I was born into a farming family. No strange sign appeared in the sky when I came into the world, and by the time I reached adulthood I had built no great achievement to my name. What I did have was a small country house to keep out the weather. Mine was no scholarly household, and there was no family estate waiting to be inherited. A few lean fields were all we had to work, enough to scrape out a living and survive. If I have made it this far, it is thanks to the mercy of time and, more than that, to a mother’s love and a father’s care, which allowed me to curl up and endure in this dusty human world.
My heart was always higher than my fate could bear. I crawled through life with a stubborn refusal to give in, bent and battered yet still moving forward. Hidden among ordinary streets and common people, I sometimes found a little ease. I never became a great scholar, nor could I claim extraordinary talent, so I have never dared to speak in grand terms. Still, I have always loved writing and putting feeling into words.
When the tide of reform and opening-up rose, I too once stood with lofty ambitions, eager to search high and low, to run east and west in pursuit of a larger life. I did manage to gain a little ground, but it never lasted. In the end, all I secured was food and clothing. I lived like an ant, without a settled place to belong. I never returned home in glory, and so I lacked the face to go back draped in success. By day I submitted to the demands of living; by night I yielded to the claims of the soul. In doing good, I was never as steady as I should have been. Yet whenever I turned away from what was wrong, I at least found a measure of peace.
I am neither a villain loose in the world nor some towering hero. I have tried to keep an open heart and a little compassion, and in that I have few regrets before heaven or conscience. Half a lifetime has slipped away without any glorious chapter worth showing off. Looking ahead, I no longer possess the fearless charge of a young calf newly born. Cards, cigarettes, drink, meat—like so many ordinary men, I have taken my share of life’s rough pleasures. I have wasted years like an ant spending itself away, drifted through the world like dust on the wind.
As a son, I feel ashamed that I have not fully repaid my parents’ kindness. As a husband, I am uneasy that I have not given my wife a life of wealth and splendor. As a father, I am often troubled, knowing that my heart wants to do more than my strength allows. As a friend, I reproach myself for not always being able to sit down and drink freely to the end.
After several decades of life, I have seen suffering in the world, understood how hard the right path can be, and sighed at the years wasted along the way. Now that I have reached the age when a man is meant to understand his fate, I have seen too many ugly faces of human nature and tasted bitterness, heat, sourness, and sweetness alike. In such times, I take comfort in an old truth: people know joy and sorrow, meeting and parting, just as the moon must wax and wane. Perfection has never belonged to this world. With a bamboo staff and straw sandals, one can still walk on lighter than a man on horseback. Why fear a life spent in wind and rain?
To live in today’s China is already a kind of blessing. I may not be timber fit to hold up great halls, but I still have some small skill by which to carry myself through the rest of my days. When I raise my eyes, there are stars and open seas; when I look back, the past is already smoke and cloud. The wasted years can be poured into a jug of wine; the world can be tasted slowly in half a cup of tea. Merchants, writers, and plain common folk all tumble together in one unruly human stew. Wealth, power, grandeur, rank—how many houses hold joy, and how many hide sorrow? Whether one speaks of the vast mortal world or only a few pieces of silver, in the end it all passes like drifting mist.
Born in hardship, content with a thatched dwelling, I chased dreams and often only found them while drunk on dreaming. Though I may have accomplished little, I can still say I have not shamed my parents above me, nor failed those who come after me. If I can reach old age with fewer desires and fewer demands, taking my ease through the turning seasons, that will be enough. Most people under heaven live much the same way. If so, why torment oneself for being ordinary?