Shen Pangpang’s articles are evergreen—each reading brings fresh insights. Below I quote and annotate to share them with you.
Part One: On Life
Life is too short for roundabout strategies.
If you want to be a banker, study finance—don’t think about studying physics and chemistry first, then switching careers. If you want to build your career in America, go work in America—don’t spend all your time in mainland China stuck in perpetual “preparation mode.” After experiencing life’s ups and downs, I’ve finally realized: even for seemingly difficult endeavors, jumping straight in and learning by doing is actually much easier than endlessly “preparing” without taking action.
To achieve an ideal, you must be ready to sacrifice everything else you possess in the fight. Only this way do you have any real chance of making it happen.
Pangpang has already expressed this perfectly, and I have nothing more to annotate. If I must add something, it would be this: for ordinary people who have no throne to inherit, being able to discover one’s true self, recognize one’s nature and genuine goals, understand where one’s real passion lies, and then charge straight toward it with focused effort—this is far more important than learning some meaningless tricks and strategies. Always being too embarrassed to admit your goals, as if there’s some dark forest where revealing your objectives will invite unnecessary attacks, all that “the nail that sticks out gets hammered down,” “the bird that leads the flock gets shot”… all this means is that you’re granting others far more importance and attention than they deserve. For me, my life experience has also taught me that the straight line is the shortest path.
Part Two: On Friends
The most precious wealth in life is friends, followed by time. Both friends and time are more valuable than money.
Building a circle of friends who deeply appreciate you, people with integrity who share your values and vision—life becomes as exhilarating as equipping elite gear and crushing noobs in random matches.
The core of social skills is the ability to quickly and accurately gauge how interested someone is in you.
Don’t try to befriend people who don’t like you. Encouragement from friends is one of life’s most valuable motivators. Spend time with people who don’t like you, and their constant criticism—”you’re wrong about this, you’re wrong about that”—will eventually turn you into someone who IS wrong.
Once you’ve made a few good friends who appreciate you, notice how you suddenly become alive and get out of your shell of being shy and passive.
For each friend, getting together once every two weeks is a reasonable frequency. Those who reject your invitation—even once—don’t appreciate you, and you should keep your respectful distance. Rejection is a universal expression of aversion across all cultures and peoples; it doesn’t vary by background.
On the topic of friends, Shen Pangpang has said it perfectly—I can’t add anything better. I can only reflect that in the past, I didn’t value friendships nearly enough.
Part Three: On Character
No matter how much you admire someone’s strengths, if their character is flawed, you must keep your distance.
The happiest families are those where parents love each other. Loving parents lead by example, teaching their children confidence, honesty, discipline, composure, and generosity—not just making a lot of money so their kids can show off in front of other children.
I often wonder how many of the so-called traditional Chinese virtues remain relevant in modern society.
My German teacher brought up “harmony”—which is obviously nonsense. When the Hu-Wen administration first proposed a “harmonious society”, I thought it was a good concept—all that “unity between heaven and humanity”, “universal peace and prosperity”… But later we all learned that harmony had become a means rather than an end, so fuck that damn harmony. I’d rather they enforce strict laws and rule of law to shape society than let this damn “harmony” muddle everything into compromise; I’d rather have freedom of press and speech that exposes evil than willful blindness that paints over the truth. The former is the legitimate path to social progress—the latter isn’t worth discussing.
On modesty: Every time this word comes up, I recall a conversation with a state-owned enterprise executive’s driver right after graduation—the way he schemed to sniff out any trace of pride in me disgusted me thoroughly. Perhaps I did have rough edges back then, and not only have they not been smoothed down, but after turning thirty and adopting a “fuck it, I don’t care anymore” attitude, I’ve actually turned back into an angry youth. This so-called virtue can stay with those who consider it virtuous, because it obviously just increases communication costs. Everyone’s so busy—who has time to slowly excavate your hidden qualities? If modesty is truly necessary, it should only be to spare a friend’s feelings.
On the “favor-based society”: similarly, a custom that increases overall transaction costs for society. Its necessity stems from inadequate social safety nets and the opacity of public services. In a more robust social system, this necessity would be greatly diminished.
On character cultivation, I’ll use Pangpang’s list as my reference:
Confidence.
Honesty—the older I get, the more I detest manipulation and lies. Though born in Henan, I find myself increasingly reluctant to deal with Henan people (not regional discrimination—it’s just the culture, really hard to explain in a few words; some local cultures genuinely take pride in deceiving others for amusement). From now on, honesty and integrity must be my principle. Be hardcore like Thanos: he is many things, a liar is not one of them.
Discipline—strict with oneself, tolerant of others.
Composure—ancient sayings have covered this thoroughly. Remain unshaken when crisis strikes suddenly, stay calm when provoked without cause. Face mockery and doubt with indifference. This truly requires cultivation—I still have much to learn from my friend Mark.
Generosity—maintain an open mind, don’t be closed off. Hoarding knowledge like a treasure has never been my style; even as a student I never feared sharing study methods. For me, the key is to think aloud—to articulate and share my thoughts.
When choosing people to work for you, character comes first, loyalty second, and ability third.
When selecting young people, I prefer those who are extreme, especially those extreme individuals who look like they’ll become visionary leaders.
People who aren’t extreme will never be visionaries.
Of course, not all extreme people are visionaries either.
Some things, when someone else voices them for you, you immediately know they’re right. Indeed, I am not alone in my path. I’ve been criticized for being extreme since high school, because mainstream society favors the steady, middle-of-the-road approach.
Of course, this also reflects my own wavering faith and lack of confidence in my own judgment. But for young people with limited experience and no statistical validation, how can I know I’m right?
Conversely, this exposes the flaws in our education system. Which brings us to another of Pangpang’s quotes:
If you’re more capable than your parents, keep your distance and avoid their interference. I’ve seen quite a few talented people from mediocre families who, because they spent too much time with their parents, slowly regressed back to mediocrity.
Part Four: On Going Abroad
When you go abroad, don’t stick with Chinese people.
Many people complain about racial discrimination from whites in America, implicitly suggesting that whites don’t face discrimination from whites. This logic is flawed—because if you weren’t born white, you cannot become white (at least not without tremendous cost). As a luckless Chinese person, I face discrimination wherever I go. But given the choice between discrimination from my Chinese compatriots in mainland China versus discrimination from whites in America, I’d take the latter. The former treats you like livestock—donkeys and horses; the latter treats you like pets—cats and dogs. Obviously the latter is more bearable.
…Especially for someone like me who never planned to leave China (in my youth, I actually looked down on those who went abroad—abandoning family and friends seemed so selfish), fate chose to grant me a rebirth in the New World.
In this world, no matter how capable I am, many things—birth, aging, sickness, death, and the movements of nature and society—are simply beyond my control…
For someone like me—a country mouse from rural Henan, China, dwelling at the very bottom of the social hierarchy—Pangpang’s words strike a deep chord. In my youth, I fancied myself a Sakamoto Ryōma, determined to stay rooted in my homeland, stir up winds of change, and reform society. Before turning thirty, I never truly wanted (or felt motivated) to go abroad. I still remember ten years ago, drinking late into the night with Mark and Joey outside Tsinghua’s north gate, declaring that my roots were in China. It feels like yesterday. But now, past thirty, I’ve re-examined life through a more essential lens and realized that many of my attachments were baseless.
If I oppose defining and treating people based on innate characteristics like birth origin, then I must equally oppose the household registration system, gender discrimination, racial discrimination, filial piety dogma, nepotism and favor-based society, crony capitalism, nationalism, patriotism… because all of these discriminate based on the accidents of one’s birth. As a line from Sense8 that deeply resonates with me puts it:
He’s my brother. And not by something as accidental as blood…by something much stronger. By choice.
Within the four seas, all are brothers—regardless of East or West.
If none of these should serve as criteria for dividing humanity, then what principles should we uphold?
Part Five: On Principles
Western elites work to better nurture their families; some mainland Chinese elites, however, make their families serve their work. Remember: superior species are those most successful at raising offspring. Of course, the essence of raising children is for the community, not for oneself—so it’s also fine not to have children, as long as you help close friends in your community better raise theirs.
Nature and evolution don’t favor the clever or the wealthy—but they do favor those who contribute to their community. Natural selection is group selection, not individual selection. I wish all my Western-oriented friends on Zhihu happy families and children to be proud of, contributing noble souls to the ideal society of the future.
Note: Most of the original quotes in this article are from Shen Pangpang’s answers on Zhihu, without authorization. Pangpang left Zhihu five years ago. I’ve lost the email address he once messaged me. If any friends can still reach him, send my regards.