Testimony…
Listen for 7 min
When the purpose of education is to win the competition, the gaokao becomes a doorway to the adult world where the same kind is legally crushed. In order not to be too sadistic, the director designed a warm ending: Chen Nian, who was imprisoned with Xiaobei, took the college entrance examination again, counterattacked with high scores, and became a people’s teacher. Through punishment and rewards, the system has completed the shaping and absorption of youth. The soul can no longer find its way back to paradise.
You may not have had the experience of bullying, but you must have participated in and at least seen the college entrance examination. In the popular screen movie “Young You”, starting from the countdown of “60 days before the college entrance examination”, the director told a school bullying story, as the college entrance examination approached day by day, the girl Chen Nian, played by Golden Horse Award actress Zhou Dongyu, faced with bullying getting worse day by day, and the tension of the college entrance examination and the fear of bullying increased frequently.
The gaokao is not just the background of the story. When Hu Xiaoflutter committed suicide by jumping off the building, the perpetrator prevaricated with only the phrase “she can’t stand the pressure of the college entrance examination” when questioned by the police, and the college entrance examination covered up the crime. The police were investigating Hu Xiaoflutter’s death on campus, and when the class bell rang, the teacher told the police, “They still have the college entrance examination”, and the fresh life must give way to the solemn college entrance examination. After Chen Nian was targeted by the bully, red ink appeared on the chair for no reason, and the head teacher’s first reaction was “It’s still a few days before the college entrance examination, and you still engage in this kind of prank?” Compared to the college entrance examination, bullying is just a “prank” that is not worth mentioning. The author of “Prank” is Wei Lai, whose bullying has been downplayed by schools and parents because of her stable grades and various awards.
The gaokao has become complicit in bullying, and in a system where scores are king, dark corners of the campus are obscured, watered down, and ignored, and the light is difficult to penetrate. When youth reveals the cruelty of growing up in the bullying of life, the oppressive atmosphere that permeates the film reminds us that there is another omnipresent force that looks down on everyone coldly. When you walk out of the theater, you may not realize that the institutionalized survival represented by the college entrance examination crushes you and your youth on large-scale legal bullying.
“You protect the world, I protect you”
In the film, when Chen Nian chooses to ask for help, it makes the pain deeper. The intervention of the police forced the school to change the head teacher, expel two students, and lock the school door, which was all the school was trying to. Until Chen Nian missed his hand and pushed Wei Lai down the stairs and fell to his death.If the college entrance examination is a cover-up and indifference to the evil system in the bully, in Chen Nian, it has changed, like a redeemer’s aura. “Although it’s not fair, it’s good that there is a college entrance examination, and the college entrance examination may be the only fair competition in life, let’s cheer together!” Chen Nian’s mobile phone received such a text message, which made her hope to escape the dark gutters through the institutional arrangement of the college entrance examination, and forbearance for a while in exchange for rushing into the bright sunny days of the system.
Institutions promise security and decent life, but only if you first enter the system. In order to maintain the efficiency of its own operation, the system needs to establish a screening mechanism. The tragedy of bullying happened on the way to the screening process. The little gangster Xiaobei lives outside the world of the college entrance examination, and Chen Nian originally looked down on him, because he was completely impossible to be absorbed by the system and was destined to be a marginal role, and there was no place for him in the five modern societies. In Xiaobei’s underlying survival wisdom, people are divided into two types: bullied and bullied, in order not to become the former, he can only become the latter. Chen Nian tries to convey a simple cultural belief while being protected by Xiaobei: power can also be used to protect people, protect the world, and be used in love. Unfortunately, as a middle school student, she was first forced to learn how to struggle to survive.
When Chen Nian has not yet passed the college entrance examination to enter high-level survival, the rough reality forces her to seek the protection of the forces she despised before. The subversive rebel force took advantage of Xiaobei’s appearance to become another redemptive force for Chen Nian, just as the rivers and lakes became relief when the temple failed. Children who are bullied can only seek survival outside of “reasonable and legal” means.
Despite this, Chen Nian hopes to harness the “life force” of Xiaobei’s barbaric growth through love. Indeed, after meeting Chen Nian, Xiaobei’s unrestrained and destructive “Force” was quietly changed. Until Xiao Bei said to Chen Nian: “You protect the world, I protect you”, he has invisibly changed his previous rough classification of people. Chen Nian helps Xiaobei stick to the bottom line as a protector without falling into the curse of fighting evil with evil. When Chen Nian cut his hair and took nude photos, Xiaobei’s bottom line encountered the strongest challenge, and Chen Nian hugged Xiaobei to prevent him from derailing and driving on the road of revenge.
When Chen Nian missed and pushed Wei Lai down the stairs, Xiao Bei, a “foreign aid”, could only help her bury the fact of the murder into the darker abyss. In order not to be too sadistic, director Zeng Guoxiang designed a warm ending for the film: Chen Nian turned himself in and went to prison with Xiaobei for 4 years; Four years later, he retook the college entrance examination and counterattacked with high scores. Through punishment and rewards, the system finally completed the shaping and absorption of Chen Nian. She became a teacher, and the two eventually came together.Love, which only indicates with whom you will cry
The movie does not really discuss the solution to school bullying. Chen Nian eventually escaped from the humiliating memory and came to another city to become an English teacher, becoming an intellectual in the system, a character with a qualification to preach and pass on the three views.
At the beginning and end of the film are Chen Nian’s teaching scenes, where she explains the difference between “was” and “used to be”, the former is a simple past, while the latter has a sigh of losing paradise. The emergence of the concept of “paradise” allows us to boldly try to interpret the meaning of the film as a cultural allegory. For Chen Nian, what does paradise mean about life before being bullied? Or are the youth years protected by Xiaobei? Whatever the answer, what is certain is that a school and society with bullying and college entrance examinations is acceptable for an adult, but far from being a paradise.The college entrance examination in modern China plays a role similar to that of the bar mitzvah in indigenous culture. Young people need to pass a slightly cruel test before they can be accepted into the adult world. End the stage of willful growth, and learn for the first time in front of the college entrance examination to say standard answers according to the regulations: speak well, send sugar; Wrong, out.Bully Wei Lai does not have a problem getting into college on her grades, and it is also reasonable to assume that she will be able to quickly integrate into the system and master the ability to legally commit evil under the protection of the system. In Chen Nian’s coming-of-age ceremony, Wei Lai appeared as an additional question. The pace of the film has hinted to us that if we don’t do this additional question well, we don’t want to have the entrance examination qualification.Wei Lai, who was well-behaved and cute on the surface, was depleted, but she helped the system solve two potentially dangerous elements: Xiao Bei with savage vitality, and Chen Nian, who yearned for the power of love. Both forces unnerve the system. If Xiaobei is admitted to the police academy, the police in the film may be what Xiaobei was absorbed by the system as an adult. At the end of the film, Xiaobei still protects her behind Chen Nian, in fact, he himself is attached to the system to obtain a recognized social identity. After the two merged, they upgraded and completed the process of socialized survival.The director originally wanted to comfort everyone with a warm ending, but unexpectedly came up with a crueler reality: no one in the film found an effective way to redeem. When love is a thing of the past, people are destined to live in paradise lost. Chen Nian’s trajectory vaguely marks the growth path of a generation of intellectuals. She will either continue to preach love, or she will not, it doesn’t matter; No matter what she did, she was already fragile and weak inside.As the Universal Youth Hostel sang in “The Pawn of the Clouds”, “The iron curtain is full of young people, who exchange luck for breath, who exchanges soul for rice”. Love has been reduced to the lubrication of survival, the shame of the system, and the loss of action. The so-called love only means who you cry within Paradise Lost. The two survivors, like two small animals, can do the greatest good which is to warm each other.
When was our paradise lost?
In the Bible, mankind did have a paradise, otherwise, how could it be lost? Coincidentally, the first evil act committed by humans leaving paradise was a bullying incident between two brothers: Cain and his brother Abel were talking in the field, Cain suddenly rose up and killed Abel, blood seeped into the earth, and since then mankind has begun a history of beating and abusing each other. It wasn’t until World War II that Nazi Germany unleashed the largest bullying and massacre of one group of people against another in the last century.When I was in the second grade of elementary school, there was a boy with low intelligence and a large body in the class, and it seemed that naturally, he became the target of bullying and ridicule by the boys in our class, we humiliated him, abused him, and he thought we were joking with him, and that expression made everyone even more excited. Later, we encouraged him to kiss another girl in the class and crush her underneath. Except for the girl, the class burst into laughter.This scene still appears in my mind so often, making me feel extremely guilty and self-blamed. At an age when everyone is a “flower of the motherland,” it is puzzling why we take pleasure in humiliating others. You know, these two victims did not offend anyone, our happiness came from the heart without the slightest pretense, and the way of humiliating others for fun has never been taught. There is no blame in our hearts, and no one stands up to point out that we are not, and just like that, our happiness becomes someone else’s nightmare. When was paradise lost?My son is in the first grade this year. During the spring outing classmates, a girl enjoyed the treatment of being carried by her senior brother the whole time because of a foot injury. Seeing this scene, his son was indignant and muttered: “I wish I had a knife in my hand now.” The teacher asked him strangely what he wanted the knife to do, and he said, “So I can kill her and let my brother hold me.” “The teacher relayed my son’s words to me, and I was shocked. Isn’t it better to have the idea of killing in order to get the attention of others, and Cain killed his brother Abel because he was jealous of God’s pleasure? When was paradise lost?These moments of loss cannot be attributed to the environment or the system. Neither the way out of the institutional arrangement nor the relief outside the system can solve the problem of the depravity of the human heart caused by evil. Everything in this world is part of Paradise Lost, so how can it possibly provide the power to help us find peace and joy in our hearts?
Every evil deed begins when no one sees it
As a first-hand witness of the Nazi atrocities of World War II, theologian Barthes believes that the root cause of the tragedy is that the relationship between people and neighbors has been severed. All reflection on human nature should return to the root of the problem – the rediscovery of “the rights, dignity, and sanctity of one’s neighbor”.The college entrance examination in “Young You” crushes youth, making people ignore life. Because the whole system is training students to become “people who work for exams”. The most fundamental harm of this educational model to human nature is not to make children’s knowledge structure go wrong but to make the soul of generations go wrong. People are groomed to be molded into rival enthusiasts who are enemies of their own kind, and only by winning in the competition can they have more resources and more freedom.In Bart’s human education, eye contact, verbal conversation, and listening with both ears are our responsibilities as neighbors to others. What he meant was that people themselves should open themselves, go to others, meet others, experience, understand, feel, and care for others. Education should cultivate the ability to discover and serve one’s neighbors. Education that has no one will eventually be reduced to a factory that manufactures large and small demons, cultivating parts one by one, and participating in the safest way to do evil with an insensitive heart, that is, the evil of the system, the evil of customs, and the evil of culture.Leslee Udwin is the director of the documentary “India’s Daughter,” which investigates a gang rape on a black bus in India. Through interviews with criminals, criminals’ families, friends, academics, police officers, etc., Youdwin tries to find the cause of the tragedy. “This gang rape case is just the tip of the iceberg. In fact, all social problems are human problems, and they are inseparable from education. ”
“Our education has always placed too much emphasis on the training of the mind and the development of the intellect, but not on the education of the heart. Schools teach children how to take exams, but they don’t teach people how to be a real person. Youdwin thought. She then founded Fair Thinking, a nonprofit organization that educates children about their hearts, focusing on improving understanding, empathy, and compassion for people of different backgrounds or cultures.
“Man is only human when he sees another person, only when he listens to and talks to him, only when he helps others and receives help from others. A person is only human if he is free for this, not only out of necessity but also willing to be a partner, companion, or colleague of another. Bart said.
When my son easily said the word “kill”, it reminded me once again that whether it is me or my son, our humanity has fallen. I realized that leading this little devil back to his lost paradise was not just about reading the Bible and attending Sunday school with him. How to make him feel that God values his personal worth, how to make him appreciate the image of God in others, and how to help his eyes have others, is indeed a difficult task.
After my son finished school, I began to adjust the conversation between us. In addition to asking him what he was happy or sad about at school, I began to ask his classmates by name if they were happy or sad today; When praying together, I would also ask him what the classmates needed… Looking forward to relying on God to make his classmates his first neighbors. The responsibility of me, the “big devil” who was slightly changed by God, is to lead my son, the “little devil”, to God to learn respect for people and reverence for life.
