Hundreds of millions of Chinese lived through an age that witnessed a storm of idealism and were baptized in that flood of idealism. Even though later on their ideals turned to nightmares and disillusionment, and an entire generation of people lost their ideals, still they didn’t abandon idealism.
Fang Caodi and Little Xi had grown up in that turbulent era. They themselves were probably not even aware of the fact that no matter how much the times and the environment had changed, they still retained the strong character of idealism they had learned in their youth.
Even though the People’s Republic of China has been established for over sixty years, China remains a great nation of idealists. The population of China is so large that even though the percentage of idealists is small, if they were placed in some other country, their actual number would be overwhelming.
Just think of all those people currently languishing in prison or under government surveillance-human rights lawyers, political dissidents, promoters of a democratic constitution, leaders of nongovernmental civil organizations, promoters of independent political parties, public intellectuals, whistle-blowers, and missionaries of the underground churches-no doubt all of them are hopelessly incorrigible idealists whom the People’s Republic of China version 2.0 can never cure.
No society can afford to be without idealists-especially not contemporary China.
Of course, contemporary China is fertile soil for realists, opportunists, careerists, hedonists, appeasers, nihilists, and escapists. In this age of prosperity with 90 percent freedom, they’ve found their golden opportunity and are living exceptionally well. In this age, if you are lucky enough to be born into a hereditary Party and government-aristocracy family and your roots are a deep crimson red, then all the heartier congratulations to you. In the future you will have a tremendous competitive advantage and many business resources will be looking to you to cooperate with them. If China has an aristocracy, you are that aristocracy. From the point of view of a Chinese Communist Party that intends to govern China forever, you are one of them and the Party trusts you.
At this point, before our plot takes a dramatic turn, and before we bid farewell to our heroes, let me first build somewhat on the story of three of our characters whose roots are as deeply red as red can be-Wei Guo, Wen Lan, and Ban Cuntou. It goes without saying that they are all riding the wave of China’s age of prosperity; they are big winners under the Chinese social, political, and economic model. I’m not going to spend time relating to you how they catapulted into prominence like leaping dragons and bounding tigers. I just want to tell you I predict that these three are flourishing now and they will continue to be in the ascendant-a rich, many-splendored life awaits them. Is this, perhaps, China’s destiny?
Let us return to Fang Caodi and Little Xi. That the two of them felt like old friends the minute they met and regretted they had not met earlier was wholly to be expected. They had a common language and similar life experiences. Even more importantly, for over two years the two of them had been searching for like-minded individuals, and finally they could prove that “my way is not a solitary one.”
When Lao Chen introduced them, they saw at once that they were indeed like-minded. They then seriously attempted to analyze why, when everyone around them experienced an ineffable feeling of happiness and a mild form of euphoria, they always remained clearheaded and aware. Fang Caodi said the American Food and Drug Administration had issued a warning in 2009 that some common medicines given to treat asthma, such as Montelukast, Zafirlukast, and Zileuton, could cause depression, anxiety, insomnia, and even suicidal tendencies. Maybe the asthma medicines prescribed in China had the same side effects.
Little Xi, however, said that this was pretty strange, because the antidepressant medicines she took should have had the opposite effect. These medicines stimulated the brain to secrete more monoamines like serotonin and norepinephrine, which caused people to become excited. So people like her on antidepressants should not have been able so easily to notice that other people were high. She had read a report stating that mood-altering antidepressants had already surpassed blood-pressure medicines as the most commonly used prescription drugs in America. When over-the-counter drugs were also considered, antidepressants were now the number-one most-used drugs in America. Many Americans who were not really suffering from clinical depression, but who didn’t feel good, whose spirits were low, or who were unhappy in their work, resorted to some kind of antidepressant. Little Xi wondered if perhaps many Chinese people were also taking antidepressants on their own initiative and feeling high all day.
Fang Caodi corrected her by reminding her that no matter how prevalent antidepressants were in China, there was no way that everyone was taking them. The phenomenon they needed to explain was why almost the entire nation was experiencing a feeling of a high, while clearheaded and sober people were so few.
During the entire trip from Henan to Beijing, the two of them exchanged stories of the things they had
