北京，北京

* 毕业论文致谢‍ ‍

感谢我的导师W老师。在无数次自我怀疑和迷茫的时刻，与您相处的点滴总是能让我重拾前行的力量。在飘忽不定、游离徘徊的成长与探索中，您温和而坚定的指导、毫无保留的相信与包容，是一座常亮的灯塔，每每回首来时，总能望见。

感谢法学院Z老师。在您的课堂上，我在高中时对遥远国度的琐碎好奇化成一个越发坚定的梦想；也是在您的课堂上，我体会到思考和求知本身的乐趣，在对自我的质问中一次次完善我正在成长的价值观。大一时每周与同学在课后围着您提问的那一个小时，总是我一周里最期待的时刻。每当有人问起我走上今天这条路的缘由，您总是第一个跳出来的名字。

感谢一直陪伴左右的Z和F。如果没有你们，我应该没法完成这篇论文。从万松园到颐和园，很快又要隔着太平洋和大西洋，在美国、中国和英国继续我们的人生。时至如今，我们好像真的完成了那句“从这里走向世界和未来”的诺言，但个中滋味，彼此皆是见证。我记得在保送考试的前一天，我们在熄灯的武广教室里唱歌。保送考试结束的那天晚上，我和F望着窗外，我说，你觉得这段密集的备考过后，我们还会是朋友吗；F说，有缘就一直在。我记得和Z一次次在楼梯间的夜谈，我们谈八卦、谈理想、谈未来，谈那些在成人世界看来无谓的纠结与思考；不知道在校园之外，还有何处能容纳那些夹杂着憧憬与犹豫的时刻。我记得和F走在曼哈顿的街头，穿着大衣冒着大雪去找一家角落里的古着店，在垃圾桶旁边喝黑糖奶茶，在中城的咖啡厅研读Merrily剧本，然后在Hudson Theatre听着Old Friends前奏响起的那一刻痛哭出声。好像所有关于青春的记忆，都是和你们一起度过；好像我总是比较紧绷的那一个，时常羡慕你们的洒脱与坦然。

感谢G。和你在一起，就好像能将世界所有的纷扰与未知拒之门外。当我疲惫迷失于物质的追求和远方的目标时，你常让我想起人生的另一种可能。如果不是有一个不可抗拒的声音召唤着我出发，或许我们真的能一直平淡地幸福下去。

当你说不愿再幻想 / 我悄悄湿了眼眶 / 在这座荒诞游乐场 / 我们都一样彷徨

我对北京和本科生涯的感情总是很复杂，一切都只是在记忆中匆匆闪过。如果要我说这四年来最值得称为青春的那一刻，大概是大一的一个秋天，在未名湖边，我为公共法语课背诵口语考试的诗歌。当兰波的诗句在耳边响起，当友人朝柳树的倒影扔出石子泛起一波涟漪，枯叶在风中轻轻颤抖，时间仿佛只是一个略带写意的概念。那时我还相信，未来有无限可能，而选择只是一个甜蜜的烦恼。

随后的一切都好像只是走过场般的流动着，转眼就要离开，除了一点似有似无的感伤，我好像也并没有感受到很强烈的情绪。激动过，迷茫过，忧郁过，但比起来时，我依然没有解决那些最核心的问题：我是谁，从哪里来，要到哪里去。或许有变化的是，我越发清楚地认识到，过去的许多决定并非出于我本心。我更加坦然地面对自己的无知，尝试拥抱未来的不确定；我在无数条岔路口选择了一条更加崎岖的路，不是因为挑战困难的精神值得赞赏，而是因为我真切地感到自己的冲动与希冀。我不知道这算是逃离还是创造，但对于我来说，这足够真实。比起18岁，22岁的我不再那么雄心勃勃，觉得全世界都在我脚下，而出发只在我一念之间。现实的残酷在向我逼近的同时，也让我更加拷问自己的本心，让我在应该和想要之间徘徊。时至今日我依旧没有想清楚那些人生的核心问题，但起码我找到了一个精神上的毕生课题，值得我一生反复思考追寻。

22年的夏天，我写最珍惜的自己的财产是敏感的天性，如今我依然这么觉得。成长赋予了我对外界敏锐的观察力，也给了我用这种观察影响和塑造自己的惯性。25年的春天，北京依然杨絮漫天。我写下这篇致谢的早上，美国政府刚宣布取消哈佛招收国际生的资格，以为的尘埃落定，又将变成风尘仆仆。不管未来落脚哪里，只要本心还在，希望就在。但愿。

北京，北京。从这里出发，是幸运的吗。

2025年5月23日于北京

* Acknowledgements for my undergraduate thesis‍ ‍

To my advisor, Professor W. In all those moments of doubt and disorientation, the small moments with you have always been enough to restore my will to move forward. Through the drifting and wandering of growing up, your guidance, gentle but unwavering, your belief in me, total and unguarded, has been a lighthouse that stays lit. Every time I look back, it’s there.

To Professor Z at the law school. In your classroom, the scattered curiosities I’d carried since high school about some faraway country slowly gathered into a real dream. It was also in your classroom that I discovered thinking and learning could be pleasurable in themselves, that questioning myself over and over was how a set of values got built. Freshman year, the hour after class when a handful of us would crowd around you with questions, that was the hour I looked forward to most every week. Whenever anyone asks how I ended up on this path, yours is always the first name that comes to mind.

To Z and F, who have been beside me all along. Without you two, I probably couldn’t have finished this thesis. From Wansong Garden to the Summer Palace, and soon across the Pacific and the Atlantic, in the United States, China, and the UK, we’ll keep living our lives in different time zones. It seems like we really did make good on that high school motto: Access to the world and the future. But only we know what it actually cost. I remember the night before the recommendation exam, singing together in the darkened classroom at Wuguang. The night the exam ended, F and I stood looking out the window. I said: after all this, do you think we’ll still be friends? F said: if we’re meant to be, we always will. I remember the late-night talks with Z in the stairwell, the gossip, the dreams, the future, the kind of earnest agonizing that finds no shelter in the adult world. I don’t know where, outside of a school, there’s room for moments like those, so tangled up in hope and hesitation. I remember walking through Manhattan with F, bundled in coats through the snow, hunting for a vintage shop tucked in a corner, drinking brown sugar milk tea next to a trash can, poring over the Merrily We Roll Along script in a Midtown café, and then in the Hudson Theatre, the moment the first notes of “Old Friends” began, bursting into tears. It feels like every memory that deserves the word youth has you two in it. And I think I was always the tightly wound one, quietly envying how easily you both moved through the world. [1]

To G. Being with you felt like shutting the door on every noise and uncertainty outside. When I was tired and lost in the chase of status, ambition, the next horizon, you reminded me that there could be another vision to life. If there weren’t some irresistible voice calling me to the road, maybe we really could have gone on being quietly, plainly happy. [2]

When you said you'd given up on dreaming / my eyes went wet without a sound

In this absurd circus of world / we’re all just as lost

My feelings about Beijing and these four undergraduate years have always been complicated. It all just flickers past in memory. If I had to name the single moment most deserving of the word youth, it would be a fall afternoon freshman year, sitting by Weiming Lake, memorizing a poem for my public French class’s oral exam. Rimbaud’s lines playing in my ear. A friend tossing a stone at the willow’s reflection, ripples fanning out across the water. Dead leaves trembling in the wind. Time felt like little more than a brushstroke, a suggestion. Back then I still believed the future was infinite and choosing was just a sweet kind of trouble.

Everything after that seemed to flow past like scenery from a train window. Now I’m about to leave, and aside from a faint, almost-not-there sadness, I can’t say I feel anything very strongly. There was excitement, confusion, melancholy, but compared to when I arrived, I still haven’t answered the questions at the center of it all: who I am, where I come from, where I’m going. What may have changed is that I see more clearly now how many of my past decisions were never really mine. I’ve grown more at ease with what I don’t know, more willing to sit with an uncertain future. At countless crossroads I chose the rougher path, not because there’s anything noble about difficulty for its own sake, but because I could feel, genuinely, my own impulse and my own wanting. I don’t know whether this is running away or building something new. But for me, it’s real enough. At 22, I’m no longer the bright-eyed and ambitious eighteen-year-old who believed the world owed me a destiny and setting sail was only at my whim. The cruelty of the real has closed in, and in closing in, it’s forced me to interrogate what I actually want, to linger between should and want. I still haven’t worked out the big questions. But at least I’ve found a question worth spending a life on.

In the summer of 2022, I wrote that the personal trait I treasured most was my own sensitivity. I still believe that. Growing up gave me a sharp eye for the world, and the habit of turning that eye back on myself. In the spring of 2025, Beijing is still thick with poplar catkins. The morning I wrote this, the U.S. government had just revoked Harvard’s ability to enroll international students. What I thought was dust finally settled has kicked up into another storm. No matter where I land, as long as I still know what I want, there’s hope. I think. I hope.

‍ ‍Beijing, Beijing. Was it lucky, to have started from here?

May 23, 2025, Beijing

[1] Z and F were the friends I had since high school who went on to join me in college in the same department.

[2] G was my boyfriend of three years. We have broken up since. But we were foolishly happy. All the best to him.