It was late at night when I put down Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha. I learned that it was night only when I opened the blinds. Outside, now and then, came clamour, laughter, abandon; then it would be very quiet, with only leaves swept into a pile and bicycles sleeping in the open. In any case, none of it had anything to do with me.

Siddhartha tells of a Brahmin's son devoted to seeking the Way. He practises with ascetics, then, unable to place his faith in the Buddha's great teaching, turns to the secular world in search of wisdom. Instead he is trapped by worldly affairs and delayed in his search, until at last he returns to the path and finds truth in a surging river. Hesse's language is extremely spare. I had been reading Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse immediately before it; the contrast was powerful.

It has already been several weeks since I finished Siddhartha. It remains vivid because in Hesse's Siddhartha I saw, with perfect clarity, my own reflection. As a child, I too single-mindedly sought to learn the truth and longed to change the country. My family was still comfortably off then; I had my parents' love and cultivation. The happiness of that time makes my heart blossom even now when I revisit it.

The past three years, however, like the years Siddhartha lost to worldly entanglements, could not have been darker for me. If the failure of my earlier application was the first time I endured defeat, the departure of people I loved drove me utterly to the edge of collapse. Beautiful things broke into pieces. I tasted warmth and cold in the human world.

During a long period of despondency, I often stayed awake all night watching films and going online to escape the darkness, then hurried to sleep at the first light of dawn. By the time I woke, the day was usually over. I opened the blinds, glanced at the greying sky, and closed them again. Books covered the floor of the room, along with several bananas, a computer still glowing, and clothes hastily taken off. I collapsed onto the bed with a hand over my face. In my heart there was neither regret nor resentment, only a terrifying blankness. Yet I did not wish to speak to others about my past, nor did I intend to beg for sympathy.

When Siddhartha discovered he had sunk into the secular world, he could no longer climb out. He was addicted to the games of commerce, to deception and gambling. I was different. I too tried to lose myself in noisy parties, films, and video games, but none brought satisfaction. Even the fleeting sensation was not pleasure—it was blankness, terrifying blankness.

Faced with suffering, I knew there was no shortcut. There was only endurance: endure, endure, pass through in silence. Now the time has finally come. I too must emerge.

Three years of confusion and difficulty have made me understand more clearly who I am and what I truly want. I once courted the great tide of utilitarianism; but seeing young people who, like me, ought to have been grieving and thinking, concern themselves only with success, money, and the envy of others filled me with anger. I also once pretended to refinement through philosophy and art; but the endless disputes of epistemology and the smug self-justifications of modern thought left me disheartened. I can tolerate neither the vulgarity and stupidity of the present world nor the ivory tower's self-amusement.

Only then did I think of writing.

I began to miss the time, three years earlier, when I wrote every week. I knew little and wrote immaturely, but I was genuinely happy. Yet over three entire years, apart from “A Glimpse of Sappho” in my final year of high school and “Song of the Tides” in my first year of university, there is not a single piece I wrote with care. All of it is rubbish.

But I do not regret the misfortunes of those years. Siddhartha too passed through the secular world before attaining the Way. Without having been trapped, one cannot become clear about one's choice. Writing connects two worlds I do not like, yet that narrow passage allows me to see a vast prospect and my own value. Occupying one corner of the space between them, I find genuine satisfaction.

I do not need anyone to teach me how to write. I have always carried a powerful personal colouring, but my writing has never been directed only at myself. I hope more to find resonance, or to arrive at some illumination together with my readers. That is the source of my satisfaction.

I also oppose today's fashionable “rational writing”—the supposed testing of readers through an impartial point of view. This is nothing but pseudo-intellectual fantasy. “Reason” in today's world, like “nobility” and “justice” before it, has been abused. It has become a synonym for compromise. On any matter whatsoever, invoke a dialectical two-sidedness and you possess a miraculous medicine for escaping the question.

Though my learning remains shallow, years of reading have taught me that some questions cannot be escaped. Evasion only allows error to become more rampant. Professor Yuan Weishi says extremist thought was the killer of the twentieth century; I believe compromising thought is the poison of the twenty-first. Without bold judgements that pierce to the heart, without the courage to endure a thousand accusing fingers, the intellectual world will continue to wander in the shackles of vulgarity. Face the question directly. Even if you cannot strike its heart, never smooth things over merely to preserve the peace.

Of course, ultimately writing must return to the self. From the beginning, when it is stripped from the subjective world, it wanders for a long circuit through the minds of others, then finally comes home. I will reread these pieces as though watching my own play from the audience. The vanity, unwillingness, thoughts on the edge of withering, the misery or happiness of the past—all return to their roots, leaf by leaf.

These three years were blank, but also the most intricate years of my life so far. I still remember the anguish of writing three years ago: life had been squeezed dry; inspiration exhausted. Now the feathers have grown heavy and full again. Anger, grief, excitement, and confusion never expressed before all pulse with my blood, urging me to release them, setting my heart surging.

And so I created this public platform, both to share with everyone and to compel myself to write. The work here will include fiction, essays, interviews, and notes on books. It will witness every mood and explore meanings still unknown. There will also be another author here, E. I do not know what she will write, but I look forward to the delicacy, sensitivity, and unfailing surprise of her words.

In certain nostalgic moments, I tend to think of writing as a calling: the calling of a scavenger, alone, talking to himself. Like the boulder appointed to Sisyphus, a bitter wind cuts through his whole life, and he must seize those beautiful, ethereal moments before the wind scatters them and wrinkles occupy his face.