Ling Guang Collection-37-《Movie》

The train tracks occasionally break in the seawater, and the city grows longer and longer in the fog. There are always people on the deck who refuse to disembark; why are they afraid when they see land? The piano has eighty-eight keys, which is clear, but the land has thousands of streets, endless.

Many years ago, when I watched this movie, I just thought this guy was foolish. Now, as I’m about to graduate, I finally understand him.

Fortunately, I’ve been continuously starting businesses these years, so I’m not lost in direction; but watching those seniors, having to attend job fairs, the subway packed like sardines. Everyone’s face is reflected on the glass, overlapping with the buildings flashing by outside. The buildings are too tall, cutting the sky into strips.

Suddenly, I remember the afternoon sunlight in a small inland town, spreading completely over the asphalt road, the air filled with the smell of fried pastries. The piano was placed in a room facing the street, the keys slightly warm from the sun.

Is life always this painful?

When I was a child, I scraped my knee and asked my grandma while crying. She stuck a band-aid on me with flour-covered hands: "Kid, pain makes you remember." Later, Grandma was gone, and the construction site in Kai Tak was bustling.

This area used to be so small, too small to hold the English letters on a resume, too small for development space and platform resources. But that New York or Shanghai in the distant fog, that monster called "tomorrow," can it really hold me?

People on land always like to ask why. When winter comes, they wait for spring; when it gets dark, they hope for dawn. The man who refuses to disembark doesn’t ask. The piano plays from one end to the other, and a lifetime is over.

The infinite within the finite, our exclusive little fishing village.

Our generation was taught to be infinite. Certificates must be stacked high, grades must be top, vision must be far-reaching. But no one taught us how to play our own tune on eighty-eight keys. Tunes can’t be eaten, I know.

But those poems that can’t be eaten, the moonlight, the moment your fingers touch the keys and your heart trembles—these are the proof of living.

Yesterday, while packing my dorm, I found my middle school diary. The handwriting was wild: "Change the world!" The pages are brittle now. To change the world, you first need a place in it, and that place requires a number, a queue, molding yourself into the right shape. As you mold, that wild shadow fades.

But the scratches on the film remain.

It’s waiting for a specific light.

Like now, crouched among piles of luggage, textbooks on the left, a plane ticket to the distance on the right. The fog seeps through the window cracks, carrying this city’s damp ambition.

Suddenly, I hear a sound—not the subway’s roar, but that afternoon at fifteen, pressing middle C for the first time in an old piano shop. A "dong," dust rising slowly in the light.

You can change or stay the same; life has no rules.

Rules are things of the land. The sea has no roads, only waves. The pianist chose to stay on the waves. His rules are the tides, the decisions his fingers make in every improvisation.

Maybe there’s no right choice. You choose, then make it right. Going to the land to explore is right; settling in a small town is also right.

The fear is standing in the middle of the gangway, neither up nor down, staring at a sea you never truly own.

Time to pack, so I gently place that diary at the bottom of the suitcase.

If a butterfly wants to fly away, let it. But before it does, the wind from its wings brushes your cheek. That wind will follow you, to land, to sea, anywhere. When you’re working overtime in a cubicle, zoning out in a meeting, haggling in a market, that wind will suddenly return, reminding you...

The keys are finite; you are infinite. The fog will clear, becoming morning light. Then, you’ll play yourself.

Whether at sea or on land.

The man who chose to stay on the boat lived himself into a rusty nail. Land is a monster keyboard of countless keys; he couldn’t press them, couldn’t play.

But we, who must eventually disembark, must learn to build an unsinkable ship on land.

Medicine, law, business, engineering... these are the compasses on land, pointing to directions called "decency" or "success." Holding these blueprints, we learn to drive piles in concrete forests, to root ourselves in deeper land prices and more complex contracts.

But late at night, the blueprints grow hot under the lamp, and your fingers feel empty, missing some melody that yields no economic benefit. Romance can’t pay rent; poetry can’t match a square meter’s price.

But that melody is the ballast of your soul. Without it, even a slight storm on land will make you float, light as a plastic bag.

So, that morning will come.

Not a gentle good night, but a morning you force open with your bones, cool and dewy; you’ll find that life’s meaning isn’t the foggy infinite possibilities, but walking deep enough on your chosen, finite path to hear the underground springs.

If you return to teach in a small town, turn the blackboard into a starry sky; if you go to a tech giant to code, bury poetic rhymes in the gaps of algorithms.

No land can truly trap someone with the sea in their heart.

I remember a scene from the movie: the old saxophonist sailor finally sells his instrument, trades it for a new suit, and goes ashore: "The land is too big a ship for me."

And then? Maybe in some bar, his calloused fingers tap the counter to the rhythm of the deck.

The scratches remain; the light will find them.

We’re all the same.

What we take isn’t luggage, but the salt of the entire ocean. It seeps into every dry day, making them suddenly taste of the sea—salty, bitter, real.

The film rolls; light passes through the scratches.

Now, it’s your turn to speak.

Good morning, good afternoon, good night.

What seeps from the cracks in your bones is like the southern rainy season—a shirt that never dries. As a child, I thought pain was a scraped knee: cry, the scab falls, and it’s over. Later, I learned some pain grows inside, growing with you, as tall as you are.

Always like this.

The one who says this becomes part of the pain.

But people don’t live for pain. Born in a hospital, die in a hospital—both ends are pain; the middle must find something else.

I’ve seen construction workers squatting in dust, drinking cheap liquor, their eyes softening as they talk about the rapeseed flowers behind their hometown house, blindingly yellow.

That bit of yellow carries him through three months of cement. I’ve also seen young office workers at 3 a.m., eyes bloodier than their code, but a worn poetry book in the drawer. Poetry can’t save reports, but it saves them in that moment.

Rules are set by others; the path is walked by you.

My grandfather was a soldier, retired to farm all his life. In old age: "No matter how familiar the field ridge, you’ll still twist your ankle. Don’t fear—grab some dirt, press it on. Blood and mud mix, and you can’t tell wound from path."

I only now understand his words. Positive or negative—those are book terms. Living is living, like grass: it grows in brick cracks, pushes through concrete splits. You think it’s dying, then rain comes, and it stands again.

Romance and love can’t be used as weights. You can’t weigh rice with them. But without these intangible things, the heart sinks like a waterlogged sack of rice—heavy to carry, empty to discard.

The man in the movie doesn’t disembark not because he fears land, but the land’s wordless trades, the pound-for-pound transactions. At sea, he guards his useless truth.

The scratches on the film are dust in daylight. Wait for the right light, and the dust comes alive, fluttering shadows.

The letter I didn’t dare send at fifteen—the ink has faded, but the sweat on my palms still feels damp. That dampness is proof of living. Regret isn’t a pit; it’s the mud you accidentally step in and carry out. Dried, it falls on the road, marking where you came from.

Stranger, I have no blessings for you.

Paths must be walked alone; pain must be borne alone. I only hope when you’re beaten, you carry something unextinguished—like a fire starter in your chest, not bright, but warm enough to keep your breath from cooling.

Morning always comes, even if you’ve endured the night’s darkness. It arrives unasked. Then, you open the window—inhale the cold air or retreat under covers—either is fine.

Just don’t forget you opened the window.

Good morning, good afternoon, good night. If we don’t meet today, there’s always tomorrow.

Later, I realized these American films all circle the same question: What’s the point of living?

Like the man who wouldn’t disembark, he locked his life on piano keys. Eighty-eight keys—no more, no less.

As a child, I thought: This isn’t playing piano; it’s drawing your own prison.

But we on land have bigger prisons, walls unseen. Jobs, houses, marriage, children—paths laid out like tracks, shiny and straight.

But sometimes, waking at midnight, staring at the ceiling, you suddenly wonder: Where am I headed?

The meaning of life? Too heavy. I prefer to say: To live, you need a thought. Not an ideal—too distant—but a thought at hand. The cigarette a dockworker smokes after unloading, squatting in sunset; the daze a mother stands in after dropping her child at school. Smoke fades; daze ends. But in that moment, you surface from survival, breathe.

Movie characters seek grand meanings—wars, rescues, changing the world. But ordinary folks have no such stage. Our meanings are scattered, like spilled rice, gathered grain by grain. The numbers on a remittance slip to parents, the shadow of a smile on a sleeping child, even the half-step a stranger leaves you on the bus.

Gather them, and your palms slowly fill.

I’m just ordinary—no need to succeed, no need to be useful.

Sometimes, you can’t gather.

Pain arrives like a stone in your gut, dragging. I always ask, "Is it right if it’s always like this?" No answer. Just hold the stone until it becomes part of you, until you no longer feel it—just walk a little crooked.

The old saxophonist sold his instrument, like selling a piece of bone. But on land, his steps still sway like the deck.

Some things can’t be sold. They grow in your walk, in your silent rhythms. Life may have no meaning; it’s our living—these motions, these postures of old wounds and new pains—that give it weight.

Meaning isn’t found; it’s lived. Live long enough, and you’ll see: it’s the unforgettable—the ink smell of your first paycheck, a sudden gardenia scent on a night, someone who truly saw you when you were worthless.

In the end, you become your own movie.

Shaky camera, scratched film, sometimes out of focus.

But when light hits—a child’s laugh, an old song drifting in—all pain and joy suddenly develop.

Can’t say what it means, but you know: it’s living. Like tree rings, silently, stubbornly proving storms and sun have passed.

When all becomes the past, what have you gained?

Everyone has their answer. I’m glad at this age, I have one—ambiguous.
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​I think I’ve gained nothing.