Metamorphosis

I met Mei in a cozy morning in Zhongshan Park, where tender raindrops caressed the green petals of tulips. He was playing football with his son beside bustling pedestrians and chattering elders gathered for Taiji, and we both rushed under a dome to take shelter as the rain grew fiercer. I picked up the football as it rolled beneath my feet, handing it to the little boy beside Mei as we began to talk.

Mei is a Shanghai local who has been working in the programming industry since graduating. Growing up here, he regarded Shanghai as a city that’s just yet ruthless, offering opportunities that are comparatively equitable but inexorably sifting out the labor it no longer needs.

Mei Playing with His Son

“It’s both heaven and hell. Countless people have burned their youth to ignite the city’s flourishing, acquiring minimal gain for themselves. Like me — I’m just someone who adds tiles to the industry.”

Along with the soaring development of AI, the programming industry has become a realm where ruthless competition grows sharper by the day. Outdated knowledge and skills can push one to the verge of unemployment, and academic certificates have depreciated. The apprehension of losing income has weighed heavily on the hearts of many workers, including Mei.

“AI is something that completely subverts our labor relations, creating an overlap between technical capital and human capital. It’s like a helicopter suddenly intruding into a world filled with bicycles. How can we ever outcompete that helicopter? All I’m hoping for is to save some money while I’m still capable, so my son can pursue a life less restrained by mundane shackles.”

He raised his son onto his shoulders as we continued our conversation, staring at him with tender sincerity as the little boy chirped out eccentric sounds. A glint of determination flared in his eyes. Uplifting, I thought, was a proposition that never deviated from parenthood.

I asked Mei whether he thought being a parent had constructed or deconstructed the meaning of his life. He acknowledged it was a layered mixture of both. Childcare had endowed him with an unprecedented, irreplaceable sense of fulfillment and value, but also deprived him of opportunities to pursue many ideals that once enriched his spiritual world.

“Art has always been a means for me to find an answer in the perplexities and labyrinths of life. I longed for the murals along the precipice of Dunhuang, where I could ramble in the sands and in the history of aesthetics simultaneously.”

His hands once depicted Buddha figures, creating divine strokes on immortal grottoes, but now they must also wash dishes, tap on keyboards, and enfold the small hand of his son. Idealism and realism collide — this is simply the general reality that ordinary people experience.

“My son is still young; I can’t just do whatever I want without taking him into consideration.”

I could imagine the two shadows of Mei crossing over each other — the one in Dunhuang fading while the majestic figure of a father grew more opalescent. Is parenthood a form of metamorphosis? I’m not sure. But Mei seems to be caught in the middle of his own transformation, vacillating between his spiritual pursuits and the pressing reality crammed with matters of economy, money, and relationships.

“There are essentially two types of lives. One driven by mundane conformity and another driven by the exploration of meaning. Vacillating between the two is a torturing state. It’s chaotic. It undermines one’s sense of worthiness.”

I see the struggle in Mei’s eyes - bitter, earnest, and deeply human.

As the rain softened into a lingering mist, Mei and his son ventured back into the open air, chasing the wet ball across the glistening grass. The ball bounced back and forth, presenting a unique dynamism under the morning sunlight.

Had meaning emerged in this mundane moment? I watched Mei’s half-drenched, half-dreaming shadow. Perhaps the meaning of human existence is never something intentionally knitted, like the way we attain a mathematical truth, but simply a process of becoming - becoming in meditations, struggles, and vacillations, just as Mei experiences.