[English] An Unfinished Letter: Peking University

An Unfinished Letter: Peking University#

My last day as an undergraduate in Peking University felt just as warm as the morning I first arrived four years ago. Yet, the coolness back then was filled with a vague but passionate hope for the future, while today’s heat is tinged with the melancholy of parting.

As I begin to write, I realize that the torrent of thoughts and emotions that once surged within me has now crumbled into fragments. Graduation, I’ve learned, isn’t a grand finale but a silent departure. I failed to find a single label to define these four years; they feel like an untitled manuscript, a hurried conclusion to a quest for meaning that was just getting started.

Four years was long enough to eat thousands of yuan worth of braised chicken at the Shaoyuan canteen. Yet, it was short enough that I never managed to try breakfast beyond the Jiayuan and Xueyi canteens, nor find time to soak in the atmosphere of the library and nap between breaks. I always believed I had all the time in the world, only to be left behind by it. These small, unfinished tasks, like un-dog-eared pages, have become part of the story, reminding me that life is a journey meant to have blank spaces.

On my first day, I met two senior students on the winding path in front of the Qiu Deba Sports Hall. Their simple “Welcome to PKU” became my first promise to this campus. The path sloped upwards, much like my own winding but forward-moving journey over these four years. Before I even started, I had told myself to accept my own ordinariness and make peace with my expectations. I tried to listen to my inner voice, but was ultimately consumed by the pressure of GPA. Peking University is vast enough for countless dreams; grades are just one, and by no means the only, measure of success. A life’s value should never be defined by a transcript. What matters more is finding what makes your eyes sparkle, what allows your voice to be heard and needed by the world. Letting your voice be heard and your efforts meet the world’s needs is far more meaningful than exhausting yourself on a crowded track.

As a small experiment, starting in my sophomore year, I began organizing my course materials ↗. I wasn’t trying to build a monument, but simply to leave a trail of footprints, a small light for those who would come after me. If someone could avoid a detour or see a little more of the scenery because of it, that would be the most romantic farewell I could imagine. Perhaps one day I will fade from everyone’s memory. But if, late one night, someone looks at my notes on their screen and softly reads my title, in that moment, my youth will be with them, and my thoughts will have found a form of eternity on this campus. This endeavor was also inspired by my dear friend Arthals ↗, who showed me that sharing knowledge is, in itself, an act of creation.

The time to say goodbye is here. We turn around, packing the seasons and memories of Peking University into our bags, and head toward a future without walls. Most of us will fade from the grand narratives and become ordinary people, living out our days with a face that is perhaps indistinct but incredibly real.

But this is not the end of the story. Please remember the young man who once gazed at the stars from Building 45B. Please protect that stubborn refusal to compromise with the world. That is the most precious treasure in our luggage. It will remind us in the storms to come: even on an ordinary path, we must create our own echo.