Chapter Four : Yu Jiahuan
Dancing with Philosophers — My sister, Yu Jiahuan. My parents always felt the house was too quiet.
My sister, Yu Jiahuan.
My parents always felt the house was too quiet. Their world was full of relentless optimism, words, activities—like a machine that never stopped running. And by that standard, my silence was like a defect that could neither function nor be understood.
They could not fathom why I was so different from them. So, when I was sixteen, they had a daughter and named her "Jiahuan"—"Family Joy." The name carried almost all their hopes: to inject into this excessively quiet household what they regarded as essential—"joy."
She was indeed far livelier and more cheerful than I was, and just as they wished, she brought the expected liveliness into the home.
I once overheard my mother ask my father, "Could we have brought home the wrong child?" The question was absurd, but by their emotional standards, it may have been the only explanation that could set their minds at ease.
Although Yu Jiahuan is more than ten years younger than I am, she is currently the only person on this planet with whom I can hold an effective conversation. I say ten sentences and she understands two. That is already far better than anyone else.
What dissatisfies her most is feeling like a kind of "compensation": that she was born only because I could not bring joy. She complains about it constantly, but I know her tolerance for me far exceeds her complaints.
Even now, married with a child and helping her husband run a business, she still remembers to handle the chores I am too lazy or too disdainful to deal with. She is like an efficient assistant, specifically tasked with blocking out the external affairs I refuse to face. The origin of this relationship is absurd, but it has persisted to this day in the most stable, least energy-consuming form.
That day, my sister brought her three-year-old son, Haohao, to my home and, as usual, reported to me on some trivial matters of daily life I could not be bothered to inquire about.
Haohao sat on the carpet playing with blocks. Suddenly he raised his innocent little face and threw out a question that went straight to the core of existence: "Uncle, will I die someday too?"
I put down the document in my hand, looked at him, and answered with the same precision and honesty I use with my students: "Yes."
"Why did you suddenly think about this question?" I followed up. I wanted to know the starting point that triggered this philosophical question.
"Because Jiajia's dog died," he answered.
"Who is Jiajia?"
My sister happened to have just taken a sip of water. She added, "His classmate in preschool."
I turned my attention back to Haohao: "Do you think death is frightening? What are your thoughts on death?"
Before Haohao could answer, Yu Jiahuan rushed over like a bolt of lightning. She scooped him up from in front of me, her movements fierce with instinctive protectiveness.
"Brother!" Her tone carried obvious anger and anxiety. "My son is only three. Please don't fill his head with this stuff, okay?"
I looked at her calmly. My logical thinking would not be disturbed by her emotions.
"Your son could hold chopsticks steadily and eat noodles at two, and now he's asking questions of this depth. In terms of cognitive development, he is clearly not an ordinary child."
Yu Jiahuan held the child, her voice trembling slightly: "If being extraordinary means being like you—no friends, never been in love, not knowing what love is—then I'd rather he be ordinary, grow up, marry normally, and have a companion into old age."
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There was not the slightest ripple in my gaze. I simply stated the fact: "You are destroying a genius's potential."
I understood that in her emotional cognition, my abnormality was a case study in failure. And in my rational judgment, her worry was nothing but fear of the unpredictable. But in any case, Haohao's question had already been entered into my "childhood philosophical cognition" observation archive.
Holding the child, Yu Jiahuan spoke with the dissatisfied tone of a verdict: "You've never been a parent, so you don't understand how parents feel. Mom and Dad wanted you to marry and have children, but you've made yourself into an island. Do you know how sad they are? They worry you'll have no one to care for you when you're old, that you won't be happy."
She threw out "happiness"—a concept that cannot be precisely defined—as a bargaining chip.
"Tell me, what is happiness?" I asked, trying to pull this vague concept back to the boundary of definition. "To avoid loneliness, you just find some partner whose frequency doesn't match? Isn't your definition of happiness far too shallow?"
She immediately counterattacked, pulling the argument back to my own state of existence: "Then as an island, are you happy? Since I was old enough to understand, I've seen you smile fewer than ten times."
Her observation was based on fact. I could not deny it. But what I pursue is not outward emotional expression.
I looked straight at her and posed my final question, aimed at the ethical core of expectation and freedom: "I cannot spend the rest of my life with anyone I cannot communicate with. That would be an enormous drain on myself. If I chose to violate myself in order to satisfy our parents' expectations, do you think that is the happiness they want—or do they simply want me to become what they define as 'happiness'?"
Seeing that my logic was impregnable, Yu Jiahuan shifted the topic to a question of feasibility.
"Tell me, on this planet, aside from me—someone who can barely communicate with you—what other higher life form is capable of communicating with you?" she asked, her tone carrying a kind of helpless precision.
"You need someone who doesn't require you to accompany them to meals, movies, or shopping, doesn't need you to coax them, has their own inner world, and knows what you're thinking whether you say one sentence or nothing at all. Right?"
I picked up the coffee from the coffee table, took a sip, and calmly admitted: "Close enough."
She sighed and made her final judgment: "Brother, that spec is dinosaur-tier."
"I know." I calmly set the coffee cup back in place. "That's why I gave up hope long ago."
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Segment 4 (copy-paste ready):
Just then, a new perspective intervened.
Haohao, in Yu Jiahuan's arms, suddenly asked a question steeped in philosophy: "Mom, could Uncle be an alien?"
Yu Jiahuan and I both turned to look at him at the same time. He looked utterly innocent.
Yu Jiahuan's answer unexpectedly cooperated with this metaphysical judgment.
She said: "Yes. Your uncle is a resident of the lonely planet." She set Haohao down, grabbed her handbag, and prepared to leave.
Perhaps she was right. I am a resident of the lonely planet, which is why I can find no true peace in this mismatched environment called Earth. I am always living in potential anxiety. Only when I bury myself in philosophical research, delving into the structures of those long-dead thinkers, can my thoughts obtain a moment of quiet.
She walked to the door, then suddenly turned her head and gave me an instruction about the external world: "Forgot to tell you—the publisher asked when you'll have a new work."
I immediately gave the most efficient reply: "Tell them I’ve been busy with research lately and have no time to conceive a new work."
