There was an anger in Luo Wenzhou’s heart that could have burned a hole in the ground. He was afraid that if he breathed too deeply he’d blow the earth out of the solar system.
I sometimes find that it can be very difficult for a person to escape his parentage and the surroundings he grew up in.
Thoughts, habits, disposition, manners, level of virtue, cultural accomplishments… These things, which can be altered later, are like the branches and leaves of plants. As long as you’re willing, you can prune yourself into any direction.
But the deeper levels, the most essential things, are very hard to alter. The things you encounter in the earliest surroundings of your childhood, when you have no notions about the world, settle into your unconscious mind. Traces of these things will be hidden in all the abstract concepts you take in through your native language. You won’t notice it yourself, but those things will shroud your whole life.
Sometimes when you stood looking out into the street, watching the people pass by, men and women, young and old, you’d feel that they were all about the same. You’re wearing a button-down and pants, and I’m also wearing a button-down and pants; you looked down and saw that the old people jogging by the street and the golden-haired, green-eyed foreigners were wearing the same brand of sneakers, almost giving you an illusion that the whole world was one.
The people living in the sun couldn’t imagine the inescapable and customary torment that the smiling and chatting buddy next to them suffered, while a person deep in depression couldn’t understand that the human figures rushing past them really weren’t forcing themselves to smile.
Just like now, with him and Luo Wenzhou standing together; at first glance, it seemed like they were from the same country.
The body often hid the truth so firmly that not a drop leaked out.