I met up with a high school friend at a Starbucks yesterday. He encouraged me to write something like a family history over three generations from my parents to mine and the next.
"Why do you waste time writing something so rudimentary now?" Like what I’m writing now. It's so easy to come up with some self-defense, which I did.
The conversation brought back the memory of my father. He enjoyed reading memoirs of famous people and politicians, like Richard Nixon's Six Crises, and biography of General de Gaulle. I know he had some dramatic experiences during the Cultural Revolution. So I once asked him about writing a memoir. He did have this plan. But he was taken away from us too soon. Also he knew perfectly well what could be published in China.
If I am totally objective and lie-free, especially about Cultural Revolution, I can't avoid exposing something negative about Chinese culture and the current system. I'm not ready for that yet.
Most importantly, it won't be an easy journey back when I try to trace back the past five decades. That journey could be dark and depressing and spirit-draining.
Perhaps, the exciting way is to always have something to look forward in the future, as the Chinese saying goes, 展望未来 (zhǎn wàng wèi lái), which literally means: look forward to a bright future!