I am not Ximen Qing.

Change, everything is changing, becoming vibrant, with an invisible force of progress. Private schools have been abolished, replaced by neat classrooms with red tiles and red bricks. Western education, Aristotle's educational philosophy, is what allowed Western civilization to surpass the Eastern civilizations of India and China. It simplified complexity, categorized subjects, and didn't treat education as an abstract philosophy. Only a privileged few, the powerful and wealthy, monopolized the right to universal education—physics, chemistry, mathematics, languages, physical education, geometry, algebra. The root of China's failure and decline lies in education. The Book of Changes (I Ching) is profound and mysterious; Confucius only felt a great responsibility to write the Zuo Zhuan (Commentary on the Book of Changes) when he was over fifty. But through generations of transmission and long periods of teaching, by the Eastern Han Dynasty, the Book of Changes had lost its original meaning. Education itself served only the upper class, making it difficult for even poor families to access it.

Confucius had seventy-two disciples and over three thousand students, but this was far from sufficient for the widespread dissemination of culture across the entire nation. Gunpowder was invented by the Chinese, yet it changed Western history. The Chinese valued its entertainment value, while the West used it to manufacture firearms and cannons. During the Lunar New Year, the Chinese use firecrackers to bid farewell to the old year and welcome the new, warding off evil spirits and celebrating family reunions. At this crucial, epoch-making moment, the West searched the world for gold, silver, and spices, while China, after Zheng He's three voyages, became arrogant, self-important, isolated, and closed off from the world.

History punishes the complacent. America, the land of Puritan exile, transformed itself into a world superpower in just two hundred years. When Western missionaries arrived in China, they were astonished, describing it as an uncivilized people, poor and decadent, where even decadence required an economic foundation—a destitute, deformed people with queues. Even the descendants of African slaves integrated their folk songs with the Bible; Dunbar's hymns eventually became popular music. Africa fully embraced Dutch, French, English, and German, transitioning directly from primitive society to modern civilization.

India's peaceful sitting moved the British colonists. The British Empire, being pragmatic, thought, what's so scary about a nation whose own mother tongue has been wiped out? The English-speaking Indians were no longer a threat, nor could they threaten the British Empire's position as the suzerain state. They allowed India to be divided in two, then in three: India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. The British Queen, skilled in political maneuvering, always planted a landmine in everything, waiting for it to explode. She was never satisfied until her interests were maximized.

Creating conflict is the only way to prove one's existence, to highlight oneself as a defender of justice, democracy, and freedom, regardless of the life-or-death struggles of the countries involved. There are no permanent enemies; think about how many countries have suffered greatly from this. Only permanent interests exist. They are two-faced, watching from the sidelines as others fight, and finally appear as peacemakers to show they are good people who love peace. History is a mirror, but forgetfulness is in the nature of most people.

The missionaries were genuinely sincere in one respect: God had shown them so many living dead who were about to die, and they wanted to spread the gospel, yet they found that even God couldn't move the souls of these living dead. Why? Because they couldn't understand what God was; their minds were tormented to the point of exhaustion. The best way to spread the gospel wasn't by explaining the Bible, but by setting up a few large pots and cooking lots of thin porridge. The missionaries had never been disappointed in Africa, in the Native American tribes, or in any corner of the world. But when they came to this land, they were disappointed. They forgot the essence of missionary work; their minds were filled with pity. Their opportunity to spread the gospel of God failed, failed so utterly that they might never understand, even in death, that it was precisely the evil consequence of Western powers. When Lin Yutang's *The Art of Living* topped the bestseller list in the United States for seven consecutive weeks, Lin Yutang couldn't understand why he couldn't win the Nobel Prize in Literature. When you use ancient Chinese wisdom to live a better life, to showcase a Chinese person writing their own story in English, Nobel wouldn't agree to award him the prize.

The West was struck by something new: why did this free wisdom make Westerners' lives better? Many commentators and readers viewed China with this mindset. The old, backward, primitive Chinese, a symbol of poverty, backwardness, failure, and stupidity, were viewed with a sense of curiosity upon arriving in the New World. When the Native Americans welcomed them with feathered hats, they had no other thought than "How fun!" or "Interesting!" Their true feelings were nothing but contempt and disdain.

While one side danced a devout, wild bonfire dance on the North American prairie, the Native Americans had no idea that what awaited them was the slaughter and loss of their homeland. This was, in fact, their morality: bringing destruction and then feeling sorry for the weak, like the Jewish death factories. When the Allied forces arrived, they rescued the remaining survivors. Only the missionaries themselves knew their true thoughts, but that didn't matter. Only after seeing the scenes of hell did they understand why Dante sent the archbishops and popes to suffer in hell—a hypocrite who deceived the world.

The changes in China, once impoverished and backward, are immense. It's strange; for the first time, I hear the sound of children reading aloud in schools. There's a force that transcends the tragic fate of abandoned orphans described in Victor Hugo's *The Man Who Laughs*. The eradication of child traffickers in that time is a huge irony. For the first time, the Western world felt the power of authority and abandoned all the trafficked children. Now, a force, like the rising sun in the East, shines upon China with the power of the sun god, the power of a savior. It is greater than Apollo, radiating selfless cosmic love. The sound of children reading aloud belongs to the children of the poor, the children of the homeless.