A live-streamed Chinese language lesson under the sky—the ancients were taken aback.

Inside the Xianyang Palace, Ying Zheng leaned forward slightly.

He didn't understand Greece, but he understood Shen Moyan's last sentence.

Chinese literature is concerned with "what to do," while ancient Greek literature is concerned with "why."

Ying Zheng leaned back in his chair. If he didn't ask why, he wouldn't pursue the matter to the end. If he didn't pursue the matter to the end, some things would remain buried forever.

He didn't know what he was saying; Master Shen hadn't finished speaking, and he hadn't figured it out.

But he vaguely felt that the man named Cao Yu, a Chinese man, had gone to the tragedies of ancient Greece, borrowed a hoe, and returned to dig up the walls of old Chinese families.

He wasn't undermining any one person's foundation; he was digging up the entire foundation of "not asking why".

The classroom was quiet for a moment, then another student raised his hand: "Teacher, you said that ancient Greek tragedy was related to fate, so why did the ancient Greeks believe in fate so much?"

Shen Moyan turned around and drew a simple map on the blackboard.

A winding coastline, with several mountains painted on the land.

"Because geographical environment not only affects national development, but also literary creation."

She pointed to the map.

"What kind of place is Greece? It's mountainous with barren land, unsuitable for growing crops, but suitable for growing olives and grapes. Greek agriculture can't support too many people, so they have to go to sea for trade, colonization, and war. There are thousands of islands scattered in the Aegean Sea. Going from one island to another, a change in wind direction could mean shipwreck and loss of life."

"What would someone who grew up in this kind of environment think?"

She turned around and looked at the whole class.

"He sowed seeds in the spring, but a rainstorm washed away all the seedlings. He went out to sea to fish, but a storm suddenly broke out, the boat capsized, and he was killed."

He didn't know why this was happening; he only felt that something was controlling everything. He couldn't control the land, the sea, or the weather.

The ancient Greeks believed that an unknowable force governed people—that was fate.

Therefore, the source of ancient Greek tragedy was the unpredictable calamities of nature.

She put the chalk down.

"Although Cao Yu used the Western tragic style to write Chinese stories, he did not copy it. He integrated it, replacing the ancient Greek concept of 'inexplicable fate' with the Chinese concept of 'cause and effect'."

Zhou Puyuan abandoned Shiping thirty years ago, and thirty years later his son falls in love with his own sister. In terms of dramatic structure, this is a classical Greek coincidence, but to Chinese audiences, it's retribution.

"So the most powerful thing about 'Thunderstorm' is that if you take away the concept of fate, it can be explained by cause and effect; if you take away the concept of cause and effect, it can be explained by social criticism; if you take away the concept of social criticism, it can be explained by the complexity of human nature. It has multiple layers of interpretation."

"Furthermore, think about Cao Yu, a young Chinese writer from the early 20th century. Why did he go back to ancient Greece more than two thousand years ago to borrow from its structure?"

In the preface to *Thunderstorm*, he mentioned that he wrote *Thunderstorm* to depict the cruelty of the world. What is the cruelty of the world?

She asked and answered her own question.

"It's simply that fate itself is irrational."

She started erasing the blackboard, wiping away the circles and lines she had drawn one by one.

"Cao Yu lived in the first half of the last century."

What era was that? It was a time in the gap between the old and the new.

With the influx of Western ideas, modern civilization took root in the concessions of the coastal treaty ports, in the Western-style buildings and electric lights.

In the mansions of landlords in the inland areas, there are still people like Zhou Puyuan who adhere to old rules and crush human dignity into dust.

Two forces coexist, squeezing each other; they are not parallel lines, but rather they permeate and tear each other apart, crushing those in the middle.

She picked up the textbook of "Thunderstorm," opened it to the first page, and glanced at the annotations.

"Thunderstorm was written in 1933. That year, Cao Yu was twenty-three years old and a student in the Department of Western Literature at Tsinghua University."

In those days, the concept of etiquette and morality was still a huge burden, weighing down on countless ordinary families like the Zhou and Lu families. Social status, parental orders, and strict separation of men and women were all inviolable rules.

He poured everything he had witnessed and heard in the old-fashioned extended family—women ruined by arranged marriages, children crushed by power, secrets covered up as scandals—into this story that unfolded within twenty-four hours.

She put down her textbook and looked at the whole class.

"Now, please make a connection between the old society and ancient Greece."

The ancient Greeks faced a kind of capriciousness called fate; when a storm came, ships were destroyed and people perished, without any reason to believe it.

People of Cao Yu's era, faced with the old social order, were equally utterly unreasonable. Wasn't this the same situation as the ancient Greeks facing a storm?

She paused for a moment, allowing the students time to process the question.

"The patriarch of an old-fashioned family is the storm."

If he says you're crazy, then you're crazy. If he says you're unruly, then you're unruly. If he kicks you out, you don't even have the right to resist.

When Shiping was kicked out, what did she do wrong? She did nothing wrong, she was just "disobedient".

Simply because this sword of Damocles hangs over our heads, disregarding evidence, logic, and justice—it's not even written down in black and white like legal statutes; it's something that permeates the air, something everyone takes for granted.

She wrote a line on the blackboard.

When man-made order becomes "natural law," it becomes another ocean of impermanence.

"In the traditional ethical order, all of an individual's choices—marriage, career, and beliefs—are predetermined by the family and social norms."

This order allows no variables; these rules are inhumane and insensitive to human nature. It demands that everyone stay within predetermined squares like chess pieces; anyone who dares to cross the line is crushed.

She suddenly stopped and scanned the entire classroom.

"What you are seeing now is the process of a family being crushed, which was all too common at the time. There was a Zhou family in almost every county town, and there was Shiping in almost every county town. It's just that Cao Yu concentrated all the crushing within 24 hours."

Now think about it again, do you still think the plot of "Thunderstorm" is too coincidental?

"Teacher, I have another question. The tragedies of ancient Greece were natural disasters, but the rules and etiquette of the old society were all man-made."

Shen Moyan looked at the student with admiration, "A very good summary."

"Chinese culture is also influenced by geography."

Ancient China was an agrarian civilization. We had vast plains and abundant rainfall, and the Yellow River and the Yangtze River nurtured agriculture on both banks.

We don't really need to go to sea; we can survive on the land. We plant, water, fertilize, and harvest in the fall.

The Chinese people's sense of security comes from the land beneath their feet, from the stable cycle of the four seasons, and from the predictability of spring planting and autumn harvest.

"But this predictability comes at a price: you have to be tied to the land, you have to be organized, you have to follow certain rules and regulations, and you have to obey order."

On the Chinese side of the blackboard, she wrote a word: Order.