When I was a kid, I really loved watching anime, especially in elementary school. Around 6 p.m. every day was when different TV stations would broadcast all kinds of anime, and I would sit in front of the TV and not miss a single one, watching them one after another. My grandmother once described me like this: “As soon as he turned on the TV, he could always find anime every time he switched channels.” It wasn’t just when I was a kid either—I still watch anime from time to time now. If anime back then was basically made for kids, now all kinds of anime are for all ages. Some are even made specifically for adults, for example, dealing with topics like philosophy and complex human nature, and so on. Anime are no longer just for children.

And among people around my age or younger, a lot of them grew up with games and anime. After becoming adults, these things still remain as one of their hobbies. I’m the same. If you’ve read my previous articles about the “desktop PC” topic, you might also know I like playing games. It’s not that I’m very obsessed, but whenever a game or anime I’ve been looking forward to comes out, I’ll follow it and play it or watch it.

About a few years ago, while I was watching videos on a video website, a video suddenly popped up. It was a clip from an anime, but I didn’t know what it was—I had never seen it before. But the characters looked very strange, so I got curious and clicked on it.

I saw a huge, extremely muscular man full of scars taking off his suit. He didn’t take it off normally—instead, he grabbed it starting from the pant legs and ripped it all the way up to his head. What does it mean to rip it from the pant legs all the way to the head? I don’t even know what kind of logic that is 😓 He basically used brute strength to “tear” the clothes off. He revealed a body covered in countless scars and a giant tattoo covering his entire back. Across from him was another bald huge guy, also very tall, strong, and extremely muscular. With a creepy smile on his face, he immediately started attacking the scar-covered guy. First, he smashed his face with pointed leather shoes. Then he lifted a huge park bench nearby and, using brute force, smashed it toward him. But the scar-covered guy clenched his fists, raised both arms upward, and didn’t fight back at all—he just took all the attacks head-on. Then he slowly threw a punch, directly knocking the bald huge guy flying and sending him crashing to the ground.

The scar-covered guy grabbed the bald guy by the collar and lifted him up. At that moment, the bald guy took out bullets from his pocket, shoved them into the other man’s mouth, and then suddenly struck his jaw. Those bullets exploded inside the scar-covered guy’s mouth, blowing away part of his cheek. With such a bizarre plot, plus those strange character designs, my only feeling at the time was: this is too weird, this is just way too weird! What even is going on here 😂

But at the same time, it also sparked my curiosity. I wanted to know what anime this actually was, and what would happen next. Then I found out it was part of the Baki series. And that scene I just described was the fight between Kaoru Hanayama (the scar-covered guy) and Spec (the bald guy) in the “Baki: Most Evil Death Row Convicts Saga.” That video is still on the video website, and it has a lot of views. Baki: Most Evil Death Row Convicts Saga was also a pretty popular anime at the time. It came out weekly, and it was still in the early part of the story then. I kept following it until the very end. After each episode ended, I couldn’t wait for the next one and really wanted to know what would happen next. Even in the years since then, I’ve kept following later Baki anime as well.

Interestingly, a lot of people who had never watched this anime before had a very similar path to getting into the Baki series as I did. They would see short clips of Baki on video sites (especially that Kaoru Hanayama vs Spec fight), and think: this is so weird, so bizarre! Then they’d get curious about the strange character designs and the completely wild story. They’d wonder what would happen next. And then they just couldn’t stop and kept watching.

The Baki anime gives you the exact kind of feeling I described earlier: first, it’s weird. The character designs are unusual, and the plot is full of wild, imaginative ideas. Especially how the author seriously delivers complete nonsense and pseudo-science in a very serious tone. But these things actually made the anime even more engaging. You really want to know what happens next, but you can’t predict anything, because the author doesn’t follow normal logic at all. And those serious-sounding absurd explanations not only made it more funny, but also created a lot of memes over time.

Like the idea of “training 30 hours a day.” There’s a character called Jack Hanma. The author describes him as training 30 hours a day, but there are only 24 hours in a day—where did those extra 6 hours come from? Everyone found it strange, but the author never really explained it. I personally thought maybe it was referring to a training volume equivalent to 30 hours? There’s also a term that appears a lot in the series: “purity.” The author never clearly explains what exactly this “purity” refers to. But that doesn’t really matter anymore—many people have already started using “too low purity” to describe situations like “not enough” or “not good.”

There’s also a scene where Baki sees Miyamoto Musashi swinging a wooden sword repeatedly. Every time he swings it, the wooden sword breaks from the force, so he has to keep switching to a new one. Baki asks Musashi why he trains like that. Musashi replies: “I don’t know, I’ve never thought about it.” And that answer itself has become a widely used meme. When someone asks you about something you take for granted, you can just say, “I don’t know, I’ve never thought about it.” There are also things like squeezing charcoal into diamonds with bare hands. There are a lot of absurd scenes like this, and many memes that are still commonly seen online.

Interestingly, the absurd plot also affected my real life in some ways. Since Baki is a fighting anime, it often shows duels where people get seriously injured. For example, in one fight, a character’s face gets caved in by a series of headbutts from another person, and he just collapses on the ground and can’t get up. In real life, that would be a serious injury, maybe even fatal. When he was carried away, I felt like he might be done for, or at least need a very long recovery. But after a while (maybe less than an hour in the story), he shows up again. He only has a bandage on his nose, and looks completely fine. Scenes like getting seriously injured but still being okay happen a lot. Sometimes I also get injured at work. Even though the injuries aren’t very serious, they can still be uncomfortable. But thinking about Baki, it starts to feel like these kinds of injuries don’t really matter that much. I would just keep moving around normally as if I weren’t injured at all. It might sound a bit childish, but that’s honestly how it influenced my perception at the time.

I also gradually came to realize that you don’t actually only gain strength from things or people that are “great.” It’s kind of like how the seemingly absurd plots in Baki made me feel that, even when I’m injured, my body can still fully handle these “minor injuries.”

But why is the title of this chapter “What an incredible lesson to learn… I’ll have to put it to use next time”? This line actually also comes from the Baki anime series. Later, it also became a meme.

In the Baki series, there is a very powerful Chinese martial artist named Kaiou Retsu. He is extremely strong. He believes that weapons cannot truly defeat a person. If someone is hit by a weapon, how can they just be defeated like that? A true top-level martial artist should be stronger than any weapon. Later, he has a life-and-death fight with Miyamoto Musashi, a legendary Japanese swordsman from ancient times (who was “revived” into the modern era—don’t ask how that works, that’s just the logic of this anime 😅).

After an intense fight, Retsu is cut in half at the waist by Musashi’s sword. Retsu tries to get up and fight back, but his skin, internal organs, and spine have all been cut through. Not only can he not fight back, he can’t even move. At that moment, he suddenly realizes what it feels like to be fatally struck by a weapon, and feels like he has learned something new. He says, “What an incredible lesson to learn… I’ll have to put it to use next time,” and then passes away.

Even in his final moment before death, Retsu maintains a sincere attitude of learning, and hopes to use what he learned next time. But he no longer has any “next time” to apply it. This creates a contradiction: he believes he can use what he learned next time, but in reality, there will be no next time. (Although the author authorized other manga artists to draw a story about Retsu Kaioh after his death in another world, that’s another topic.)

So this line also became a meme. Even though defeat is certain, one still learns something important. You can understand it as being unwilling to admit defeat even after losing, or as going to another world (or another place or situation) to use what was learned there, or as paying a considerable price to learn something important. It’s a meme in itself, and you can interpret it in many different ways.

I used it as the title of this chapter because I really admire Retsu’s sincere attitude toward learning even at the moment of death, and I also feel this line can be useful for me. Just like how earlier I saw Baki characters recovering from severe injuries as if they were minor injuries, which influenced my perception in real life, I also hope that Retsu’s final words can influence my attitude in real life.

By the way, I originally wanted to include some related images or clips from Baki, but it felt a bit too bizarre, and some of them also contain a lot of blood since it’s a fighting anime. So I decided not to include them. If you’re curious about what anime it is, you can search it yourself.

Many people like listening to music. Even those who don’t seem like they enjoy music, or those who can’t sing, in reality many of them also like listening to songs.

Because I grew up in a Korean ethnic community in China, before leaving my hometown—especially before graduating from high school—I spent most of my time speaking Korean. At that time, South Korean pop culture was beginning to rise, and since South Korea shares the same roots and language with us, many families in our area would set up satellite dishes at home to receive South Korean TV broadcasts. It also meant listening to various South Korean pop songs. So while I was growing up, besides listening to local Korean ethnic songs and Chinese songs, I also listened to a lot of South Korean songs. I still remember that in elementary school, a classmate I was very close with collected various kinds of photos of Korean pop stars and made them into a book. Back then, we called this kind of thing “다이어리,” which is the Korean transliteration of the English word “diary.”

Speaking of songs, besides the music itself, they often also have lyrics. Just listening to the music, even if you don’t understand the lyrics or don’t pay attention to them, you can still like the song. For example, a foreign-language song whose lyrics we completely don’t understand can still appeal to us purely through its melody, making us feel that it’s a good song. Even so, I also really like to look at what the songs I enjoy are actually expressing, so I would go read the lyrics.

In this way, during my childhood and teenage years, I would listen to South Korean songs from time to time. But around high school, I had already started to gradually lose interest in South Korean songs. Because the content of the lyrics was almost always the same. They were all about tragic love. It was always about someone no longer loving you, and then acting as if the world is coming to an end. It’s not that this kind of theme is unacceptable. But in order to cater to what is considered “popular,” producing this kind of formulaic music—with lyrics that have no substance and even melodies that sound very similar—makes it hard for people like me to truly like it. Moreover, there were a big number of such songs, even became mainstream. It felt like products from an assembly line; there was a fixed mold and formula, and you just had to fit things into it. Listening to these songs made me feel very tired, and they were not interesting at all.

Later, in a high school music class, I learned a term called “disposable music” or something like that. It probably refers to this kind of “assembly-line” pop music made purely for selling, songs that no one sings anymore after three or four months. And that was indeed the case—if you were still listening to songs from three or four months ago, your classmates would think you were out of date. So by high school, I had already started to hardly listen to South Korean pop songs anymore.

After becoming an adult, a few years later I started listening to some South Korean songs again. But not the kind released by popular idol groups. Instead, many were older songs. In the mid-to-late 1990s and the early 2000s, there were a lot of very good songs in South Korea. You could say it was a time of great diversity and creativity, with all kinds of different styles. They expressed all sorts of things, rather than the later “assembly-line music and lyrics.” The songs from that time not only had distinct and pleasant melodies, but their lyrics also told a wide range of stories: philosophical reflections, personal narratives, and even social critique, rather than being limited to love or dance. I really enjoy listening to South Korean songs from that era, and I still listen to them now from time to time.

But this doesn’t mean that I no longer listen to new South Korean songs. I still do, I just don’t tend to listen to “assembly-line” music. I don’t deny that today’s South Korean idol groups can produce excellent songs. Actually, I think many of talented idol groups do produce popular songs. If I happen to come across that kind of music and find it quite good, I’ll keep listening to it. But I no longer have any motivation to actively search for this type of music myself. Still, there are some South Korean songs from recent years that I quite like, especially those that combine traditional elements with a modern style.

Of course, I don’t limit myself to songs in Korean. I mentioned South Korean music above, but that doesn’t mean I listen exclusively to it. I also listen to songs in various languages—Chinese, English, Japanese, and so on. I’ve also found that quite a few songs from anime, and even from games, are very good. For people like me who grew up watching animation, hearing those classic theme songs from childhood often makes you can’t help but listen to them a few more times.

I’ve mentioned before that I quite enjoy playing fighting games. One of them is called “Guilty Gear.” To be honest, I haven’t played this game very much, and I’m not particularly good at it. But one time, I was wearing headphones and playing random songs on a video website. Basically, you click on a song video, and after it finishes, the algorithm randomly recommends and plays the next one.

At that moment, I heard a song with a more heavy metal and hard rock style. At first, I just felt that the song was very energetic, and the melody was quite good—very suitable for working out. I ended up replaying it a few times. It was only when I picked up my phone later that I realized it was actually a song from the game Guilty Gear. After that, I started listening to the music from this game regularly, and ended up listening to many tracks.

This fighting game has a theme song for almost every character, and they all have lyrics. So in total, the game basically has dozens of songs. The vocals are performed by Naoki Hashimoto, while the lyrics and composition are done by the game’s creator Daisuke Ishiwatari. People often joke that the game creator basically made this game just to release his own music.

The more I listened to these songs, the more I started paying attention to their lyrics, trying to understand what they were expressing. Many of the lyrics in Guilty Gear’s character themes often made me feel things like “I completely agree with this,” “this is really well written,” or “yes, exactly, I should also do like this.”

For example, the following lyric:

“You Wanna be Crazy? You Wanna go Freak out?
You don’t wanna breakdown? Ignite (your) rusty heart
Shred the bindings don’t turn around
You need to lose once to see the truth

You Wanna be Crazy? You Wanna go Freak out?
You don’t wanna breakdown? Ignite (your) rusty heart
Shred the bindings don’t turn around
Dig out again what you’ve lost Let’s get down

(if) You got the Guts count me in Let’s get down”

This seems to be about a person trying to break away from their once dull life, igniting the fire within themselves, and having the courage to break through limitations. Especially this line really resonated with me: “You need to lose once to see the truth.”

There is also another song whose lyrics go like this:

“Under the sacred briars – never stop, just go
I don’t care how many more scars I get
Bearing the pale fire, I’m going as far as I can
I hope my path will be
A guiding lightning for someone to follow
The roar of the spark!”

Because many of the songs in this game are written for specific characters, you inevitably have to interpret the lyrics through the context of those characters’ settings. This particular song is the theme of a character named Ky. The phrase “Bearing the pale fire” in the lyrics usually refers to the lightning power used by Ky. Here, it also serves as a symbol of hope—a quiet but undying light. I also really like the line: “I’m going as far as I can. I hope my path will be a guiding lightning for someone to follow.” It carries a sense of selfless determination to light the way for others.

There are many other lyrics as well, but I won’t go into each one.

In fact, it’s not only mainstream songs people usually listen to, or anime songs, but also music in games—all of them have creators behind them. The lyrics of these musical works are a way for their creators to express their own understanding of life and their values. If lyrics are written based on genuine personal experience and sincere feelings about life, then even without any fancy wording—just through plain and unadorned narration—they can still deeply resonate with people. But if they are written merely to cater to the audience, or simply because a song is expected to have lyrics, then those lyrics may not be as moving. In that case, the song can only rely purely on its musical composition to leave an impression (setting aside the influence of the singer or other factors related to the song itself).

Although lyrics are just a small piece of text that may not take much time to read, good lyrics can not only give people insight, but even provide strength.

Sometimes it feels like the things that influence us don’t necessarily have to be something big. In fact, small, unremarkable things or people can sometimes affect us more than grand events or great figures.

I remembered a charity program I used to watch as a kid. Do you often see ads like “these children need help” nowadays? Do you often get asked in various places whether you would like to donate a small amount of money to help children in poverty? When that happens, how do you feel? Do you think “It’s heartbreaking to see these children,” or “I want to donate a little,” or do you just feel a brief moment of sadness that quickly fades away?

And what about me?

When I see advertisements showing children suffering in war, I do feel pity for them. But something seems to be missing. What exactly is missing? Yes—it’s that sense of true empathy. Because I have never experienced war, I cannot fully share the same feeling as those children who are actually suffering in it. In other words, we as “viewers” can only perceive the surface level. Although that layer alone can already make us feel sad, it is far from enough for us to truly empathize with them.

And when I see ads or appeals like “please donate to help children in poverty,” I often find myself thinking: what exactly does “poverty” mean here? Is it the kind of poverty I see on television? Because I don’t know the real living conditions of these children who need help, I cannot truly empathize with them. As a result, I don’t feel a strong urge to help. Not to mention that some of the aid funds originally meant for these children may not even reach them.

Does this mean I am a person without empathy? No, I do consider myself someone with a sense of empathy. I try to put myself in the position of those who need help. But if you have never truly experienced their background, you cannot imagine it out of thin air. Even if you try to construct the closest possible scenario in your mind, you still cannot truly achieve genuine empathy.

So after saying all this, what does it have to do with the charity program I watched as a child? It’s because that program gave me a very deep experience of empathy.

At the time, it was broadcast by our local TV station. The broadcast area was only a few small cities, with a total population of about 2 million. In China, that is roughly the size of a medium-sized city. Moreover, the program was specifically made for the Korean ethnic community, so it was entirely broadcast in the Korean language. That already reduced the audience by at least half. And even among that remaining population, not everyone would actually watch it. So it was a very niche program. But when I was a kid, I often watched it with my family, and many of my classmates did as well. The program was called “사랑으로 가는길”. As I mentioned, it was a Korean-language program, and the title translates to “The Road to Love and Care.” It was dedicated to helping children from financially struggling families. Even after all these years, I can still sing one line from its theme song: “불상한 애들에게 사랑을 주자”, which means “Let’s give love to the unfortunate children.”

The format of the program was to film the daily lives and home situations of children from poor families. What was so special about that? I think for you, it might feel similar to what I mentioned earlier about children suffering in war—you might only think of them as “poor children.” But for me, it was deeply distressing in a very personal way. Why? Because their lives felt extremely close to mine. Their language, culture, and way of life were all very close to mine. More precisely, they felt like different families within the same community I belonged to.

On television, I would see children about my age living with their grandparents because their parents had gone out to very far place to work. Their daily meals had almost no dishes to go with the rice. These children had no pocket money at all, and nothing to play with. Not even television, let alone anything else. They felt almost like classmates of mine. I’m not saying I actually had classmates in exactly the same situation, but their lives felt like they overlapped with mine in a very real and significant way. I could truly empathize with their suffering—I could imagine their feelings, while also being unable to imagine what it would be like if I were living in such conditions myself.

To be honest, if you asked me to recall the specific stories shown in the program, I wouldn’t be able to. It’s been far too long ago, and I simply don’t remember them. But the feeling itself is still there. It’s like my heart is being gripped by an invisible hand—it’s suffocating, and so painfully distressing.

At the time, the program displayed a phone number. If you called that number during the broadcast, you could donate 5 RMB (Chinese currency) to the show, and the total donations would go to those children. I truly wanted to donate—I was willing to do it. But back then, 5 RMB per phone call was not a small amount. As an elementary school student, I didn’t have the authority to make such a call. So I never donated. But if it were now, I might really do it without hesitation.

Not only that charity program, but there is also another memory that didn’t rely on any “grand” narrative, yet still remains vivid in my mind.

Another thing that comes to mind is when I was in elementary school, when the school organized group trips to the cinema to watch movies.

To be honest, these school-organized films were not always bad—occasionally there would be some quite good ones. But most of them were movies that children were not very interested in. This time was also one of those cases. It wasn’t a big sci-fi film with spectacular special effects, but rather a story about a young soldier taking a long-distance bus home. At the beginning, I already felt there wasn’t much that would make it interesting.

The basic plot was that this young soldier was taking a long bus ride home. But because he was young and seemed a bit naive, the passengers on the bus didn’t pay much attention to him and didn’t really treat him warmly. However, halfway through the journey, the bus broke down in the middle of the road—it was deep winter, and everything was covered in snow. The passengers had no choice but to spend the night inside the bus. During that time, various conflicts and trivial incidents took place. The young soldier also played the role of a “good-natured helper,” always trying to keep things together.

Then, in the middle of the night, he urgently needed to use the bathroom and stepped out of the bus and came back. He noticed that one of the bus’s wheels had started to slide down the snowy slope, and the entire bus might fall off a cliff. In order to save everyone, he sacrificed himself and used his body to block the wheel that was slipping downward. The bus survived the night safely. The passengers woke up one by one and realized they could not find the young soldier anywhere. Eventually, they discovered his body under the wheel outside the bus—he had stopped breathing. Only then did they understand that he had sacrificed himself for everyone. At that moment, sorrowful music began to play.

I cannot say the plot is exactly 100% like this, because it has been too long. I could have searched for the film online and described it more accurately. But this time, I really want to describe it purely from my childhood memory.

When we came out of the cinema, a classmate pointed at another student and said, “He cried just now.” Then we all gathered around and teased him, saying things like, why are you crying for a movie, and how could a boy cry over something like that.

But do you know what my real situation was at that moment?

When the young soldier sacrificed himself and the sorrowful music started to play, my eyes were already welling up with tears, and the urge to cry was right at my throat. But I knew that if I actually cried, I would end up in the same situation as that classmate. So I forced myself to hold it back. Even so, the scene was truly moving—it really made me want to cry. That classmate crying was actually a completely normal reaction, or rather, the kind of reaction one should have.

This film was neither a big-budget sci-fi blockbuster nor an action movie full of explosive scenes. In describing its plot earlier, I didn’t look anything up. But after writing it, out of curiosity I went to check, and I did find the name of the film. However, there wasn’t much information about it, and it hadn’t won any major awards. It was just a fairly ordinary film from that time. Yet the kind of emotion it brought through seemingly ordinary people and stories has stayed with me all these years. I have never seriously revisited its plot, nor have I watched it a second time, but I still remember its story and how it made me feel for this long time.

In the end, what truly moves us and allows us to empathize deeply is not necessarily something “great” or grand in scale. Often, it is something that seems unremarkable at first glance, yet still manages to affect us and give us a completely different kind of feeling.

When I was in kindergarten, something used to happen a lot. Since people usually go to a kindergarten close to home, the kids there were mostly my neighbors. After school, I’d often hang out and play near home with the kids from my class. While we were chatting, they would say, “I’m going to elementary school in a little while.” And it wasn’t just one or two kids saying this; I remember hearing it from quite a few of them. I was a bit curious back then—if they were all moving on to elementary school, why was I still in kindergarten? But despite having that question, I was too young to really care, so I just kept playing with them.

Gradually, because of work, my parents didn’t have time to take care of me, so they left me at my grandparents’ (my mother’s parents) house when I was still quite young. They would come visit me on weekends or give me a call. My grandparents lived in a county, not a big city—not even a small city. I stayed there for over a year, almost two years. During that time, I went to a preschool class in their county for about half a year. You know, that preparatory stage before entering elementary school.

While I was in that preschool class, I noticed they were just starting to learn math and writing. I thought to myself, “I’ve already learned this stuff so many times in my city kindergarten, why are they only learning it now?” I thought it was because it was a small county, so the learning pace might not be as fast as in the city. That’s what I thought at the time, and I kept believing that for a pretty long time even after I grew up. Until one day, I overheard my mom talking to someone, saying, “My kid barely went to kindergarten.” After that person left, I asked her, “I remember going to kindergarten for a pretty long time, so what do you mean I barely went?” My mom said, “Those weren’t kindergartens. Most of the time, you were in preschool classes, attending them with kids who were older than you. You even got beaten up by those older kids back then~” I don’t remember getting beaten up 😓, but I was really curious: why didn’t you send me to kindergarten instead of always sending me to preschool classes? My mom said, “Because it was free.” I had this exact face 🙂. That was the moment I finally realized I had been going to preschool classes the whole time.

Now the mystery is completely solved. Those “kindergarten” kids I used to play with told me they were going to elementary school soon, while I stayed behind, because they were attending preschool at the normal age, whereas I had started preschool early and stayed there for a pretty long time. No wonder I always remembered going to “kindergarten” for ages. And that preschool in my grandparents’ county town was actually teaching math and literacy at a normal pace; it was just that because I started preschool early, I had already learned those things beforehand.

In fact, besides starting preschool early, my family—especially my dad—would also teach me things ahead of time at home.

When I was very young, particularly before elementary school and during the first two years or so of it, my dad often forced me to study. I’m not putting the word “forced” in quotation marks because, as a little kid, you obviously just want to play; you don’t want to study. For instance, he made me memorize the multiplication table ahead of time—I must have been around five years old then, anyway, back when I was still in that “kindergarten” phase. I can still remember crying while memorizing it. Then, after I started elementary school, he bought some Chinese character picture books during the first two years to teach me various characters in advance.

Because I went to a Korean ethnic school, we had two different language arts classes, both of which were mandatory: one was Chinese, and the other was Korean. For the Korean textbooks, my dad even made me memorize every single text from beginning to end. I hated that part the most. My dad also bought those math flashcard sheets. They were packed with tons of math problems, but the answer spaces were cut out, like a stencil. You’d place a piece of blank paper underneath the sheet, so when you wrote the answers, they’d go onto the blank paper instead of the sheet itself. This was so you could practice the math problems over and over again.

It wasn’t just about studying, either. During the time I lived at my grandparents’ house, my dad even assigned me workout routines. Every morning and evening, I had to do push-ups, high kicks, and jump rope. Of course I didn’t like to do them, but when my dad was around, I didn’t dare say no. So on weekends when he was there, I’d do them seriously, because I didn’t dare not to 😅. But from Monday to Friday when he wasn’t around, I’d just half-heartedly go through the motions and call it a day. My grandpa often saw me doing this and would laugh, saying, “If your dad ever catches you doing that, you’re going to be in big trouble.” Of course, my dad never found out. Still, I couldn’t slack off every single time; sometimes I had to do them seriously even when my dad wasn’t there.

This situation lasted until about the first half of second grade. I attended elementary school in my grandparents’ small county town for a year and a half. During that time, as a kid from the city, I was quite well-liked by both my classmates and teachers. Looking back now, I’m really grateful to my classmates and teachers from back then. Then, because my parents had settled down and finally had some time, they brought me back to live in our original city. I also transferred to an elementary school in that small city of ours. And that’s when the scene played out where a kid who had spent a year and a half in a small county school absolutely “crushed” the kids who had spent a year and a half in the city.

Of course, that last sentence was a bit of an exaggeration on my part. But when I first transferred, my performance was indeed outstanding. Back in second grade, they were selecting students for the Olympiad math class based on a math exam. My score was so good that I was picked right away, and that’s how my Olympiad math journey began. Although I dropped out during middle school—as I mentioned in one of my previous articles—during elementary school, my Olympiad math grades were excellent. I won a lot of awards, including national-level ones. My Chinese was also very good because I knew many characters that the others hadn’t learned yet. Our Chinese teacher back then even asked me, “Did you already do second grade before and repeating the second grade again?” What she meant was, why did I know so many characters? But in her mind, the concept of learning ahead of time at home probably didn’t exist, which is why what she said sounded so clueless. Anyway, I really disliked that Chinese teacher. She only taught us for about a year or a little over a year, I think. After that, it wasn’t her anyway, and the Chinese teachers we had later on included many really nice people.

It wasn’t just in academics; I also performed really well physically. For almost my entire time in elementary school, I was the strongest kid in my class. Boys love to arm-wrestle to test their strength, and nobody could beat me. I was also a fast sprinter with great explosive power, and my jump rope test scores were outstanding. The fact that my dad forced me to work out back then definitely has a huge connection to my current fitness habits. It surely planted the seed back then, and later on, once I tasted the benefits, I started working out on my own. Especially the jump rope—to this day, it’s still my main form of cardio. I even have a jump rope logo printed on my license plate frame.

However, ever since I moved back to the city, my dad stopped forcing me to study ahead of time. Although my family still wanted me to study at home on my own, I was already attending a lot of after-school tutoring classes, and I didn’t really want to study at home after doing all of those. So I didn’t do much self-study at home, and since my grades were great, my family didn’t keep nagging me about it. Plus, during this period, my family’s parenting style shifted toward being mostly encouragement-based. For example, if I proactively signed up for a writing competition at school, my mom would praise me and reward me with 10 RMB (Chinese currency). Back then, for an elementary schooler, 10 RMB was a massive fortune! Also, when the school sold books, I bought all kinds of them. When I came home, my mom would still praise me. Basically, whenever it came to buying books, my family would absolutely never spare a penny. Whether it was buying books at school or going to the bookstore myself to buy what I wanted to read, they would buy them for me without a second thought. But thinking about it now as an adult, those books the school sold weren’t necessarily useful. Those children’s magazines were fine—I actually quite enjoyed reading them. But a music book written by the uncle who ran the school convenience store—the kind that only had sheet music and no pictures—would a kid like reading that? Was it of any use at all? While it’s nice that everyone encouraged the store uncle’s writing, there was really no need to sell it to the students, right? Did the teachers buy it themselves?

Even though this period was mostly about encouragement, it didn’t mean I never got punished. When I did something wrong, I’d still get punished—not just scolded, but often beaten as well. Right now, at the time I’m writing this essay, corporal punishment might no longer be mainstream, but during my time, it was quite common, even the mainstream way of doing things. Sometimes my colleagues, even the female ones, would mention that they had received the same kind of upbringing when they were little.

It wasn’t until I became a middle schooler that my parents’ parenting style quietly changed. Why do I say “quietly”? Because I didn’t notice it at first; it was only after some time passed that it started to dawn on me.

After I’d been in middle school for a while, I vaguely felt like something was different. I slowly started to realize that my parents barely ever scolded me anymore, and they rarely even lectured me in general. On top of that, if it was something concerning me, they would actually ask for my opinion and discuss it with me. Looking back at elementary school, I can’t remember them ever asking me about decisions that involved me; I only remember them just telling me to do things directly instead of talking them over with me. For instance, I didn’t really like writing essays, but I was still forced to go to an after-school essay writing class—there was absolutely no room for discussion.

By the time I reached high school, I got even more freedom. Before that, my allowance was given on a daily basis, but in high school, they started giving me a large amount all at once, letting me manage and spend my own money. Once it was gone, I could just ask for more. Back then, I didn’t know anything about saving money, nor did I ever think about it. I’d buy gaming prepaid cards from time to time, or treat my classmates to a meal during the school lunch break. Since my home was far from the school in high school, my parents would usually pick me up by car. But occasionally, I’d walk home with classmates or by myself; since we stayed at school for a really long time in high school and spent ages just sitting down, I wanted to move my body more. Sometimes, even if my parents picked me up, I’d get out halfway and walk the rest of the way home.

Precisely because it was so far, it was impossible for me to go home for lunch during our one-and-a-half-hour lunch break. So from time to time, I’d hang out at classmates’ place nearby for lunch and take a break, and in return, I’d often treat them to meals nearby. But even with all that spending, I still couldn’t run through the money. One reason might be that they really did give me a lot, and the other might be that while I seemed to be spending recklessly, I didn’t actually go too overboard. Anyway, I just couldn’t finish my allowance back then. My mom even asked me why I hadn’t asked her for more money, how I still had money left, and if I just wasn’t spending anything at all 😅.

Because I didn’t get scolded by my parents, I wasn’t afraid to tell them directly whenever something happened or I got into trouble. Instead of blaming me, their first instinct was always to figure out a way to help me solve it. As a result, I became even more comfortable telling the truth; I didn’t have to lie, because there was absolutely no reason to. The less I lied, the more they trusted me. And the more they trusted me, the less I’d ever want to lie. It became a positive cycle. Thanks to that, I basically grew into someone who dislikes and disdains lying. Instead, I became an honest person—someone who knows that only by being honest and coming clean can you actually fix a problem. This also shaped my later attitude of absolutely not tolerating people who like to lie, brag, or talk big, because those behaviors only mislead others or screw things up due to their hypocrisy. I’ve encountered some people in the past who were just full of lies. They might not have been trying to deceive others maliciously, but pretty much everything they said about themselves was fake. My very first thought back then was that their parents might have been very strict, making them too afraid to tell the truth, which eventually became a habit and a way to survive. Later on, I did find out that they indeed had a very strict mother whose expectations they couldn’t meet, so they had no choice but to rely on lies to get by.

Just like that, from middle school up until now, I have never once been blamed or scolded by my parents for almost anything. To put it a bit dramatically, even if I were to tell them right now that I had gambled away every last penny—something extreme like this—they probably wouldn’t blame me. Instead, they’d figure I must have had my reasons, because they trust my character and know I’d never do something so ridiculous as to gamble away my entire livelihood. If you asked me to recall the last time I was scolded by my parents, I honestly couldn’t tell you. I can only vaguely remember the last time being around the time I graduated from elementary school and just started middle school. Later on, I even wondered if my parents, especially my mom, had learned something somewhere during that time. Why did their parenting style change so drastically? I mean, getting beaten didn’t exactly seem rare for me before, but now, let alone getting beaten, I haven’t even been scolded.

Since my teenage years, almost no one has ever blamed or criticized me. So, what kind of person did I end up growing into? Did I become the type who is arrogant, conceited, and completely unable to take any negative feedback? No, I gradually grew into an adult who is upright, honest, responsible, values promises, rational, low-key, and self-disciplined. As I’ve mentioned in other articles, my personality as a minor and my personality as an adult seem very different. Plus, when I was underage, the way elders saw me was very different from how my peers saw me. In the eyes of elders, I used to be a well-behaved, calm, good-natured kid who never swore, while in the eyes of my peers, I was someone who was more like an extroverted, funny, and high-energy. But after I became an adult, I basically turned into the version of me that the elders used to see.

I only found out later that it’s actually quite common for many people to have completely different personalities as minors versus as adults, just like me. People form new understandings of the world based on brain development and real-life experiences, and change comes naturally with that. For example, when I was underage, I might have aimed to be a fun and interesting person, but after becoming an adult, my values underwent a huge shift. Now, I’d much rather be someone who can be trusted and relied upon, even if it means appearing a bit less interesting.

I used to wonder where that underage version of me went—did he just disappear like that? Actually, the me from back then hasn’t completely vanished. He’s just somewhere in my heart, showing up at specific times or manifesting in a different way. For example, some people think I’m usually serious, but then I suddenly become humorous. It’s not that I suddenly acquired the trait of being funny; it’s just that I’ve gotten closer to that person, perhaps felt safer around them, and let my humorous and fun side come out. Also, as I mentioned in my article about playing tennis, I really liked the atmosphere of having so many people waiting on the sidelines to play tennis. When I participate in this kind of competitive team-oriented sport, my extroverted side comes out too. But what about the me who would “grab people by the collar” or “throw books in people’s faces”? As I grew up and matured, I came to understand perfectly well that doing those things is wrong. As an adult, I can’t and won’t act like my immature, younger self who didn’t know where to draw the line. Instead, I treat people in a milder, more measured way. And I think I might have channeled that energy into doing all kinds of thinking instead. It’s also possible that when I catch someone being malicious, that old “little boss” personality might come out in a confident and unafraid way, while still remaining highly rational.

I also wonder, if another person had the exact same upbringing as me, would they turn out completely identical to me, or even very similar? Honestly, I don’t really know. But I feel like who a person becomes is a mix of their natural temperament and their upbringing.

However, as time went on, I also started to notice the negative impact this kind of upbringing might have had on me. I’ll talk about that in the next part.

For a while, I always thought I had weak execution skills. Why? Because it felt like I rarely actually got around to doing much of anything. If you aren’t doing things, it is probably because your execution is weak, right? For example, I’d keep things at the idea stage without ever pushing them into reality. So, I always had a vague doubt about my ability to take action. And why was it only a “vague” doubt? Because I had never seriously thought about it; I just had a lingering question mark over my execution skills.

Later, I felt it was necessary to work on my execution, so I tried to turn my thoughts into actions. It wasn’t about pulling random ideas out of thin air to execute, but rather about finally doing the things I had always wanted to do—or vaguely wanted to do—but hadn’t done yet.

After repeating this process, I realized that my execution skills aren’t weak at all; on the contrary, they are actually quite strong. I can set a date for what needs to be done, make plans, and do the research. Once the date arrives, I jump straight into action. If I hit any snags during execution, I analyze what went wrong and figure out a way to overcome the obstacles. If the cost of overcoming an obstacle is too high, I still do my best to get to the bottom of it and understand its core nature. That way, I can make trade-offs, knowing when to stop and when to keep going. I can also maintain a decent level of self-discipline. In the end, I usually get the results I want. Even if I don’t, I generally know what step to take next.

Looking further back, this kind of execution has actually always been a part of me. One subtle sign is that I’ve been working out consistently since I was about 20. To this day, I’ve hardly ever missed a single week (except when injured). This is actually a clear sign of strong execution. So, my problem wasn’t execution at all, but something else. Since this article is mainly about execution, though, I will discuss that “something else” in another piece.

During these repeated cycles of “planning -> executing,” I also gained a deeper understanding of just how important execution really is. Essentially, it’s the vehicle through which things get accomplished. If you only have ideas without the execution part, the end result is pretty much the same as the idea never existing at all. “Planning,” on the other hand, is more about boosting the success rate of that execution. Furthermore, you realize a lot of critical issues while executing, and analyzing them afterward provides more data to fuel the “planning” stage of the next cycle.

I also discovered that during execution, there is one factor that can either massively boost or drastically drain my ability to take action. And that is “meaning.”

What is meaning? Of course, there is bound to be a formal definition for it. But I was afraid that looking it up would color my personal perception of it, so I didn’t. I’d rather explain it through my own understanding.

For execution skills, this meaning doesn’t need to be grand. Sure, it can be noble and far-reaching, but it can also be incredibly small. Let me use some examples from things I’ve written on my website:

– My first road trip: Its meaning to me was “to push past my comfort zone, clear my head, and see the world outside.” Pushing past my comfort zone was the main point. Going on a road trip might not be a big deal to many people, but for me, it was a fairly significant breakthrough. So, that held quite a bit of meaning.

– Learning judo back then: Its meaning to me was “I want to try something I’m curious about, and participate in a group activity while I’m at it.” It wasn’t some grand ideal, just a very ordinary purpose. But it was enough to keep me repeatedly studying judo, even outside of the class, and consistently showing up for practice.

– Learning how to swim: Its meaning was simply, “I’ve always wanted to learn to swim.” A reason that simple was enough to keep me practicing over and over until I successfully learned it, and it eventually became one of my hobbies.

– Writing the articles about building my PC: This also had its own meaning: “Because of those ‘arrogant ones’, I’m going to give up something I’ve owned for years, which cost me a lot of time and money.” This drove me to decisively spend a good chunk of money to build a desktop PC, and even abandon a PlayStation account I had built up over many years.

– Building this website itself: This is also fully supported by an underlying meaning.

Just as there are examples that boost execution, there are also examples that drain it. Again, to look at example from a thing written on my website:

– Learning to snowboard: I did this because “I’ve been curious about it for years and wanted to try it.” That was the motivation behind spending a lot of money on lift tickets and renting equipment, going at least once a week, driving four to five hours round-trip to the resort in the dead of winter, often taking the highway at night, and keeping at it despite making slow progress. However, as time went on, I realized it was costing a lot of money and time. As my progress slowed, its meaning began to shift. Especially after I had already basically fully experienced snowboarding, its meaning morphed into just “Snowboarding.” But for someone who hadn’t successfully learned it and whose initial drive was just to experience it and learn along the way, this new meaning felt almost meaningless—especially since I hadn’t actually mastered it yet. This caused my execution to drop drastically, to the point where there was no follow-through. I might try it again when it takes on a new “meaning” in the future. But right now, without that meaning, my drive to execute is pretty low.

So, if there are things you want to do, or things that already have meaning to you, there’s no need to overthink it. Just make a plan and jump into the execution phase. But if there are things you don’t really want to do, things you feel forced to do, or things you’re even afraid to do, maybe you can try to see if you can find some meaning in them. Once you find that meaning, you might find your ability to execute becomes much stronger. Conversely, something that originally had meaning can also become less meaningful depending on the circumstances and the passage of time.

Besides “meaning,” I discovered another thing that affects execution skills: “energy.” In reality, the factors that influence execution are likely far from being limited to just these two. I simply want to focus on them, but that doesn’t mean they are the only things at play.

Sometimes I used to feel like I could handle everything, and I would plan out a massive list of tasks. But when it actually came down to execution, I found that even if I worked at it seriously, I still couldn’t get through them all. Slowly, I realized that my energy is not infinite, and I have to be deliberate about how I allocate it.

One example of this comes from a behavior I noticed myself doing unconsciously. I realized that the way I act at work is very different from how I act in my personal life. When I’m at work, I am highly focused but also quite serious—I even choose to dial back on socializing, like not going out of my way to greet people. In my personal life, however, I am much more easygoing and smile a lot more. I’m not strict, and I may more actively greet others. The way I dress, and even my overall appearance, can look completely different. I only noticed this phenomenon later on. Its root cause is very likely an unconscious allocation of energy. At work, I feel that my job performance should come first. On top of that, my job is incredibly exhausting and requires managing a lot of things, so I unconsciously channel most of my energy into the actual workload. As a result, I might ignore other areas or choose to let them slide entirely just to recharge and cope with the next wave of tasks. But once I return to my personal life, I don’t need to divert my energy elsewhere, so I can act more like myself—or at least, the person I perceive myself to be and want to be.

I’ve found that there is one specific scenario where energy interferes with execution, to the point of drastically cutting it down. This happens when there is something I find deeply “meaningful”—something I want to do, something I must do—but I’m neither familiar with it nor good at it. When this happens, I might have to trigger an “overclocking mode” to get it done. What does that mean? Because I’m unfamiliar with it and not good at it, I have to burn through double the energy to make myself to do something that is difficult to pull off in my “normal mode.” But if the end result offers no reward, or if the reward is too small to replenish my “energy fuel,” I am forced to stop doing it—even if I still think it’s truly meaningful. There’s simply no way around it; if the energy isn’t there to sustain the “execution,” and there is no “fuel” to quickly replenish it, this “overclocking mode” cannot keep running. So, what about waiting for the fuel to slowly recover on its own? If the reward from the outcome is still tiny, wouldn’t I just be repeating the same cycle? Once this cycle repeats to a certain point, this “highly meaningful” thing will slowly turn into a “meaningless” thing. If you’ve tried many times and success is strictly impossible, where is the meaning in that? Perhaps you could say the meaning lies in trying a few more times to gain experience so you can succeed eventually, right? But practically speaking, when your energy drains rapidly during the process and the outcome fails to quicky replenish it, can it really sustain your “execution skills”?

So, what should be done in this situation? From my current understanding, if the reward is enough to “replenish the fuel,” then it goes without saying—sometimes even a tiny breakthrough can generate a “massive amount of fuel.” But if the reward remains very small, you can practice repeatedly to make your “normal mode” gradually perform better, until it matches the performance of your “overclocking mode.” That way, your energy won’t hit rock bottom so quickly, right? However, this is a long-term approach that takes a significant amount of time. By the time you get there, that originally “highly meaningful” thing might have lost its meaning long ago, though the skill can still be applied to the next similar “meaningful” thing. There are certainly other ways to handle this situation, but these are the only ones that have crossed my mind for now, and I haven’t dug any deeper into it yet.

And these are my personal reflections on how meaning and energy influence execution skills.

To Do

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