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

In a teahouse in the East Market of Chang'an, several men who looked like merchants sat around a table by the window.

A middle-aged merchant wearing a silk shirt and with a short mustache placed his teacup on the table with a crisp "thud".

He runs a silk business on this street, owning three shops, and is known as Manager Feng.

"This Ms. Shen, after talking for so long, going around in circles, actually portrayed Zhou Puyuan as a pitiful person." He picked up his teacup, blew away the foam, and spoke with a dismissive tone of someone accustomed to the ways of the business world. "To put it bluntly, she's worrying unnecessarily. What's pitiful about Zhou Puyuan? How is he pitiful at all?"

The businessmen at the table looked up at him, waiting for him to continue.

Manager Feng counted on his fingers, one by one: "Is the Zhou mansion still there? Yes. Is the coal mine still there? Yes. He is the chairman of the coal mine, the owner of the mansion, the most respectable person on the whole street. What has he lost? He hasn't lost any money, his house hasn't collapsed, and he hasn't lost his dignity."

He withdrew his fingers, picked up his teacup, and took another sip.

"Just you wait and see. In a couple of days, he'll marry another woman and have two more sons. The Zhou family will still be surnamed Zhou. Master Shen said he's just an empty shell. I think he's living a more real life than anyone else."

No one spoke for a moment at the tea table. Several younger waiters stood to the side, wanting to interject but not daring to.

After a while, an old shopkeeper in a gray cloth gown spoke up from the corner.

He runs a business selling the Four Treasures of the Study (writing brush, ink stick, inkstone, and paper). His shop always displays a plaque that reads "Passing down the family tradition of farming and reading." He speaks slowly, as if he has already chewed the words in his mouth before spitting them out.

"What you say isn't entirely unreasonable." He stroked his beard, carefully choosing his words, "But you've only considered one account: the financial account. Zhou Puyuan has another account that you haven't considered: the account of people's hearts."

Manager Feng put down his teacup: "What is this 'account of people's hearts'?"

"Tianmu says that at the end of the fourth act, Zhou Puyuan is sitting alone in the living room, and 'he feels lonely.'"

Those of you in business understand one thing: losses on paper can be recovered by gritting your teeth.

But when a person lives to the point where they have nothing left but a facade of respectability, beneath that facade lies emptiness.

Manager Feng smiled dismissively: "So what if you're lonely? Who isn't lonely in this world? Can loneliness feed you? Zhou Puyuan is rich and powerful. If he's lonely, he can remarry, have more children, and build a more perfect and orderly family."

Master Shen said he was hollowed out by the order, but I say he willingly allowed himself to be hollowed out, because what he got back in return was what he wanted.

A shopkeeper chimed in, "To put it bluntly, dignity is something the poor can't even have if they want it. At least Zhou Puyuan still has some dignity, but what does Shiping have? What does Fanyi have? She's lost her life. What's the point of talking about morality when you're dead?"

The old shopkeeper wanted to say something more, but Shen Moyan had already continued speaking, looking up at the sky.

Shen Moyan flipped through the lesson plan, letting the students discuss it quietly for a while before continuing.

"If you find Zhou Puyuan a bit hard to understand, then let's talk about another person. Everyone has read 'Rickshaw Boy,' right?"

Shen Moyan turned around and wrote four characters on the blackboard: Camel Xiangzi.

"Xiangzi is a rickshaw puller in Lao She's novel. When he first came to the city, he was young, strong, and clean, like a tree."

He has only one dream: to buy his own car.

He neither steals nor robs, nor cheats nor swindles; he runs on his own two legs.

He believed that as long as one was willing to work hard, one could live a decent life.

"The first time, he saved up for three years to buy a car, but it was stolen by the soldiers."

The second time, the detective extorted all the money he had saved.

The third time, he used his wife Hu Niu's savings to buy a car. Hu Niu died in childbirth, and he had to sell the car to pay for her funeral.

"He rose and fell three times. Every time he felt he could get back up, he was pushed back down each time."

"What did Xiangzi become in the end? He stopped pulling rickshaws and started attending funerals and carrying paper banners, just getting by day by day."

He learned to be cunning and deceitful, to borrow money and not repay it, and to hide in crowds, hands in his pockets, and indifferent to everything.

"Lao She wrote the following passage at the end of the novel."

Shen Moyan looked at the student and recited it.

"Decent, strong-willed, dreamy, selfish, individualistic, robust, and great, Xiangzi, who knows how many funerals he has accompanied others to; who knows when and where he himself will be buried, buried this degenerate, selfish, unfortunate child of a sick society, the ghost of individualism's dead end!"

She paused, letting the words settle in the classroom.

"Xiangzi initially wanted to live a life on his own, with a rickshaw, a meal, and a home—such a simple wish."

But society wouldn't allow it. It took away his car time and time again, his wife, his dignity, and finally his belief that "hard work will lead to a way out."

What did Xiangzi eventually become?

A freeloader, a swindler, a betrayer of friends, and someone who doesn't care about anything.

He didn't die; he survived.

But do you think the one who survived was still Xiangzi?

Shen Moyan turned around, pointed to the question in "Thunderstorm" on the blackboard, and then pointed to "Rickshaw Boy".

"Zhou Puyuan and Xiangzi, one fell from a high place and became an empty shell, the other was crushed into dregs from a low place."

They started from different places, took different paths, but ended up with strikingly similar fates: they all survived, but they all lost themselves.

Cao Yu wrote about the alienation of respectable people, and Lao She wrote about the alienation of the lower class, but they were asking the same question.

When the order forbids you from being yourself, who truly survives?

She read the line of text again and took a deep breath.

"Therefore, the ending of 'Thunderstorm' is not despair, but compassion."

Because if Cao Yu only wanted to make the audience despair, he wouldn't have needed to write Zhou Chong.

To let everyone rot, die, and become like Zhou Puyuan would be utter despair, but Cao Yu wrote about Zhou Chong, a clean, dreamy man who remained untainted until his death.

He also wrote about Fanyi, a crazy, defiant person who rebelled until her death.

The very existence of these people is a denial of despair.

Compassion doesn't tell you there's no way out, but rather that if you can still feel pain, if you're still refusing to become the kind of person you despise, if you're still struggling, then you're not completely 'dead' yet.

The real despair is never death, but rather, like Zhou Puyuan, living on without realizing it, and taking this "living" for granted.