(Skip to the quotes if you’re not here for my rambling)
Sleep + reading + eating + running = my perfect day
(Would be truly ideal without homework… [doge])
Honestly, both sleeping nearly 12h and spending 4h total on “lunch” with family today were equally ridiculous lol
Woke up thinking we’d have an early lunch – took 1h just to get out the door (standard), 45min to choose a restaurant (family couldn’t decide while chatting [facepalm]), 15min actual eating, then waited another hour (finished the last third of To Live). Spent 30min looking for a study spot before just going home.
1 + 0.75 + 0.25 + 1 + 0.5 + 0.5 = 4h wasted (TL;DR version [doge])
Got a headache on the way back – intended to rest 15min but crashed for 90min instead (4-5:30pm).
Woke up feeling sluggish but pushed through an 8km “retirement jog” (coach would murder me [jk]). Pace was embarrassingly slow [facepalm] but otherwise solid.
Hit this surreal meditative state by the 2nd km – body on autopilot, mind hovering above reality like some detached observer. Exhaustion never came – guess this becomes normal with enough miles.
Midday Reading Notes
(on finishing To Live)
Hard to describe this heaviness in my chest – want to cry yet feel strangely empowered.
This book marries human tragedy with raw survival instinct like nothing else. No cheap sentimentality, just truth that breaks you.
Fugui stops being a character – he’s flesh and blood, his suffering unfolding like some visceral documentary.
Finished at exactly 3h14min (π hours [fox grin]) – human resilience feels just as infinite and unpredictable as pi.
Update: Actually 4h56min upon checking lol
—————————————————Selected Passages————————————————
(From 300+ notes… here are the gems)
Author’s Preface (CN Edition):
“People live for the sake of living itself, not for anything beyond living.”
McMillan Edition Preface:
“A writer’s existence is this constant crossing between reality and fiction—sometimes reality dissolves into fantasy, sometimes fantasy abruptly becomes real.”
“Writing mirrors life: we’re all lost souls in this world, groping along self-chosen paths. Maybe we’re right, maybe wrong. Often both at different times.”
“Life belongs to one’s own feelings, not others’ opinions.”
Chapter 1 Highlights:
[On marriage] “Rich wedding rich is just piling money upon money—you hear the clinking flow between bills.”
[On vices] “Gambling follows whoring like shoulders follow arms—inseparable once joined.”
[Addiction psychology] “That particular tension… an indescribable comfort.”
[The gambler’s fallacy] “Losing just made me desperate to win back great-grandfather’s lost acres…”
[House always wins] “Long Er only lost small bets—never the big ones… that illusion of breaking even…”
Chapter 1 Masterstroke:
“By dusk, my silk shirt had frayed through to bleeding shoulders. Stumbling home alone, weeping between steps, it struck me: if one day’s money-carrying broke my body, how many ancestors had died earning this fortune?
Finally understood why father insisted on copper coins over silver—he meant me to learn money’s brutal arithmetic.”
(This gutted me. Today’s kids demanding latest iPhones never see the bloodstains behind each yuan. Personal experience taught me this early—hence my 5-year-old hoodies and secondhand devices. When you’ve seen the ledger of sacrifice, frugality becomes instinct.)
[Word count murdered. Worth it.]
—————————————————Reflections————————————————
Yu Hua employs deceptively simple prose—an old man’s plainspoken narration—to unfold Fugui’s life with raw authenticity. I can’t quite articulate why I keep returning to To Live during spare moments, but this pre-reading comment captures it best:
“A friend asked: ‘How can you bear such a tragic story?’
‘Precisely because Fugui endures unthinkable suffering—that’s why I need to know how he keeps living.’”
(Admittedly paraphrased, but the essence holds.)
In this book, there is hardly any so – called “climax” – Fugui’s life is basically filled with suffering. While his various experiences reflect different stages of his life, they also mirror the lives of ordinary people during the development of New China. In his youth, there was the “Chinese Civil War”; in his middle age, there were the “Land Reform” and the “People’s Commune Movement”; in his later years, there were the “Cultural Revolution” and the “Household – contract Responsibility System”. Each historical process has brought about great changes in Fugui’s life. As a former landlord and later a peasant – at the bottom of society – he quietly “watches” himself being swept along by the torrent of history… So, did the lives of the bottom – level people get better during that period?
Unlike the disposable web novels I’ve devoured before, To Live is that rare book demanding revisiting. At different life stages, through different sufferings, readers will always find their reflections in its pages. Fugui transcends being merely a character—he becomes a spiritual emblem, proving through his odyssey that true despair cannot exist.
What this book imparts is priceless: not just survival, but the sacred fire that persists when all else turns to ash.
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