(Sometimes, a melody speaks louder than a thousand words.)
For a long stretch of my youth, I never quite understood: Why should a person deeply love their homeland?
It wasn’t until life had tested me that the answer arrived with sudden clarity — and it came down to just two words: worthy of it.
Only by choosing to love her deeply will you possess the tenacity, trust, and sincerity needed to engage with everything that happens on this land without prejudice — to truly begin to understand it. And that understanding will repay you, endlessly, across every dimension of your life: in how you navigate the world, in how you invest, in how you grow.
I ask myself honestly: have I ever seen anyone who, while harboring hatred toward something, was still able to gradually grasp and master its inner workings? I cannot say I have. Because hatred, by its very nature, leads you only deeper into bias and blindness — never toward clarity.
This same truth also answers a question that has circulated for years: Why do so many Chinese who emigrated over the past three decades now regard that decision as the greatest mistake of their lives?
At its core, they didn’t merely miss thirty years of extraordinary growth in their homeland. More than that, they failed to grasp a fundamental principle: escape is never the right path. Understanding and love are.
When those people emigrated to the US, Canada, or Australia — had they truly come to know those places deeply before going? From every group I have encountered — wealthy businesspeople, technical elites, the ordinary middle class — the honest answer is almost always the same: they left out of pure dissatisfaction with where they stood. Not out of genuine understanding of where they were going.
And then, after the move, most of them discovered something uncomfortable. Without the soil that had nourished and cultivated them, even the sharpest businessperson and the most resilient middle-class professional will quietly realize, somewhere in those first ten years, that they weren’t embracing hope — they were running from reality.
This isn’t an absolute. But when something carries an eighty-percent probability of being a bad decision, a wise person knows when to step back from the edge.
Look back now at the past thirty years. Those who built wealth, achievement, and legacy on this land — and those who simply found stable lives, firm footing, and genuine contentment — what do they all share? Without exception: they understood the difficulties of this land, yet chose to love its beauty all the same.
What is held in mind without forgetting will eventually find its echo. What is quietly cherished will, in time, return its grace.
Speaking of broader trends: our homeland remains, without question, in a period of comprehensive ascent. This means that over at least the next twenty years, beyond the great surges and shifts playing out on the world stage, we ourselves will witness — and participate in — multiple concentrated windows of opportunity. History has already proven it: every such window on this land has held the power to transform and elevate countless lives, yours and mine included.
We are Chinese. Our blood carries a natural resonance with this land and this people, unique to us. Do not betray it. Do not waste it.
And we should count ourselves fortunate to belong to a nation that dares to stand up against the world’s injustices and power structures — and has the real strength to protect itself and care for its people. A nation that, through extraordinary hardship and obstruction, genuinely brought pandemic control and poverty alleviation across the finish line, and has steadily built both its strength and its people’s sense of national pride.
Look around the world. No other country has achieved all three of these things simultaneously.
So — try to respect a land that has created miracles, again and again. Try to appreciate a people who have remained optimistic and resilient through it all. Try to deeply love a nation that has pursued a better life without ever giving up.
Simply because: it is worthy of our wholehearted love.