On Record: My First Year in High School

2009-08-30

The tail end of summer vacation. In the diary I’m indifferent about the high school life about to begin.

“What new life? It’s all the same. The environment changes, the classmates change, the textbooks change, the teachers change — this is what they call a new life? Nothing about my level has risen, my thinking is exactly what it was. What’s new about it?“

2009-09-01

This entry goes out of its way to mention that the IT teacher was teaching us Office 2000.

I wrote: “Office 2000 belongs in a museum of information technology, not in a classroom.”

Then I praised Google Docs.

2009-09-06

This entry poses fifty-nine questions. Some of them:

Why won’t the school let us carry single-shoulder bags? Why does the IT teacher feel no shame about what he teaches? Why are the school’s computers dirtier than the ones at an internet café? What’s the point of modern poetry? Why does the chemistry teacher always come in exhausted and then perform cheerfulness through the lesson? What qualifies the English teacher to be a teacher, with that pronunciation? Why does the politics teacher sneak looks at me after class? Is he gay? Why do several teachers like turning the homework into a Word document, projecting it, and making students copy it down to do at home? Why do we have to read the Four Great Classical Novels? What is the point of “inquiry-based learning”? Can we inquire into sex instead? Why can’t they give us research topics that are meaningful and worth something? Why doesn’t the school allocate funding to support research? How do I register for WordPress? What exactly am I sad about?

2009-10-15

“Took part in a Google event and was lucky enough to win a prize. The prize wasn’t heavy, but this is what love pays back.”

I no longer remember what the prize was, but I did love Google, and I loved it heavily.

The entry also mentions that I came first in the class in English, and makes a point of showing off about it.

2009-10-20

“I want to be a literary youth. I want to make the Renaissance happen again,” I wrote.

“Before things truly change beyond recognition, there’s no need to cry. Go have a surrealist dream,” I wrote.

No idea what any of it referred to, and no need to remember.

2009-11-17

This entry contains a several-hundred-character assault on my father for not letting me wear my own jacket over my school uniform jacket.

I charged him with colluding with a decaying system, with having no innovative spirit, with nitpicking, and with disregarding his son’s dual requirements of warmth and fashion.

Listened to The Fray and was very moved.

2009-11-19

Today I learned my cram school teacher’s background.

She graduated from Xiamen University and dreamed of teaching and shaping people, but in the end decided to give it up. I always felt she had something she couldn’t say.

Went to a girl I liked at her school to find her, passed another school on the way, and thought of another girl I liked.

2009-11-20

This entry poses another sixty-five questions. Some of them:

Does being lopsided in my subjects mean I’m a lopsided talent? Why is geography so impenetrable? Why am I first in the class in English again? Why does the homeroom teacher care so much about boys and girls being too close? Why have we absorbed the advanced openness of the West while she clings to feudal vulgarity? Why is there a rumor the arts class is being dissolved? When does the revolution start? Is Apple really going to make a tablet? Why are the practical skills teacher’s nostrils so large? Why do I also have a few uncomfortable days every month? What exactly is outside the universe? Why have I started getting attached?

(The arts class was where all the dance and music students in our year were put together.)

2009-11-24

Today I advanced a thesis: a country afraid of becoming another country is not much of a country.

“In that era we closed off the country. In this era we close off the internet.”

2009-12-03

Because it was close to school, I spent my lunch breaks resting at the company belonging to my aunt’s ex-husband.

“I eat with my uncle, and during the meal he’ll routinely ask what classes I had this morning, what was covered, what homework was assigned, and keep discussing every aspect of my studies — that same tiny pile of crap. I’m honestly about to break down. Everyone talks about this, and he asks every single day. It’s already become an enormous psychological burden.”

2009-12-20

The phone I bought in secret was discovered through my own carelessness, and I’m full of self-blame over my stupidity.

Since I may be offline for a long time, I said a temporary goodbye to my friends.

2010-01-01

On the first day of the new year, I gave a sentence to every friend and every person I liked.

Sixteen people in total. Still in contact with five.

Declared that I would keep playing at the crest of technology.

Was dragged to the seaside by my parents at dawn to watch the sunrise. Did not see the sunrise.

2010-01-15

C lost one of the magnets from the flip lid of his phone, and was afraid of being blamed by his father when he got home. He was falling apart a bit. The classroom floor was terrazzo, and anything the size of a pinhead is completely unfindable once it’s down there. I had a flash of inspiration: our chair legs were iron, and could serve as a metal detector of sorts. So I pushed a chair across the entire classroom floor, and in the end found the magnet stuck to the leg.

Several other friends also had good things happen that day, so after school we all went and bought a lottery ticket together.

2010-01-28

Apple released the first iPad. I expressed my excitement.

After school, went with a classmate to an authorized reseller to buy an iPod Shuffle.

Declared a hope that a girl would spend the night with me.

2010-02-22

Paid back the 400 yuan I owed the magazine stand at the entrance to our compound.

2010-02-23

Per this entry, I was called in for another talk by the politics teacher after class. I think there’s something wrong with him.

And he actually smacked my ass when I wasn’t looking.

Can you imagine this happening in America?

2010-02-24

Want a Mac very badly.

Another entry from the same day quotes Susan Sontag.

“A writer is someone who pays attention to the world.”

“Literature tells us what the world is like.”

In any case, you can tell: apart from wanting to be a writer, I held everything I was obliged to do in contempt.

2010-02-25

“Even though a few teachers were sitting in on history class, I still got a full sleep in alongside the Secretary of State (a girl’s nickname), both of us face down on our desks. In the last math class of the afternoon I slept three separate times, on and off, and the key detail is that the principal was sitting in the back observing, and I ignored him. Woke at dusk, the most beautiful time of day, and the saddest. Bao is the whole of dusk’s beauty. I feel like I’m living blankly, in a wide emptiness. The weather is hot, and at night it even has the smell of a summer evening, only without the cicadas. I’m wearing cool shorts and want to look at the stars, but someone more important needs comforting. You people are the whole of my life; for now I have nothing else to sing about. Every day I come home dizzy with hunger. I’m drenched in sweat. I like walking. Walking makes me move nakedly and madly, and think very coldly.”

2010-02-26

My scissors were confiscated by a teacher and I was in a terrible mood, so the entry works through the harmlessness of scissors, and adds that if you actually wanted to hurt a classmate you could ram a broom handle up his asshole. You could also pull the refill out of a gel pen and use that as a weapon. The examples are extreme, but the principle holds.

2010-03-06

Today I resolved to establish my own style, one absolutely distinct from a certain author who got famous young.

There must be an old grudge here — a teacher in middle school once compared me to him.

2010-03-07

Praised iTunes, judged it a well-made piece of software.

“Went home. The rain didn’t stop me, because I took a cab.”

2010-03-09

This entry argues that the templated argumentative essays the school makes us write are a display of erudition, and that the personal essay is the greatest form.

I also criticized the homeroom teacher: she attacks counterfeiting in China during class, all that talk about how uncivilized it is, while using a knockoff iPhone 3GS herself.

2010-03-10

Per this entry, I was summoned to the teachers’ office, and felt I was subjected to a “pincer attack” and a “bombardment.”

In the text I accuse them of distorting facts, fabricating evidence, and gross exaggeration.

“I will choose to ignore these behaviors of yours.”

The teachers think I write because I want to be famous. I deny this in the diary.

The last line states my demand: “Please mind your words and conduct, and give me back my scissors.”

I still don’t know why a teacher would confiscate a student’s scissors for that long.

2010-03-11

The conflict continues to escalate.

“Let me state one thing: I am not some master. Please run your words through your brain and think them over before speaking. As for saying I’m impervious to attack, I’ll take that as you entertaining yourself. And that other one — you’re threatening me with a zero. I don’t buy it. I’ve actually been wondering whether to stop writing exam essays altogether from now on, and here’s the occasion, delivered right to my hand, and I’d like to take it.”

2010-03-13

Per the diary, I was in a bad mood going to my painting lesson, felt much better after painting, presumably argued with my parents in the afternoon, mood turned bad again, took a nap.

“All making of beauty is provocation against, and resistance to, the rules that imprison us.”

I wonder what AI would make of that one.

2010-03-14

Consider White Day ridiculous. One Valentine’s Day is already slightly too many.

Consider that you can’t talk about photography without a DSLR; point-and-shoots don’t count.

This position has been thoroughly overturned by my current photographic philosophy.

2010-03-17

“What I can’t face, I still can’t face. What I don’t like, I still don’t like.”

2010-03-19

Decided to stop attending PE. Feel that PE has gone from a thing I loved to a compulsory task, which is disgusting.

2010-03-20

A long entry, describing the “largest conflict to date” with the politics teacher in class a few days earlier, which ended with me storming out.

The same day in the teachers’ office, the homeroom teacher still wouldn’t give my scissors back. I slammed the door on my way out.

2010-03-23

The entry notes that Google has formally withdrawn from China and is redirecting user requests to Hong Kong.

Baidu founder Robin Li posted asking users whether Baidu should move into Hong Kong.

That classless joke made me thoroughly sick.

“Go well, Google. You don’t have to keep eating shit in China.”

2010-04-11

Mentions that my dream is to create something the world doesn’t have.

“To be a new-era earthling: with personality, with ideas, with creativity, with a loving heart, with money, with literary talent, low-carbon, capable of real art and fluent in new technology.”

2010-04-12

Presumably read something before bed, resulting in a desperate craving for love.

“I want to hold you and fall asleep listening to your heartbeat. I want to hold you and say goodnight. I want to take you for walks, because I want to talk to you, no matter where we go. I want to go for coffee with you. I want you to be my first reader. I want to nap with you through a beautiful afternoon in the sun. I want to hold your hand and sway on the bus. I want to cook for you. I want to sit with you when you’re sick. I want to buy you a pink iPod. I want to kiss you. I want to take your portrait. I want everyone to see that you are my fucking darling. I want to draw you. I want to own your colors.”

The me back then didn’t know who “you” was. Still less did he know that a girl would later appear who really did get the pink iPod I bought her.

2010-04-13

First encounter with an online strategy game called eRepublik. Joined eAmerica in the game.

So one way or another, a Fujianese wants to get to America.

Notes that Twitter’s servers went down that night. Notes a distressing report read in a magazine.

2010-04-15

“I hope the old ideas die tomorrow. I hope justice and fairness appear by miracle.”

2010-04-17

“I still have one strand of your hair. Three years now. It’s been there the whole time, and all it can mean is that I own a small part of you… all of it is the past now, and I’m going to keep this strand of hair. When I go somewhere else, I’ll take it with me — unless you’re willing to come along too, in which case nothing could make me happier.”

Written for the girl I liked for a long time in middle school. I have absolutely no idea where she is now. Or how many children she’s had.

2010-05-13

“I used to think that once the nine years of compulsory education were over I’d be free, and it turns out there are three more, worse. I saw it from the first day: every day of high school is a sprint toward the gaokao, no different from the do-or-die days of ninth grade.”

“In the not-too-distant future, we will simply be alive, and nobody will know what for,” I predicted.

2010-05-14

“In the politics class that just ended, I spent the entire period looking for a comfortable sleeping position. I turned this way and that, and by the time the bell rang I still hadn’t found one.”

This too is a form of adolescent trouble.

2010-06-01

This entry sighs that May was “like a dream you have while asleep in chemistry class — gone in an instant.”

WWDC is about to start; worried I won’t save up enough for an iPhone 4.

2010-06-06

First time trying Apple’s Aperture. The first impression wasn’t good.

He certainly had no idea then that he would come to love it to death, and would still be complaining on social media sixteen years later that Apple should give Aperture back to its users.

2010-06-11

Made a point of recording that I now have friends on Facebook. Both are middle school classmates studying abroad.

2010-06-14

A list of things that make me feel insecure.

The most conspicuous: wearing my own pants.

Also: “The bathroom light is a cold white.”

2010-06-30

Our year is the only one still in class, and it’s going to last another week. I’m unhappy about it, and complain in the diary.

“I just want to go somewhere cool.” The classrooms had no air conditioning, which is why I wrote that.

2010-07-01

Agitated because I can’t reach the girlfriend I’ve just started dating.

Smuggled the first-generation iPad into class for my friends to inspect.

The second half of the entry is unhappy about the reshuffling of classes for the second year — that after we finally got along, kept each other company for a year, we’re going to be split up again, which is absurd. Curses the education system.

“If we don’t scatter now, we’ll scatter in two years. I don’t want to be trapped by this kind of pointless feeling anymore,” I wrote, though I know I was only pretending not to care.

2010-07-06

“Exams have become demonized, superstitious, a matter of praying to gods and buddhas.”