The reason I'm standing here today is because I've just finished writing a book called "Let There Be Light." It's a non-fiction book about adolescent mental health issues, and it's based on several years of research I conducted in large, medium, small, and rural cities across China.

Actually, the book was originally titled "Don't Blow Out the Light." This sentence comes from a diary entry written by a girl named Ya Ya, whom I interviewed for the book. We didn't use that title because it sounded too pleading and bleak. But I've always kept that sentence in mind.

"Don't blow out the light"—this phrase is particularly thought-provoking. What light should we not blow out? Who is blowing out that light? I hope that you, the listeners, can keep this question in mind as we slowly delve into the stories of children struggling with emotional distress.

First, he wants to manage me.

First, I'd like to tell you Minmin's story. When I met her, she was 16 years old and had already been out of school for three years.

Later, she wanted to retake the high school entrance exam, leave her family, and reintegrate into society. Every day, I studied with her at the tutoring center, chatted with her, ate with her, and took walks on the beach together, engaging in all sorts of conversations. She slowly told me her story.

She recounted how her father and mother abused her when she was eleven or twelve, or even earlier. She described how she chose not to live, and how she groped her way through a long, dark period, eventually emerging from it all.

During our conversation, I discovered that Minmin was an exceptionally restrained girl. When she was telling me her story, whenever she reached a crucial point and felt intense emotion, she would nod vigorously to conceal it. But listening to her, you would shed tears because the story was so heartbreaking.

Her parents were going through a divorce, and her mother was very unhappy, so she took her anger out on her child. Because children are the most vulnerable members of the family, this was a common occurrence. One day, Minmin didn't want to go to her tutoring class, so she skipped school. The teacher told her mother. Her mother came to the scene, grabbed Minmin by the hair, and dragged her through the neighborhood, shaming her like a public spectacle. Minmin said many people were watching her.

Later, Minmin returned home and ran to the stairwell of her apartment building to call her father. She said, "Dad, come here, my mom is hitting me." While she was on the phone, her mother came out again and started hitting her, banging her head against the wall. During this time, her father didn't hang up, and she forgot to hang up either. After a while, suddenly someone on the phone said, "You two should sort out your own problems." Then her father hung up.

When Minmin told me this story, she said, "I don't remember exactly how I felt when I heard my dad say that. I just felt that they were very far away from me, and I could never be close to them again."

When I met Minmin, she was already 16 years old. She was very healthy and had a very graceful figure. When I talked to her, I could sense that she was trying hard to sort herself out and organize herself.

She said, "I forgive my parents now. I realize they were immature kids too, and they have their own troubles in life, which are their problems. I no longer blame them for my problems, and I no longer think of myself as a bad kid. However, I hope my mom and dad will apologize to me for this."

She said, "Once, I had a very serious talk with my mom. All I wanted was for her to sincerely apologize and say that hitting me was wrong. That would have been enough. But my mom wouldn't. Perhaps within Chinese families, parents apologizing to their children is a very unfamiliar concept. Because we are an authoritarian family, because we think children are immature, that it's okay to hit them once, that they'll remember it forever. I provide for your food and shelter, I treat you so well, I've spent all my time, energy, and money on you, and you only remember this one thing?"

But she didn't realize that when Minmin said those words, when your child talks to you about her childhood trauma, she's trying to communicate. She's trying to tell you, "This hurt me." This is very important.

When communication between parents and children is not smooth within a family, it means that the transmission of love between you has also been interrupted, and it means that the child may move forward forever with trauma and this unresolved issue.

When Minmin was telling me this, she was very restrained and calm, but I felt that it contained something very cruel: the lack of self-awareness among us parents.

That's why I often say that I wrote *Let There Be Light* not to condemn parents, much less to condemn my family of origin. I use this word very cautiously. I think at this moment, as adults, we need to realize that in many situations we are oblivious to our own habits. Because we've used these ways of speaking, these behaviors, these expressions for thousands of years. We don't realize we live within this cultural inertia.

So I wrote this book hoping to awaken everyone. You need to be moved—oh, so that's how I talk. I hope there will be moments that resonate within you, prompting you to re-examine your behavior and mannerisms.

Minmin told me that when her family discussed sending her back to school, she was in a very bad emotional state and contemplated suicide, so she took medication. However, after taking the medication, she couldn't bear the pain and called her father. Her father took her to the hospital. She stayed in the ICU for a long time; if it had been half an hour later, Minmin might not be here anymore.

The father also felt some remorse, realizing that his child must be suffering a lot inside. But as soon as Minmin felt a little better, the father immediately started making sarcastic remarks.

"The doctor said that if it had been half an hour later that day, I really wouldn't have survived. Stomach lavage is incredibly painful. After the lavage, I was on an IV drip until the morning. Seeing that I was relatively stable, my dad thought it was nothing and was still gloating. He told the doctor that I was fine, saying that I should have my stomach lavaged after taking the medicine, and that it would be fine after a few more lavages. He said that she would stop making a fuss. Ugh, it was already heartbreaking enough, but it got more and more heartbreaking and hurtful. Then he attacked me and sarcastically said, 'Didn't you want to die? Why did you call me at the end?'"

“When I was discharged from the hospital, his car was parked in the parking lot, and we had to walk there. Halfway there, I couldn’t take it anymore. I saw snowflakes in my eyes, so I squatted down. My dad didn’t help me. He told me to walk over by myself, and he opened the car door and got in. He just wanted to control me, to make me feel like I was wrong, and to force me to admit my mistakes.”

Minmin's mother often said, "Minmin, do you know how much I love you? Mom loves you the most." One day, her mother showed her a short video and said, "Look, this parent hit their child even harder." The implication was, "I'm not that harsh." Minmin felt very helpless.

During my conversation with Minmin, I discovered that she had been working hard to sort herself out. She spent three long years healing herself through various methods, striving to escape this quagmire. By the time she turned 16, she realized it wasn't her fault. Before, she would think, "I was wrong, I wasn't a good kid." She said, "My parents have their own struggles, but I still have to walk my own path."

I think her parents were unaware of the turmoil Minmin had gone through, and that after such a storm, she chose to move forward. Therefore, I believe that much harm comes from a child's closest relatives, their parents, but the parents are often unaware of it.

I don't want to condemn us adults, but you need to understand that at some point you may lose your child; you lose their trust in you, you lose their closeness. Even though we say we love our children, can our love reach them, can they perceive it? You need to see yourself through your child's eyes, not just your own.

Second, the mother is portrayed as the weaker party, while the father is portrayed as the silent party.

Now I'll tell you Ya Ya's story. Ya Ya is a very perceptive child. I posted a small message online, asking if anyone would like to share their story with me. Ya Ya was the first and only one to respond. So I packed my bag and went with her to the seaside where she lived.

In her reply, Ya Ya said, "I want to tell my story to others. If they can gain some confidence from my story, I will be very happy." That's why I put so much effort into writing the book "Let There Be Light"—I wanted to write it well. I feel it's a very, very great responsibility, and I want to fulfill Ya Ya's request as much as possible.

Ya Ya was an excellent student, consistently ranking among the top two in junior high school. However, upon entering the best high school in Binhai City, she suddenly discovered that her classmates were like monsters, all exceptionally good at their studies, leaving her in the middle ranks. This caused her great anxiety.

She told me that one day at noon during a Chinese quiz, she heard her deskmate writing and flipping through his test paper. She thought, "Oh no, he's going to surpass me." So she looked at her own paper. She said, "I recognize every single word on the paper, but I can't understand them when they're put together." Under such intense pressure, Ya Ya fell ill and couldn't go to school. She took a leave of absence and went to see a psychiatrist.

Throughout the entire process, her mother was extremely distraught. Ya Ya said, "I cried, but my mother cried even harder than I did. I told her I was going to the hospital for a checkup, and my mother said I needed to take medicine too." Because she had to stay with Ya Ya, her mother frequently took time off work, and her mother would say, "Look, it's all because of you that my boss has a lot of complaints about me."

Then Ya Ya thought, "I might as well be dead. I've caused my parents so much trouble." She said, "If my father and mother had given me some support back then, I probably wouldn't have been so desperate."

I wrote Ya Ya's story in her own words, using her own narrative. My intention was that if we, as parents or adults, read this, we would think, "We are adults, what should we do when our child breaks down?"

Of course, this is our first time being parents. Our child is so good, a top student, always first or second in school, how could he suddenly stop going to school? We'd definitely panic. But do we break down with our child, or do we quickly pull ourselves together and give him a safe haven? I think at this moment, we might need a sense of responsibility, a sense of duty, and courage. Although it's difficult, we are adults; we brought him into this world.

Ya Ya wasn't just telling her own story; she was also talking about her mother. She said her mother was portrayed as the weaker party at home. Her father was a silent figure; he never spoke, and rarely about Ya Ya's illness. In very tense moments, her father would kneel down before Ya Ya and say, "You have to get better quickly, or our family will be finished."

Later, when she was analyzing the situation with me, she said that the mother's image as a weakling actually led to an extremely unnatural atmosphere in the whole family. She took me to her house to see that Ya Ya lived in the largest bedroom, her father lived in the second bedroom, and her mother lived in the living room with a very small sofa bed.

You can immediately sense the difference in their status. Ya Ya said, "I'm placed at the top, Dad is secondary, and Mom is the least important." She wasn't accusing or mocking her mother when she said this, but rather seriously considering why her mother was such a weak figure in the family. Dad was almost entirely absent. This is a question, a crux of the problem, that Ya Ya has pondered through her own painful experiences. I find it particularly meaningful.

She analyzed for me that her father sometimes abused his power in a ridiculous way. For example, they had agreed that he would take her to her exam the next morning, but because there was a family dispute the day before—her parents had argued and he had argued with Ya Ya—her father said the next day, "I won't take you. Go by yourself. Aren't you capable? Aren't you trying to be independent?" Ya Ya said this was manipulation, the lowest form of manipulation. He never asked, "Ya Ya, what's wrong?"

While writing this book, I suddenly realized that there seemed to be no male, no father figure. I started to rethink all the families and children I had interviewed. I discovered that the image of the father was indeed very, very rare. So, where have the fathers gone?

When I visited the hospital to observe, I found that most of the patients were mothers with their children. The mothers looked haggard, anxious, and sad; I hardly saw any fathers, though I'm not saying there were none at all. I'm not saying this to incite gender antagonism, absolutely not. This is based on my own interviews.

Many children say that things would be better if their fathers were here, or if their fathers could communicate with them. They are calling for their fathers.

When a mother devotes all her energy to her child, she will be extremely tired and in a state of imbalance if no one shares the burden. Therefore, I think fathers should participate in the family as much as possible. Tonight, I was supposed to have dinner with clients until 11 pm, but we'll go home at 10 pm or 9 pm. Can we skip playing cards?

III. Successful Narrowing

Throughout Ya Ya's childhood, she was always the "other people's child" that parents talked about. She excelled in her studies and was very well-behaved, and she tried her best to maintain this image. However, this was her only standard of evaluation, and when she lost it, Ya Ya suddenly broke down.

In conversations with many psychological counselors, I've found that a significant number of children experiencing emotional problems are high-achieving students. This is because their family and school education instills in them the only path: you must excel academically, and if you do well, you'll achieve great things.

So when their grades slip, they feel very anxious. I think it's hard for parents to understand their children's anxiety. We just criticize them, saying, "Why did your grades drop? Why don't you try harder?"

I think that now that our children's self-awareness is fully developing, we must face this problem: judging children with a single value standard is an extreme pressure on them and can cause them to break down.

We often ask our children to go out and play, and then write a travelogue when they come back. We're still very goal-oriented. Do we ever let our children lie in the sun, bask in the sunlight, daydream, relax, listen to the sound of flowing water, and enjoy the sunshine—do we nurture them completely without a purpose? No. All our nurturing is purposeful: learning piano is for passing exams, learning flute is for passing exams, learning tennis is for this and that...

Everything is labeled as utilitarian, but in reality, this puts extreme pressure on children and is extremely biased in their personality development. In the end, we say, "Look, all my child knows is playing video games."

We never reflect on whether we have cultivated other forms of aesthetic and diverse enjoyment in our children during their adolescence, childhood, and early childhood, but simply attribute the mistakes to the children.

The third is the story of Wu Yong.

This is a story I wrote about Beijing. The three parents in this chapter are all very responsible. One of them is a mother named Chen Qinghua. When I talked to her, her child was already grown up. She reflected on where she had missed her child, where her child had cried out to her for help but she was completely unaware. Her child had been on medication for two years and had taken almost a year off from school.

In the final part of Wu Yong's story, I wrote a scene of a serious late-night conversation between a mother and her child. They both spoke their most honest thoughts. Wu Yong said, "Mom, I know you've sacrificed so much for me. You hired Aunt Zhang, Aunt Wang, and Sister Wang for me. I know it was all for me."

You think you provide me with the warmth of a family, but when I come home, I feel only desolation. Because I'm studying and doing homework at school, and when I come home your face is long and sullen, you know I probably won't finish my homework again tonight. I don't feel the warmth of a family; I feel like my home is just an extension of school.

What was the biggest conflict between the mother and son? At the time, Wu Yong was attending a math competition training course and was doing quite well. However, he didn't want to do endless practice problems, saying that it would stifle his creativity. Chen Qinghua said, "Just work hard for three years! You're clearly quite smart; if you work a little harder, you could get into China's top university." He was being groomed to be that kind of talent. But Wu Yong said, "I just want to experience the joy of learning."

Wu Yong said he liked mathematics because he liked its beauty. He wanted to learn, not just to go to school, but only through learning could he find a certain peace. You repeatedly felt that his decisions violated the realities of survival, that there was no future in that. I don't need any future; what future could there be under those circumstances? Because of this repeated pressure, Wu Yong developed some emotional problems, making it difficult for him to go to school in the end.

Chen Qinghua said that at that time, she had no idea what Wu Yong was thinking. As parents, we usually think, "Can't you just work hard for three more years? What are you being so dramatic about?" Just focus on your studies, and you can definitely get into the best university. Then you can go do whatever you want. You can stop being dramatic then.

But the child at that time very seriously expressed his desire to be creative, and that moment was precisely the peak of his self-development. Are there other ways to balance the relationship between so-called creativity and learning? This requires us to rethink and engage in extensive discussion. Therefore, Wu Yong told his mother, "My trauma is a trauma to the entire society and civilization, not simply a trauma to teenagers in Haidian District." I think this statement is extremely poignant.

This child said something along the lines of, "Mom, don't imagine a complete, perfect family. Families can have traumas, but we can keep moving forward." If you read Wu Yong's chapter, you'll be deeply moved. Because this child thought so deeply and far ahead. I want to say that many times our children have already gone very far; they've already surpassed us, but we're completely unaware.

When you read Minmin's and Yaya's personal accounts, you'll find that these children, in sorting out their inner thoughts, have already thought incredibly well. They are trying their best to understand their parents and society, but we know absolutely nothing about them.

The most crucial problem is that we don't know what our children are thinking. We're still using our own experience to tell them what to do, so we miss out on them. Therefore, when our children have emotional problems, we don't know what to do. We don't even realize that our demands are actually one of the biggest causes of their suffering; perhaps their pain comes from us, not just from other things.

I'm not making accusations; I just want to say that we need to rethink, we need to build a new relationship, we need to re-understand our relationship with our children, our relationship with society, and our relationship with ourselves. Only in this way can we truly understand our children and ourselves.

In the chapter about the capital city, there is another character, Shen Chun. Shen Chun is a parent whose child is studying in the best middle school and the best class in Beijing, and is being groomed to be a top student for the most prestigious university. However, her child failed. Because of her child, she took a three-year leave of absence without pay, but her child ultimately did not get into university and chose to study abroad.

When she received her child's report card and learned that her child hadn't been accepted into the top university, she cried for days. She turned off her phone and cut off all contact. She said, "I didn't receive the medal when I deserved it most. I failed as a mother, and I failed the first half of my life."

When I interviewed her, a year had passed. She said, "I feel like I've just woken up from a dream. I'm reflecting on what I was doing those years." She has a master's degree in history, and she said she could tell her son was very creative and wrote exceptionally well just by looking at his essay. However, the teacher only gave him a score in the 30s. Her son came home and asked, "Mom, was my writing really that bad?" Shen Chun then said, "If I were to judge, this essay is indeed quite good, but you should still write it according to the college entrance exam format." Her son became very angry.

She said that we so-called highly educated people know that children are not wrong, but we still lecture them in the same way. "So what if you do it that way? Can we try something different?" It's actually very unconvincing. Your child knows you don't believe it, and nobody believes it either. Children like my son who want to express their own opinions will rebel and become divided.

Shen Chun said she was reflecting on herself. "We know what's good," she said. "We have our children read world classics in elementary and middle school, letting them know what good literature and good ideas are. Especially parents in Beijing, every holiday they take their children around the world, to museums, instilling truth, goodness, and beauty, cultivating excellent character, making them kind, sincere, and with their own independent thoughts. At this point in their lives, if you suddenly ask them to go back into their cage, to stop their creativity, to frantically do practice problems, to frantically repeat things, to frantically use templates, everything they've learned before is negated at this point." And parents, in this process, often play the role of the most harsh accomplices.

Of course, she didn't think that way during her child's three years of high school. She argued with her child every day, got angry with her every day, and felt that her child was so disobedient, why didn't she follow the proper method? She thought, "You can get high scores by following that method, why don't you do it this way?"

The result was that my child failed the college entrance exam. Unable to get into the top university, we had to find a teacher at an international school. After assessing my child, the teacher said, "Your child is exceptionally talented and has a lot of ideas. He told me that as long as he can study physics, he'll be fine with any school. Your child is very, very good, so why are you so anxious?"

That's really how it is. In our narratives, children always seem to make all sorts of mistakes. But when others see them, they think, "Wow, your child is great!" This is because we hold our children to even higher standards, and consequently, we don't appreciate or trust them as much. I think this is something we really, really need to think about.

Why don't we trust our children? Shen Chun said that after a year of adjustment and reflection, she felt like she had just woken up from a dream. Society as a whole has somehow created a system with very tight logic; if you don't follow this path, you fail. In fact, attending any school won't ruin a child's life. We use a single rule of success to demand things of our children, which actually narrows their horizons. We narrow their future, narrow their happiness, and in a sense, destroy their enjoyment of life.

So I think that in this process, I hope that everyone, as adults, even though we all have traumas, and we all encounter so-called social injustices or job dissatisfaction, we must know that we must learn to move forward . The child Wu Yong in the book says that we must learn to move forward through trauma; there are no perfect, intact families, and we must learn to understand each other amidst inevitable breakage.

We must acknowledge our own weakness and ignorance, our limitations as parents, and that we are not perfect. Only when we view our children from this limited perspective do we realize that their vulnerability, their anxiety, even their laziness, are simply human nature, not signs of badness or inadequacy. Only by understanding your child from this angle can you truly know them. That's why I said at the beginning, "Don't extinguish that light." I hope we can see the light within our children.

Many of the children I wrote about in my book are struggling to escape the mire and the darkness. They are working so hard, and we must see their efforts; we must know that life itself is resilient. As parents, we should support and protect them, not be among those who destroy them.