2024 New Year Message: Finding an Ideal World

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The bells of the New Year have rung. As we look back in the quiet, 2023 has come to a complete close.

This year, the world went through many changes, yet many things remained as they had always been.

As if by daily habit, sunlight still fell across the vast earth.

Its warmth and radiance felt like nature’s embrace, illuminating every corner.

ChatGPT sparked a wave of AIGC, and large language models began to permeate our lives.

Will algorithms rule us, or grant us freedom? Does the starry sea in Elon Musk’s writing foretell humanity’s future?

Will emerging technology bring us the beautiful vision of the metaverse, or Pandora’s mysterious curse?

As the tide arrived,

Japan’s nuclear-contaminated water was ultimately discharged into the ocean, while the Israeli–Palestinian conflict displaced countless civilians.

Milan Kundera’s passing made us reflect on The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

For me, this year was extraordinary. The pandemic, the Gaokao, and university—these frames of memory passed before my eyes.

One moment, I held a pen and wrote exam papers.

The next, I held a keyboard and wrote code.

This year flew by. I grew a great deal, understood a great deal, regretted a great deal, and lost a great deal…

Workbooks in cafés, endless practice papers, a second bout of COVID, signatures on graduation photos, the Gaokao.

Those years of striving in my final year of high school are deeply engraved in my memory.

They were repetition, endurance, and expectation through countless days and nights.

They were also memories of walking outside campus with classmates after evening study, talking freely.

Looking back on this year, my living environment changed enormously.

Friends who were once close at hand can now only exchange greetings through video calls.

When I meet friends I have not seen for half a year, countless feelings rise in my heart.

I no longer need to study continuously every day, and life has gained much more spare time……..

And yet, a turn of the pen:

With what state of mind should we greet the new year?

The events of the past year are still as clear as yesterday,

but I wonder whether I am fully prepared to step into a new year.

Time waits for no one.

Even though we may now be passionate about constructing a “blueprint,”

“perseverance”—

that precious thing, dazzling like a diamond—

is buried in the sea of people.

May you and I, amid all the changes in the coming year,

still hold fast to our ideals, preserve our original aspirations, and move forward with resolve!

When we look back on this year’s journey, may we neither regret wasting our youth nor feel ashamed of having achieved nothing!

“In an age of hunger and cold, an ideal is food and warmth;

in an age of food and warmth, an ideal is civilization.

In an age of civilization, an ideal is stability;

in an age of stability, an ideal is prosperity.”

The first sunlight of the New Year will eventually drive away the cold of the long night and shine into every corner of the earth.

With that, I wish you a Happy New Year!