Winter Zelkova
"The values and cultivation that Tongzhong instilled in us are the most precious treasure."
Last semester, while preparing for my departmental transfer, I listened to Tongzhong’s songs day and night. When I sat before the Physics Department’s interview panel and introduced myself and my alma mater, I felt, alongside pride for the school, a faint worry that the panel might disapprove of a crow disguising itself as a phoenix.
I have always regarded Tongzhong as my alma mater. Perhaps in high school this still existed as a kind of collective pride one might disdain; but whatever remains after leaving the collective can never be the institution’s alienation of the individual. If this too is a kind of collectivism, then collectivism can change its reputation.
To be proud of Tongzhong—what exactly am I proud of? Being beaten mercilessly in results since 2008? Hanging my head in the gaokao? You say Tongzhong has a century of history, a brilliant crop of talents; but you don’t even know their names.
Nantong people lack a strong sense of local identity, so identification with Tongzhong has become a kind of substitute; and in fact, the major events of Nantong’s modern history have indeed all revolved around Tongzhong. I am not defending the 2008 gaokao arrangement, yet Jiangsu’s gaokao “literary tradition” was, for quite some time, the only one of its kind in the country. This was perhaps also a conspiracy of the Sunan people.
In the playlist, every song sings of the youthful years at Tongzhong; every line carries the implicit message: whatever you are now, Tongzhong lets you remember that once you were one in a hundred. Yet embedded in this is a value system based on involution. Involution can’t even bring material benefits—only honor; this is the Protestant spirit that Weber described as glorifying God, and it is also the values and self-image that Tongzhong instilled in us.
We should also consider the charm of the historical strata accumulated by Tongzhong over time. A six-hundred-year-old zelkova tree, a campus more than a hundred and ten years old: the very ability to stand firm through the ages hints at a value that infects. This was also the driving force behind “sealing off communication with Heaven” during the second republic.
Passing the torch—this phrase was anciently called incense fire, and earlier still, the lineage of the Way. The Way is public property. Every school has its own “invoking the former kings’ governance, carrying benevolence and righteousness, adorning speech with eloquent discourse.” The values and cultivation that Tongzhong instilled in us are the most precious treasure.
A marginal note, written during a break from revising optics.