Mr. Liang's reflections — simple, grounded — are extraordinary. His essays "My Heart, Human Hearts" and "Facing Adversity" offer uniquely perceptive thinking!
—Reader Thick Double-Layer Milk Pudding

After so much ornate prose, this directness is refreshing. Deeply worth reading!
—Reader DHGWX

★A curated collection of essays by Liang Xiaosheng, winner of the 10th Mao Dun Literature Prize and original author of the TV series "A Lifelong Journey".

★How to soothe a weary soul? How to reconcile with fate? In this razor-sharp era, only through inner dialogue can we awaken our strength. From emotion to reason, this book dissects the psyche, offering profound self-revelation.

★A guide to managing the inner world for young readers.
True resilience comes from within. Faced with life's chaos — how to choose, how to endure — modern youth often find themselves adrift. These "conversations with the soul" are Liang's answer, both to himself and to young seekers yearning for authenticity.

★Piercing insights that cut through life's pressures:
"Different people face different survival pressures. Yet sometimes, it's also about our philosophy of life. With more foresight — more plans, more options — we might carve broader paths, lighten our burdens, and face the future with brighter eyes..."

This collection captures Liang Xiaosheng's introspective interrogation of our era's maladies, revealing both the fluid unpredictability of human nature and the enduring warmth found in ordinary lives.
With his pen as a scalpel, Liang lays bare the psyche, emotions, and humanity — stripping away life's armor to expose our rawest selves. Through relentless self-questioning, his words blossom into revelations of the soul's radiance.
Writing from the common person's vantage, Liang blends elder wisdom with existential musings. His socially astute yet deeply personal essays — at once philosophical and poignant—resonate with striking clarity.

Liang Xiaosheng (original name ​​Liang Shaosheng​​) is one of the representative symbols of contemporary Chinese culture and one of the representative contemporary Chinese literary figures. He is also one of the important contemporary Chinese realist writers. He is known as the “writer of the common people” because he is good at focusing on the ups and downs of ordinary people's lives in great times. His works are characterized by a strong sense of reality and a commoner's sentiment. Together with Wang Meng, Lu Yao, Mo Yan, Yu Hua, Tie Ning and others, he has become an important window for observing contemporary Chinese society and cultural trends.

Some readers consider Liang Xiaosheng as the “Chinese Balzac,” because he is committed to writing a “social encyclopedia” and portraying the destinies of people from all walks of life. His works are often used as important texts for studying and understanding Chinese social and cultural developments between the 1980s and 2020s. His work Chinese Peach and Plum is included in the collections of many overseas libraries. His work Father is selected as a textbook for advanced Chinese courses published by the University of Washington Press in the United States.

He has so far created more than ten million words of works, including essays, novels, miscellaneous discussions, and documentary literature. His representative work, The Story of "A Lifelong Journey​", won the 10th Mao Dun Literature Prize. This novel has a cumulative circulation of more than 2 million copies and are called the “fifty-year history of Chinese people's lives”. The TV drama adapted from it caused a nationwide viewing craze as soon as it was broadcast and set a new record for the prime-time viewership of CCTV (with a total audience scale of 371 million people). Disney purchased the overseas distribution rights of the drama in the first month of its production. His another long novel Snow City is selected into the “70 Classic Chinese Novels of New China's 70 Years”.

His works have been translated into English, French, Russian, Japanese, and Italian. The author was awarded as one of the “Top Ten Writers of the 2024 Hall of Fame Annual Humanities List”. In 2023, he was named as the “Cultural Figure of the Year” among the “2022 Annual Influential People” by China Newsweek. Since 1984, his name has been listed in the "World Who's Who" in the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia.

Chapter 1: Knocking on the Soul's Door
The Garden of the Mind | 002
Dissecting My Psyche | 007
The Poetry of My Soul | 012
My Heart • Human Hearts | 044
Fluid as Water: Human Nature | 051
The Meaning of Humanity | 058
The Poetry in "Foolish" Deeds | 065
On Emotions | 072
Emotional Education — A University Lecture | 075

Chapter 2: Cogito, ergo sum
Occasional Thoughts on Desire | 080
Relationships Between People and Desires | 083
On Misfortune, Unhappiness, and Happiness | 098
Defining Nobility | 105
Who Deserves Our Highest Respect? | 108
My Fish, My Flowers | 113
During the SARS Epidemic | 117
Ode to Fallen Leaves | 126
No Zen Secrets Needed, But Keep the Insight | 132

Chapter 3: From All Things to Beyond
The Woman with Orange Sleeve Covers | 138
Minnie and Bart | 143
The Escape of the "Ten Sisters" | 150
Who Should Empty the Wastebasket? | 155
How I Face Adversity | 159
Let Me Be Slow | 163
Reluctant to Speak of Bygone Days | 167
Thoughts on a Nail | 172
The Awkwardness of Truth | 176
Lions, Humans, and Other Beings | 178
The Dilemma of Choice | 182

Chapter 4: Between Right and Kind
Return, O Soul | 188
Chiron and World Book Day | 194
Warmth Persists in This World | 198
Bamboo Must Be Hollow; People Must Stand Straight | 205
Homeland Beyond the Horizon: A Dream | 210
Ba Jin's Legacy | 212
Money and Life: Replies to Students at Shuren Middle School | 217
Gleaning Fragments, Mending Gaps | 220
Right Versus Kind | 222
The Power of a Seed | 229

Who Should Empty the Trash Bin?

A trash bin — situated at the classroom door, also beside the podium, is full. With a slight turn on the podium, I can see it. It's always there, and it should be. Usually, it's always full. Beverage boxes or bottles with straws inserted, along with various snack bags, bread wrappers, and crumpled waste paper, often make it look like a mountain peak rising abruptly.
A classroom door without a trash bin is like a home entrance without a pair of slippers — it's inconsiderate. A classroom door with a trash bin so full it can't hold any more is like a home entrance with a pair of slippers so dirty they can't get any dirtier — it makes one feel very uncomfortable. Every time I enter the classroom, I always think to myself that it seems necessary to react to its being so full. Either in words or in action.
"Which student would like to empty the trash bin?" That's what I say.
I'm sure that as soon as I say this, someone will do it immediately.
To quietly go and empty the trash bin oneself — that's the action.
It has a bit of the meaning of setting an example.
I think action is more preferable than words. So I "set an example" twice, and the third time I was planning to do the same, a student did it for me. After he returned to the classroom, he said to me, "Mister, there's a janitor who should do this. Just tell her next time."
Emptying the trash bin is a matter of walking a few dozen steps back and forth in a minute, and there's a trash can outside the teaching building. I know the female janitor, and every time I see her diligently cleaning, she seems very responsible. Moreover, we respect each other and have a friendly relationship. My class schedule is in the third or fourth period of the morning. She must have already emptied all the trash bins in the classrooms in the morning, and it's the students in the first or second period who filled the trash bin again. Whether I go and tell her or a student does, she will surely come and do her job. But then I thought, she might think that it's a kind of indirect criticism of her work. To make a person who is already dedicated feel that others still have opinions about her work, I can't bear to do that.
I countered, "Is there really a need for that?"
Immediately, a student replied, "Yes." — seeing that I was all ears, he added, "If we always do it for her, won't her sense of responsibility for her own work gradually slacken?"
I had to admit to myself that there was a certain logical reasoning in this statement, even though it didn't quite align with my way of thinking.
I countered again, "Isn't there a rule that explicitly prohibits bringing food into the classroom?" The answer was, "Yes. But doesn't the presence of that trash bin there make it a redundant object, losing its practical significance?" Thus, a third viewpoint emerged: "Actually, that rule should be changed to allow bringing food into the classroom, but prohibit eating during the teacher's lecture." "Right, such a rule would be more humane and show consideration for the students." The topic then expanded. Clearly, it had shifted to questioning school rules. With the change in content, the nature also changed. I said, "That's not possible. Probably no university's rules would explicitly stipulate that kind of allowance." The response was, "We understand. Then just explicitly stipulate that eating is not allowed during the teacher's lecture. The implication of allowing eating before class is included in it." I couldn't help but laugh, "Isn't that equivalent to a rule deliberately left with a loophole to exploit?" The response was, "Mister, if it weren't for the excessive and varied coursework, and the tightly packed class schedules, who would want to rush to class with a little food?"
The topic further expanded. The content changed again, and so did the nature. It seemed to have taken on an unusually serious tone, even with an air of attempting to subvert something. Of course, my conversation with the students about a trash bin was merely idle chat before class. But that trash bin was never full again. To this day, I don't know who empties it before each class.
Thus, I realized that the affairs of the world are originally like an old saying of chinese, "a range of mountains seen from the side becomes a peak, seen from afar or near, high or low, each different", different perspective brings different view. This is the essence of worldly matters, or rather, the overall picture. A view lacking this or that perspective is an incomplete one. Sometimes, even if opinions seem particularly unanimous on the surface, different views must still exist. Sometimes what some people want to express is merely a viewpoint, without actually intending to oppose or insist on anything. More often, many people will give up their own views and default to any view of the majority, without the slightest discomfort in doing so. As long as the matter does not concern any significant principles or positions — such as who should empty a trash bin. Such matters are ubiquitous in our lives, and everyone can choose a course of action according to their own wishes. As long as we listen calmly, we will still hear many viewpoints that are greatly beneficial to our own way of thinking. Those viewpoints may be opposed to our own consistent views on the world, yet they can educate us— a harmonious society should first be one that tolerates the reasonable existence of diverse views on the world. Without tolerance, how can there be diversity? Without diversity, how can there be harmony?
In the past days that I have personally experienced, even a matter like who should empty a trash bin, even if not in a university, but in primary or secondary schools, only one viewpoint was almost allowed to exist. It can be imagined that this was a viewpoint determined to be the only correct one. Other viewpoints were either incorrect, wrong, extremely wrong, or simply heretical and had to be severely criticized. For example, from the issue of who should empty the trash bin, it actually led to the desire to change a university rule and thus complained about academic pressure. Over time, people's ways of thinking were generally assimilated and tended to become simplified. It seemed that everyone gradually got used to being bound by such a fixed pattern of thinking, that is, people's views on the world could only be one correct or nearly correct. The opposite would be incorrect, or even extremely wrong. In this way, not only does it not conform to the overall picture of the world, but it also puts other equally correct views on the opposite side of the "only correct" one. In fact, not only are there indeed various erroneous views on the world, but correctness is also diverse. It is precisely because there are various erroneous views on the world that there are diverse correct views on the world. The commonly recognized correct view of the world has always been a synthesis of various correct views. There has never been anyone in this world who could have a completely correct view on something — even something that everyone in the world has personally experienced, such as love.