At the end of 2019, the last days of this decade, I am having an epiphany.

I remember clearly, in 2013, September, the first time I stepped on a foreign land, greedily soaking in the clean air as well as the liberal culture offered by England. In an art school in Cambridge, a private institution driven solely by money but luckily majority of the tutors were not, a group of students were assigned to find a topic, a subject or an interest to study and scrutinise. After weeks of hesitation, my instinct told me: Lighthouse.

For some reason I was obsessed with lighthouses, their structures, their functions, their locations, their keepers and their metaphorical meanings. However, there was something missing – What is the connection to myself? Why the lighthouse? What my own instinct is trying to enlighten me? I simply could not connect the dots… hence, the project had to be stranded by the sea… until now.

In 2011, my supervisor slash mentor Cynthia and I were having a ciggy break in the narrow staircase. We were discussing the appaulling news regarding the illegal chemicals added in formula causing health problems to Chinese infants and toddlers. She thought that the root causing this irresponsible phenomenon in food industry as well as many other industries was the belief system in China. People in China had no belief compared to the western world. They focused solely on gaining fortune regardless the harm done to others. Essentially, a belief probably wouldn’t cure but at the least alleviate the symptoms. 8 years have passed and that moment still runs in my head like it happened yesterday.

I was back to China from England in 2016.

I think it was 2017, Chinese New Year, my grandfather, who’s a stubborn traditionalist and a faithful communist I believe, asked my parents whether I had joined the Communist Party. I was dismissive of course. He then said that the reason he asked was not about joining the Party but was worried about my belief. “If not joining the Communist Party, join something, believe in something…”

In November, 2018 and the same month in 2019, I went on a 10-day meditation trip where I scrutinized my mind and body. Some books regarding psychology, buddhism, human history etc. have been read (some unfinished). I realised it now the Lighthouse might be the belief system which had been absent from the beginning of my life as well as many others in this country. We need a lighthouse to guide us in the ocean surrounded by the mist of materialism, just so we can find our way home, home to the true self existing within each one of us, waiting to be touched, the self that is kind, warm, bright and full of light. We need a purpose in life, a purpose which is higher than our lives themselves. That might be the meaning of life, of living.

I probably should have written this in Chinese, however, this is like the unfinished proposal I was supposed to write in English, now finally finished. The lighthouse of mine has become clearer and clearer. And so is the question ‘Who am I?’