Lin

During the three years of the pandemic, isolation and numbness gradually became the norm, leaving the emotional connections between people increasingly thin and fragile. Yet, I believe that the “cigarettes, alcohol, tea, and sugar”—which once brought a sense of happiness and fostered genuine interpersonal communication to the Chinese people—can still play a vital role. For a middle-aged intellectual caught in hesitation and hardship, facing how to balance humanity and animality, how freedom and responsibility wrestle with each other, and whether one can still believe in the power of literature and cinema, is an unavoidable imperative.