My social life in Shenzhen

About nine years ago, I went to Beijing to study for a month and returned to Guangzhou. I talked to Teacher Deng Weisheng about the atmosphere there. "Almost everyone I met talked to me about political philosophy." The atmosphere was a bit abnormal, he said. I thought he was going to talk about not being so heavy, but talking about daily life or something. Who knew he was looking at the sky intently and said, metaphysics is the first philosophy, why are you talking about political philosophy?

In the summer of 2012, under such influence, I returned to Shenzhen, where I have lived for 20 years. At that time, my doctoral course had already been completed, and the teaching assistant course had just ended. I packed up the materials and went home to write my graduation thesis. After reading the literature for two or three months, I met Alang through the introduction of my elders. He is the son of my father's friend, a little older than me. He returned to Shenzhen after working in New Zealand for many years, and he is not yet married.

Some people think that I am the second generation of the deep, and there must be endless dinners and drinks in Shenzhen. After all, my classmates from childhood to adulthood are here. This is a huge misunderstanding. First of all, many of my former classmates are no longer in Shenzhen. There are four kinds of situations. One is that you have immigrated to foreign countries, mainly Australia and Canada, and have lived a life of "good mountains, good water, and loneliness". The other is to go to other cities for development, most of which are Beijing and Shanghai, because some industries, such as media, academia, education, and medical care, may not have the best prospects in Shenzhen. Another is that I don’t like the atmosphere of Shenzhen, and choose to live in a niche city. For example, my primary school classmate Xin Yaoyao has been making ceramics in Jingdezhen for ten years and is now an overseas artist; junior high school classmate Chu Lin, once Traveled to Lhasa and lived there for several years.

The last one is rare: some of my childhood playmates, at a certain stage in their later life, suddenly decided to return to their original hometown and not stay in the place where they grew up. Every second generation in the deep has more or less such classmates. They stopped reading after finishing junior high school. They either went out early to "eat food", or they started to re-plan their lives after a few years of confusion. If the parents have some background, their life may not necessarily be bad, but if the family is relatively poor, it can only rely on their own luck and ability other than reading. Some of them were "eliminated", as expected.

I can't say that the classmates who left happened to be the ones who had a good time with me, but it's true that I haven't thought about getting together with my old classmates a few times in a year. It's more likely because of the classmates I used to play with. Also very few. This situation is easy to explain, that is, I almost fully account for the three things "not gregarious", "look shabby", and "not sweet in mouth". It would be far-fetched to say that my talent was not appreciated by my classmates. After all, I didn’t think I had any talent at that time. In fact, those classmates who are willing to pay attention to me are the Bodhisattva among people. They tap into my strengths in the spirit of "uniting all the classmates who can be united", and there are still a few who are angry with me.

I have been to two alumni reunions in the nine years since I came back. The first time was a high school reunion. Almost all the girls who went there were talking about milk powder and diapers. But a classmate who thinks he has made a lot of money keeps grabbing the microphone to advertise his company. Since then, I have blocked all notifications of class reunions. Those male classmates who are still in contact are at the time when their children need company the most, and they spend time with their family whenever they have time. Even if they occasionally want to find someone to drink and vomit, they rarely think of me, who lives in a castle in the sky.

When I first returned to Shenzhen, I knew that my relationship with my old friend would be like this, so I had already thought about it: if I wanted to have any social interaction, I would have to be cheeky and re-acquainted with friends. Arang's timely appearance saved me a lot of face. It's not that I'm playing with him personally, but that there's a huge network behind him. I don't know much about the ecology of the current returnee circle, but in 2012, the activities of this circle can be described as "emerging one after another". I once felt that it was the dereliction of duty by Shenzhen cultural people that there were no novels like The Great Gatsby.

In the returnee circle, the proportion of foreign talents and the second generation of Shenzhen is about half. The two sides did not form their own groups, but formed small groups based on occupations, interests, and interpersonal relationships. There are many people who are not returnees, but they have other labels that can be used on the stage, such as "Doctor" or "Fu Er". generation". Alang's group is a group of friends he met in various ways after returning to China. The purpose of the people in it to participate in social activities is quite clear, that is, to find a partner. One person even said this in a hurry: "The proportion of singles in Shenzhen is so high, the Shenzhen government should be responsible!"

Some of them also want to make contacts and make money, but they are not mainstream, and they are not the same as now. I am deeply impressed by a doctor who came back from Japan. He has a very good image and has also appeared in "If You Are the One". He is such an exception. In the short one or two years I have been dealing with him, he has done weddings, environmental protection equipment, and American spoken language. He thought I was the second generation of the deep generation who had too many rich relatives to count. He approached me when he was working on environmental protection equipment, and urged me to draw relatives to invest in him, saying that he would definitely support the development of academic careers after he developed. At the time, I thought that his background check was so bad and his skill in drawing the pie was so poor, it should be a little difficult to succeed.

Those who are looking for a partner will participate in an activity organized by the circle almost every two weeks. Arang is very interested in a girl who loves organizing activities, so our two groups often meet up. There are two venues that we often go to. One is a tavern on the side of the Grand Theater. The owner is a returnee who returned from studying in France. He bought a winery in France and was awarded the title of "Knight". He usually has nothing to do, and likes to invite us to play, reorganize the conference room, use the projector to show literary films, and occasionally push us to open a bottle or two of sparkling wine. The other one also sells red wine, but the storefront is not that big, and there is a long table in the middle, which I suspect is mainly used to play Werewolf. He likes to listen to me talk about some academic and ideological topics, and asks me to hold a reading meeting with him, and he provides us with tea and snacks without receiving a penny.

I understand what social life means to me: I don't need to talk about my troubles, but I need to meet some friends every once in a while, have a chat, or do something together so I don't get sick alone. After my friends from the returnee circle got married gradually, I became estranged from them. For two or three years, "Avalon" became the nexus of my social life. Every Saturday afternoon, or Sunday afternoon, at 92°Coffee on Nanyuan Road, we would kill for four or five hours, and some people even took a long-distance bus from Longgang. Similarly, we get together less and less, the reason is that there are more and more friends who are married, and two of them look at each other and get their certificates directly. For most people, they live a group life in order to eventually live a two-person world. There's nothing wrong with that.

Even if those friends in Shenzhen are not married, my contacts with them cannot satisfy all my needs for interpersonal intercourse. I don’t want to always read and write in my own private space, and I don’t want to go out on a rare trip and talk about the opposite sex, family, and work. There is this description in "Existentialist Cafe" that fascinates me: "For many years, Sartre and Beauvoir lived in cheap hotels in the Saint-Germain district, and spent all day in a hotel room warmer than an unheated hotel room. Writing in a café. Their favourite Café Flore, Café Double and Bar Napoleon, all concentrated on the corner between Boulevard Saint-Germain and Boulevard Bonaparte. Café Flore is the best because when it's noisy When the reporters or passers-by are too annoying, the boss sometimes sends them to work in their private rooms upstairs. However, they also like the lively desks downstairs, at least in the early days: because Sartre likes to be in the noisy Works in noisy public places. He and Beauvoir would 'go up' and chat with many friends, colleagues, artists, writers, students and lovers, each smoking a cigarette or a pipe while puffing the clouds, Talking at the same time."

At the beginning of 2014, I heard that Mr. Liu Qing was going to share his article "Liberalism in the Chinese Context" at Mr. Zhou Baosong's "Plough Salon". He deliberately passed through Luohu Port and took the MTR to "University Station". It was carried by a driver dressed as an artist, and went up the mountain. On that day, Mr. Ci Jiwei, Mr. Zhou Lian, and brother Teng Biao were all present, and a fierce collision of ideas broke out in the living room of dozens of square meters. That’s what my dream social event looks like, but never again: we make publicity “present” anytime, anywhere, by exercising public reason in private spaces.

In the years before Huang Lu went to Japan, he often came to see me from Hong Kong and Shenzhen. He is working in a foreign office and is not directly related to political philosophy, but he has not given up thinking about those issues. I remember that he asked me to eat Baheli several times, saying that the beef hotpot in Shenzhen was better than the one in Hong Kong, and that Hong Kong was a city with excessive materialism, and he couldn’t find anyone there to talk about such a topic. By the time I introduced Mr. Zhou Baosong to him, he was about to leave. I'm the kind of person who doesn't take opinions other than articles too seriously, so I don't want to argue too much in face-to-face or online chat, as long as the other person's point of view isn't too outrageous. But he is different from me. Even in chat, he will be extremely serious in some details, and he will not hesitate to make people unhappy. When we meet, he often talks more and I talk less. He has too many thoughts to express, but because of his identity, he cannot easily put it into words, and I am always ashamed to talk about my immature thoughts, which makes us get along well.

One or two years before and after Huang Lu went to Japan, Jia Jia and Zou Sicong also came to Shenzhen. By chance, I also met Mr. Jin Xinyi, which made a big change in my social life. Brother Jia Jia has held important positions in several leading media at home and abroad, and he is also the founder of "Tencent Everyone". On the other hand, he started a more detailed historical research, and published the book "Modern China" two years ago. Zou Sicong and I have known each other for many years, and was my editor at Duan. Without his encouragement, I probably would not have embarked on the road of no return to study contemporary Chinese political culture. Even less likely to be published. After studying and working in Hong Kong for many years, he seems to think that Shenzhen is a city with more room for manoeuvre, so he came to work here, so that we could meet for the first time.

Teacher Jin Xinyi is one of the famous "Shenzhen Three Musketeers" and an expert on Shenzhen's industrial development, but I didn't know it before Li Ning introduced it. After the first meeting, he discussed Kant and Rawls with me privately, and he had such a judgment, which coincides with me: the philosopher that China needs most now is Kant. Mr. Jin was a representative of the Municipal People's Congress, but he was an out-and-out Shenzhen folk thinker. People in the Shenzhen government were both respectful and afraid of him. They were afraid that he would criticize some policies quietly. His greatest influence on me was to arouse my enthusiasm for "Shenzhen Research" and to realize that my experience and theoretical reserves are closely related to the city where I grew up.

The three mentors have their own preferences for socializing. Brother Jia likes to meet on the rooftop of Dudu, and there are some friends in the circle who go with him, but he is often improvised and I can't go to the appointment every time. He is very familiar with the anecdotes of the liberals, and he has a wide range of contacts. The topics are always easy to follow, and the research on the history of the frontier is more than that of him and me. . I have regular meetings with Sicong and Laifu, often to exchange some recently written articles, or to talk about some academic issues that have always been concerned about. If friends from the stratosphere come to me and know Sicong, I will Usually he is called too. As for Teacher Jin, I basically met him in the form of a banquet. One time, he hosted a banquet to entertain his friends and invited me, and the other time, I held a banquet in the new residence, bringing him and brother Jia Jia, Dudu, Sicong, Laifu, and Liu, who used to hold a book club with me. Yang also invited over.

In addition to that, I have two social relationships that are different from the average person. One is the aforementioned stratospheric friend. Most of them have read my articles on the Internet, added WeChat, happened to pass through Shenzhen, and asked me to have a meal by the way. I generally call on people if possible, as I'm not very good at speaking outside of class or formal lectures. There is only one situation where I am willing to go, and that is when the other party asks me to talk about an academic issue or public issue that interests me, and they have some material, perspective or analytical framework that I am not familiar with. I'm not much interested in pure grinning or verbal output, mostly slurs.

The other is from a student I have already graduated from. Some of them have studied abroad for one or two years, and their academic vision and academic foundation have been expanded to a considerable extent. They want to come back and share with me. This is what moved me the most, and it is also the original intention of my teaching. Others are just coming back to catch up with me, which I welcome as well, but sometimes I see some changes in them: they "mature" too quickly, they understand the unspoken rules of how society works better than I do, and they take on more family mission, and their idealistic enthusiasm wanes as their teenage years pass.

For a long time I felt that I was seriously lacking in social interaction: I didn't have a "best friend" or "hard buddy" in the general sense, just one or two or three people who knew me like the back of their hands and could talk about everything. Go crazy together. In the past two days, I have been reading Lu Xun's "The Scream" and "The Flowers of the Morning", and I saw that he wrote about Run Tu and Fan Ainong. Although one is fictional and the other is real, I always feel that I have a relationship: I grew up when I was young. His old acquaintances are beyond words, while stratospheric friends do not understand their pasts and are often mired in political depression. The life of an intellectual is itself divided.