in my wheelchair. Years later, I developed kidney failure and now have to undergo dialysis. At this point, I miss the days when all I had were bedsores on my wheelchair. If I don’t live to be 100 with the ability to treat every day kindly, the past 50 years were for nothing.

I don’t think we should wait until 50 to understand this truth; people should realize it in their 30s or 40s – everything is easily missed. A meal during a trip, if you don’t eat it, even if you eat it 30 years later, it won’t be the same. So my first feeling at 50 is that I should cherish every today.

The second thing is curiosity. I find that I can stop being curious about many things at any time, because I’ve seen and experienced so much. But I urge myself to be curious. So now, when I do a lot of things, I approach them with a sense of curiosity – can the phone be held vertically for filming? It can. You go do on-site reporting, participate in what appears to be a grand summit. Can the live broadcast be more relaxed and fun, leaving a deeper impression on everyone? Can it then be disseminated through new media? All possible. I think curiosity is the most important driving force for human progress. Why can’t it be the most important driving force for an individual’s progress? Once a nation loses its curiosity, that nation is finished. On a larger scale, 50 is an important test. What kind of vested interest do you become in China at ages forty and fifty? I am very worried that many people around us, hoping to achieve their dreams when they were young, once they realize those dreams and become vested interests, they turn into people who obstruct others from realizing their own dreams. Am I right? And then, they treat young people and things in the way they used to dislike most.

So a few years ago, I started recruiting 11 graduate students every year as a volunteer, mentoring them for two years, and now we’ve had five graduating classes, totaling 55 pure graduate students who have already graduated. I feel very happy to be in this position of privilege. You gain certain insights, and you also have the ability to guide them. After each day of teaching, I take them out to dinner, which doesn’t cost much. But this is what a good person with privilege should do. Privilege can manifest in two ways: one is to become a stepping stone again. I once said something like, “I don’t want to say thank you too much to those who have helped me,” because my way of saying thank you is to treat the new young people with double the effort.

If saying “thank you” every day becomes an obstacle, the next step is to pave the way for others. I hope that those with vested interests in China – whether material, economic, ideological, cultural, or in any field – when you become one of them, consider what you should do. The people who pushed the train yesterday became the ones blocking it today; looking back at Chinese history, this pattern repeats everywhere, and it won’t change today either. It might even be more so. Therefore, I urge all those with vested interests to return to how they wanted to act when they were young – hoping to encounter certain kinds of people. Perhaps I haven’t done enough in that regard, but at least I am thinking, doing, and saying it.