李承鹏：2024年度总结
Li Chengpeng: 2024 Year in Review
Translated by ChatGPT
As 2024 was drawing to a close, astrologers worldwide declared in unison: Pluto has left Capricorn and entered Aquarius, marking the start of a 20-year cycle of prosperity. However, the notoriously superstitious Chinese people had no response. After all, a life of hardship doesn’t deserve zodiac signs. Just like at the end of 2023, when feng shui masters enthusiastically proclaimed that the Chinese people were entering a “Li Fire Luck” phase. But a year later, there were only relentless separations, devastating losses, and fires that burned people to death. Not a single Chinese person found good fortune.
Chinese people no longer believe in the luck of "blind boxes"; they only recognize the fate they’re born with, as indelible as a birthmark. One day, a delivery worker in Hangzhou was found sleeping on his electric scooter by the roadside. He had been sleeping for a long time. When people tried to wake him, they discovered he had died from overwork. Camel Xiangzi wanted to change his fate through hard work but died by the roadside instead—this is a fate that cannot be changed.
On another day, a terminally ill young man was rushed to the hospital but was beyond saving. When the doctor asked where he lived and about his family, the young man said, “Don’t. Dying in a bright hospital is better than dying in my basement. Don’t waste the train fare to bring my father here.”
Yet another day, a mother seeking help for her sick child approached a charity organization, only to find the person in charge demanding that she sleep with him in exchange for aid.
This year, many schools installed rows of anti-ramming bollards at their gates. The so-called “atomized rebels” roared onto the scene in cars, seeking to destroy the hope of others because they had none of their own. This year, acts of random violence became common: a school bus was rammed in Tai’an, killing 11 students; a mass stabbing occurred in a Shanghai shopping mall, leaving 3 dead; a murder spree in Xiaowu Township, Hubei claimed 8 lives; and random killings in Fangchenggang, Guangxi took 5 lives. Some call this the “Zhang Xianzhong mode,” but that comparison flatters today’s killers too much. Zhang Xianzhong not only defeated government troops but also showed compassion for civilians. After taking Fengyang, he killed the governor but distributed grain from the granaries to the poor. In Changsha, he abolished taxes for three years. In Xiangyang, he gave out 100,000 taels of silver to relieve famine. His troops were so disciplined that they won the hearts of the people, who even guided him against government forces.
In Sichuan, Zhang Xianzhong immediately declared a three-year tax exemption for the people. To prevent plundering, he strictly forbade his soldiers from taking local women as wives, with violators punished by death. His later descent into madness and atrocities was another matter. While invoking Zhang Xianzhong’s name may fit certain contexts, today’s indiscriminate killers pale in comparison to him when viewed through a more serious lens.
Take Xu Jiajin from Wuxi Arts and Crafts Vocational College, for example. Exploited by his school, Xu shouted, “Long live the people! Long live the proletariat!” before hiding in the bushes and murdering 8 working-class women—ordinary proletarians, just like himself. Years ago, another man, Zheng Minsheng, frustrated by unemployment and a failed relationship, went to the gates of an elementary school in Nanping early one morning. He grabbed random children and began stabbing them, killing 8 and injuring 17 in just 55 seconds. The oldest victim was 12, the youngest only 6. Zheng screamed, “If I can’t live, neither can you!” But what did these children have to do with his misfortunes?
Some Chinese people have two troubling tendencies: First, they feel pride when those in power bully others on the international stage, mistaking it as a personal victory. Second, they mistakenly see acts of terror as revenge on their behalf. How deluded must one be to think that Prince Zaiyi waving bloody rags outside foreign embassies during the Boxer Rebellion was a triumph, or that killing random civilians avenged the hardships of ordinary people?
Instead of investigating the root causes that turn people into monsters, the authorities focus on identifying “unstable individuals” and promote “Fengqiao Experience” (community-level control measures). Eventually, public squares saw the installation of new “public sentiment stability testing machines.” If someone’s mood is deemed unstable, will they be lobotomized on the spot, like in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest? The real issues remain unaddressed. Instead, consider this stark contrast in news stories:
An Italian man named Andrea fell ill in Hainan and was cured for just 24 yuan. He made a video expressing gratitude, saying, “China is amazing. Thank you, China! My eyes are clear again.” Meanwhile, a Chinese woman diagnosed with a terminal illness jumped out of a hospital window after discovering she couldn’t afford the medical expenses. The video ended there, but I couldn’t stop wondering: When her husband returned, would he have chosen to kill someone in the hospital?
More and more people seem to have no vulnerabilities left—or what you think are vulnerabilities are, in fact, knives pointed at society.
Experts advise: “Avoid crowded places.” But sparsely populated places are no safer—robberies and murders still happen there. Staying at home doesn’t guarantee safety either; your building might collapse, your gas might explode, or you might get stabbed in a school dormitory. Even flying isn’t safe—you might end up on an ill-fated Eastern Airlines flight. Traveling by bus could see you buried in a landslide, like the 48 victims on a single ill-fated day. Driving a domestic electric vehicle might lead to spontaneous combustion, though at least it would save on cremation fees. Slowly, you begin to understand the phrase: “There’s no place for me in this vast world.”
As the streets run with chaos and blood, the online world reintroduces Li Ziqi, whose idyllic rural lifestyle videos offer a peaceful counterpoint. Her serene, elegant portrayal of country life masks the true desolation of rural China and rekindles a fleeting hope in people’s hearts. Li Ziqi is the counter-fund to harsh reality.
People occasionally talk about the “garbage time” we live in, but they don’t linger on the topic for long. Instead, they watch a rigged football match played with water polo rules. Now and then, shocking headlines appear: a man without arms was asked to produce a certificate proving his disability while taking the subway. Or, Beijing’s finance committee declared, “We need to break the public’s belief that money deposited in banks is their own.” This statement isn’t wrong—your money in the bank may not be yours, just like your body in a funeral home may not be yours. Consider the scandal of 4,000 corpses being stolen from funeral homes and sold for cosmetic surgery purposes. After losing so much that belonged to them in life, the Chinese people still cling to the belief that their ashes will rest in peace in their own urns. But in reality, you might not end up in a proper urn—you might become part of someone else’s fake dental implant.
When someone asks, “What’s the purpose of our lives?” the answer might be: “To keep running on the streets, working overtime at desks, and toiling at construction sites so that society appears to have some semblance of vitality.” Life goes on. The pseudo-middle class, caught in a wave of layoffs, suddenly realizes they’re worth nothing. A particularly symbolic sign of the times is this: At Shanghai’s famous People’s Park marriage market, where parents traditionally matchmake their children, the standards have dropped. Once, prospective mothers-in-law demanded future sons-in-law earn at least 30,000 yuan per month. Now, 10,000 will suffice. Owning a home outright used to be a must; now, a home with a mortgage is acceptable. Shanghai’s aunties are the most adaptive creatures on Earth.
The government has been vigorously promoting “flexible employment,” encouraging people to take on three jobs a day. The People’s Daily even published an article forbidding the portrayal of struggles at the bottom of society. In Zhumadian, a 70-year-old man selling vegetables to pay for his paralyzed wife’s medical bills was fined 55,000 yuan. When he appealed to the court, he lost. He collapsed on the ground and cried out: “I sold just 12 yuan worth of vegetables, and they fined me 55,000!” On another night, another elderly man froze to death at his roadside stall. One of his fingers had even broken off from the cold. Meanwhile, the trees lining the streets of a beautiful city were dressed in bright “clothing projects,” colorful sweaters meant to protect them from winter’s chill.
At this moment, Meng Wanzhou was giving a proud speech at a university: “While gazing at the stars, we must let our hands touch the dirt and our feet step into the mud.” She didn’t realize that the elderly man’s broken finger and frozen face were already covered in dirt and mud.
Maintaining stability remains a top priority. In Beijing’s Changping District, authorities quickly dismantled a statue commemorating Li Zicheng’s entry into the city during his rebellion. At a time when unemployment is rampant on every street, it wouldn’t do for disillusioned individuals to look up and find a historical role model in a rebellious figure like Li. But honestly, there’s no need to tear it down. The resilience of the Chinese people is unmatched on Earth. One online comment summarized it aptly: “Even animals on the African savannah don’t spend as many hours foraging every day as we do. Across the entire animal kingdom, no species spends as much time toiling for survival as we do.”
Only when toxic chemicals were found in multiple brands of sanitary pads did women protest for a brief moment. Men protested when plans to monetize public housing pensions were announced. When it was revealed that cooking oil had been mixed with kerosene in some places, both men and women protested. But soon after, people raided an oil warehouse belonging to a Japanese company. At this point, it was clear: no one dared boycott Japanese goods for fear of nuclear contamination—they needed every drop of oil to survive.
The standard practice during an economic downturn, the “anti-Japanese campaign,” became especially intense this year. One day, a “patriot” killed the Chinese driver of a school bus at a Japanese school in Suzhou. On September 18, another “patriot” killed a mixed-race Chinese-Japanese child in Shenzhen. Meanwhile, “anti-Japanese” TV dramas, once confined to Hengdian’s sets, had spilled into real life. People in Chongqing, known for their fiery temperaments, dared not confront the gas company executives who falsified data on residential meters. Instead, they shoved two girls wearing kimonos at a riverside photo shoot. On one hand, they demonstrated an uncanny ability to differentiate between who could be provoked and who couldn’t. On the other hand, this behavior reflects a deep-rooted cultural tendency toward performative loyalty. They knew the capital couldn’t see this display of loyalty, but performing it nonetheless seemed to soothe the humiliation of daily life. It’s a psychological coping mechanism, and perhaps psychologists should name it the “remote loyalty phenomenon.”
Yet, as soon as authorities announced that Japanese seafood was safe to eat, all hostility toward Japan evaporated. People quickly rushed to buy autumn saury and sake. Their hatred of Japan, once fiery, was replaced with eager consumption of Japanese products. When it’s time to hate Japan again, they will simply wait for the next notice.
Xu Zidong once told a story: One day, a village leader urgently convened a meeting to announce that U.S. President Nixon would visit China. The villagers were stunned into silence—wasn’t the United States the greatest enemy? The leader, fully aware of the significance, gravely declared, “This time, we’ve decided not to kill him.” The villagers erupted into applause.
That era of madness has returned. Speaking of madness, a student in Yunnan stormed the stage during an event to reveal that the school had built a lavish “Anna’s Cottage” while neglecting its decrepit student dormitories. He was promptly sent to a psychiatric hospital. Li Mouxue, who accused an auxiliary police officer of molestation, was sent to a psychiatric hospital twice. An elderly petitioner was institutionalized for raising grievances, and when her son advocated on her behalf, he too was committed. This entire country is one big psychiatric hospital, and those who don’t comply are labeled insane.
This year, a new institution with the most "psychotic" aura was established: the "Police-Tax Combined Operations Center." Its very existence sends chills down the spines of business owners, who now wake up every morning, look in the mirror, and feel like criminals, mentally calculating how long their “sentence” might be. Perhaps the authorities felt that traditional taxes were too “civilized” and complicated, so they began a more direct approach known as “distant fishing”—extraditing business owners from one province to another, blindfolding them, stuffing them into cars, and taking them away. Lei Jun’s former colleague, who developed a poker app, was among the victims. He was abducted and died under mysterious circumstances.
This isn’t a new story. Between 1953 and 1956, during the “Three-Anti and Five-Anti” campaigns, tax audits led countless entrepreneurs to prison or suicide when they couldn’t pay up. There’s nothing new in history—you can figure it out for yourself.
In Let the Bullets Fly, a character quips about a 99-year tax levy: “Who are you going to tax? The poor? The poor don’t have money.” The response: “If we’re taxing, we’ll tax the rich.” How naive. In addition to “distant fishing” and “nearby fishing,” 2024 saw the issuance of 50-year ultra-long-term bonds. Imagine that: it’ll be 2074 before these bonds mature. By then, humanity may have achieved immortality, rendering debt irrelevant. Perhaps the world will have reached a utopian state, complete with extraterrestrials performing at the Chinese New Year Gala. The host might even read a heartfelt message: “The lizard-people border guards stationed on Titan’s sixth moon have sent quantum New Year greetings.”
Back to reality: This year, China’s technological feats were either laughably crude—like hand-making five-nanometer chips—or mystically exaggerated, as with quantum computing. Look at this: Master Shi Yongxin of Shaolin Temple inspecting a rocket launch site, where he performed a Buddhist blessing using the Shaolin "Yijinjing" technique to ensure the rocket’s success. No need to fear Elon Musk or Jensen Huang; China has its unique approach to core technology. Here’s an old story from Zhu Yunhe: In the past, to increase agricultural productivity, a county in Hunan started a fertilizer plant. The village cadre ordered all residents to bring their pots and pans, which were placed along the roadside. Villagers were also instructed to bring urine to fill over 200 pots. Fires were lit beneath them, and the urine was boiled to extract urea. The scene was spectacular, the stench wafted into the county seat, and the atmosphere reeked of misplaced ambition.
This year, while Shenzhen’s housing prices were halved, its residents took pride in Hong Kong’s decline. They felt smug seeing Hong Kongers coming to Shenzhen to buy groceries. But dismantling the world’s third-largest financial hub, the “Pearl of the Orient,” only to boast about adding another vegetable market—this mindset is embarrassingly provincial. Fortunately, a Nobel laureate in economics brought some clarity this year: it is the relations of production that determine productivity, not the other way around. Faced with a choice between reforming the system or mimicking technology, the former disrupts vested interests, while the latter inevitably hits systemic barriers. But upon reflection, this isn’t new wisdom. Over a century ago, in the late Qing dynasty, diplomat Guo Songtao said something similar: “It takes three to five decades to learn foreign technologies, but it may take 300 years to undo the deeply ingrained flaws of our system.”
One seemingly minor event this year went unnoticed: on February 18, Hunan launched a campaign called “Great Discussions on Liberating Thought.” It fizzled out without results. A clear-headed observer summed it up: “How do you liberate thought while ensuring ideological uniformity? How do you promote consumption without increasing income? How do you expand foreign trade while resisting Japan and America? How do you restore entrepreneurs’ confidence while engaging in distant fishing? How do you raise birth rates under high housing costs and low wages?”
In 1867, Zeng Guofan had a private conversation with Zhao Liewen. They discussed the roving bands of beggars, the widespread looting, and the chaos everywhere. Zhao predicted: “The rot has reached the core; the Qing dynasty won’t last another 50 years.” Zeng replied: “I don’t want to see the Qing’s collapse; I just hope to die first.” A few years later, Zeng did indeed pass away. It’s hard being a courtier, even harder being a loyal one, and hardest of all to be a loyal courtier trying to do some good. One wonders if the current “Yellow River and Yangtze won’t flow backward” loyalist knows this history as they approach their end.
At the end of the year, two peculiar phenomena emerged. First, Christmas, long considered “traitorous,” was suddenly embraced. Authorities announced, “The Christmas trees can be taller and brighter this year.” Second, People’s Daily and Global Times jointly launched a campaign for “Stories of Sino-American Friendship and Cooperation.” Instructions from above had arrived once again. Yet, it was too late. Confidence was gone, and the rich accelerated their efforts to emigrate.
This year, at every downgraded dinner, every futile business meeting, and every sexless bedside, people debated what the future might hold. The Crowd teaches us: the education a nation offers its youth reveals its future. In Bangladesh, youths took to the streets to protest; in South Korea, they marched to prevent martial law. In China, university students biked 20 kilometers to Kaifeng just to eat soup dumplings. Somehow, this inspired optimism among the liberal crowd, who thought, “Youth are precious; there’s still hope.”
People forget that these brains, washed repeatedly with concentrated detergent, bear the same patterns as their parents’ and grandparents’. Their thought processes boil down to four characters: “standard answers.” Every year, over 10 million university graduates flood the streets. Some wear Confucian gowns like Kong Yiji, some engage in anti-Japanese rhetoric, some carry concealed blades, and some believe Isaac Newton plagiarized The Yongle Encyclopedia. This is the future. Oh, and among these youths, a law student in Shaanxi secretly replaced a temple donation QR code with his own and collected “karma funds” for a while before being caught. That was the only amusing story of the year.
Don’t pin your hopes on the youth. Don’t assume the post-2000 generation is different. Before long, they’ll stop biking for soup dumplings and start racing e-bikes for delivery orders—until, like that delivery worker at the beginning, they die by the roadside. A little older, they’ll join a square dance and be struck down by a car seeking vengeance on society.
An old video of Sister Feng surfaced. In it, she said, “When I was very young, I knew I was a peasant. The child I give birth to will also be a peasant, and the next generation after that will still be peasants. This fate can’t be changed.” Feng understood this at age nine, before even reaching puberty. Yet students from China’s elite universities, the so-called “bright minds,” will never grasp this truth. Of course, there will always be young people who bravely pursue freedom. They will chase their dreams, running and running, even at the risk of being shattered. And yet, eventually, they will stop, realizing that reality is a towering wall or a Möbius strip with no end in sight.
The conclusion of 1984: “He loved Big Brother.”
Our 2024 was like a humble snowflake that melted on our faces in an instant—so fast we didn’t even feel the chill.
Li Chengpeng, December 29, 2024, Tokyo