![[Third Anniversary of Wuhan’s Lockdown]Interview with Li Zehua (Part 2): A Fighter for Technological Totalitarianism—Mandarin Homepage](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%203%202'%3E%3C/svg%3E "[Third Anniversary of Wuhan’s Lockdown]Interview with Li Zehua (Part 2): A Fighter for Technological Totalitarianism—Mandarin Homepage")
On the third anniversary of the closure of Wuhan, citizen journalist Li Zehua, who was taken away by the police for reporting on the real situation of the epidemic in Wuhan, accepted an exclusive interview with our reporter Tang Jiajie. The former CCTV host who was born after 1995 took a 180-degree turn in his life after the trip to Wuhan. Now he is studying computer science in New York and has become a Chinese living in a foreign land. He has started a new life and is also looking for a new identity. Listen to the next episode of the interview with Li Zehua: Fighters of Technological Totalitarianism.
who am I?
“Hi everyone, I’m Li Zehua Kcriss, and I’m in Rochester, New York. United States. Hehe… I feel a little silly. Do you think I should say this sentence?”
On a weekend morning in mid-December 2022, we went for a walk to Lake Ontario not far from Li Zehua’s dormitory. The temperature was close to the freezing point, and there was fine snow. The lake was like a sea, and the waves rushed to the snow-covered beach. There are lighthouses, American-style cabins, and green American street signs in the background. I suggested that he record a self-introduction in front of the camera like the previous Vlog.
Li Zehua laughed shyly several times. He said that he also thought about making a YouTube video again, but after thinking about it for more than a year, he still hasn’t recorded it.
“In fact, I am also very grateful to my previous work, which allowed me to go up to the tall building alone and look at the end of the world.” Before meeting Li Zehua, he had warned me many times that he had become very different. The appearance has changed, and I have been studying code in the pile of books all day long. In addition, I had a knee surgery a while ago, and my fitness was neglected, and I became a circle. After the meeting, the change that surprised me even more was his state of mind. When Li Zehua was the host of CCTV before the age of 25, he caught a big fish with his bare hands on the boat, collected honey with the villagers with an exaggerated expression, and flipped back on the colorful stage… the one who once boasted on station B that he wanted to become The media student of China’s No. 1 Vlogger, the winner of the first prize in the national recitation contest, the heavy motorcycle driver holding a Harley, the hip-hop dancer circling on the ground, the rapper in baggy pants…all of them are gone now.
Li Zehua in front of me, wearing the same blue shirt for two days in a row, wrote code until three o’clock the night before, with dark circles around his eyes. Like waves coming and going, leaving a piece of pure gravel without filter. I asked him: Who is Li Zehua now?
“I think this question is really difficult to answer. For me, it is too difficult. I found that some things that build the routine of this world have its texture, and if you look deeply at one thing, you will feel that I don’t ‘t know anything! (I don’t know anything), that’s the feeling. Who am I? I’m a learner, a person who is constantly learning, and a person who keeps discovering that he is nothing (laughs).”
When China’s post-90s enter middle age
Li Zehua, born in 1995, grew up in Jiangxi and dropped out of middle school. He was rebellious, and was almost sent to a juvenile detention center. In the end, he went to Shenzhen shopping malls to work and sell computers. That was China under Hu Wen’s administration. He saw the vast world after the reform and opening up in Shenzhen, and yearned for the prosperity of Shanghai and Beijing. So I repeated the study, and a few years later I was admitted to the No. 1 Broadcasting and Hosting Department of Communication University of China. Brilliantly talented and with a face resembling a Korean version of an actor, Li Zehua successfully entered CCTV after graduation, took the lead in hosting food programs, and traveled all over China.
“In fact, I am quite grateful for my previous work, which made me no longer want to explore the so-called external world, but my heart has become more determined. In China, especially in 2020, I have been retreating, and I am not going anywhere. I have been studying, preparing for TOEFL, GRE, and self-study advanced mathematics, calculus, linear algebra, probability, and mathematical statistics. At that time, I already had an estimate for my current life.”
Li Zehua studied and was immersed in literature, history and philosophy before. He read Book of Changes, Lu Xun, Rousseau, Kant and Nietzsche. In the winter of 2020, in the inquiry room of the Wuhan police station, the police frightened him with the Communist Party’s century-old theories. In turn, he stared wide-eyed and told about history to seven or eight uniformed men.
“They told me about the promise of the Communist Party a hundred years ago, and I told them why Marx, a dick, asked Engels to borrow money? Why did he criticize the oppression of the British bourgeoisie? They (public security) told me about Lenin, Marx, and me. Just ask, do you know the relationship between Marx and Feuerbach and Hegel?”
Li Zehua is 27 years old this year, and he laughs at himself that he has entered middle age:
“What’s interesting is that people’s daily life is a small differential of a person’s life. Looking at life from the perspective of calculus, you will find that changes are cumulative. In most cases, our life trajectory or inner state is Linear, or non-linear, but at a certain stage there may be some non-linear nodes or functions that cause us to undergo drastic changes. But this kind of change, little by little, every day, until now in the United States, the biggest change is that I think I’m calmer and more composed now than before, and sometimes I feel like I’m middle-aged again, hahahaha boyhood is over.”
The generation of Chinese born in the 1990s has entered middle age. The China they grew up remembering is the China that made a fortune silently, the Olympic fireworks that embraced the world, the Great Firewall that is constantly being built, and their desire to explore free knowledge on their toes.
Later, Li Zehua read “The Selfish Gene” by British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, and “What Technology Wants” by Kevin Kelly, editor-in-chief of “Wired”…Science books seem to have opened a channel. The door to another world, he thought, if the main body of civilization development is not human beings, but technology itself, who are we? What can we be?
“Later, I gradually began to learn some real knowledge. I watched MIT’s public courses, especially in mathematics. My English was getting better and better at that time, and my whole vision and tolerance of the world suddenly became much larger. I think in China, Especially in that environment at that time, if you don’t even let me talk, you feel very annoying, do you think there is something wrong?”
Dissatisfied with the reality of China, Li Zehua compares China today with the period of the Cultural Revolution more than 50 years ago:
“Especially the executors who found power. After I left, the situation became even worse. Dabai became a white guard. The white guards were not even professional medical personnel. They were beggars on the street. You will find that the whole society is still in the Nothing changed during the Cultural Revolution. If the Cultural Revolution had cameras and social media, people wouldn’t be surprised now because nothing has changed.”
high tech evil
“You see, this desk is just two monitors, one MAC book and one MAC mini,” Li Zehua introduced his desk, which is the place he has stayed most often since he moved to the United States for more than a year, and it is also the only new furniture he bought. In the corner by the window of his old dormitory, it stands like a fortress. “That’s a sound card, that’s a microphone…”.
The three monitors on the table are full of codes or papers on artificial intelligence research. He said that he rarely reads books now. Reading papers is like reading the most cutting-edge knowledge, which makes him excited and humble. From art students to science and engineering, what is the purpose of such a big turn?
“First of all, it is because we have been oppressed by unfreedom for a long time in the environment in China. This unfreedom, especially the unfreedom of information, has brought about many unfreedoms. I believe that the current authoritarian totalitarianism, or information Totalitarianism and digital totalitarianism are brought about by technology, and the problems brought about by technology may only be solved by technology itself.”
Fang Fang, a writer from Wuhan, wrote in one of her widely circulated “City Closure Diary” articles reflecting on technology: “Weibo has a technique: you think you sent it, but in fact no one can see it. Since Knowing that there is such a technology, you can understand: High technology is not weaker than the plague when it does evil.”
Li Zehua has the same feeling.
“I think the technological singularity that Kurzweil mentioned seems to be coming. If a totalitarian regime is using such a technology to control the people, the people will want to sue him. I don’t even have the chance to know my opponent. I I feel that it is necessary to take the most cutting-edge technology and the most backward social system, what is being done with these cutting-edge technologies, and tear it apart and smash it, which is meaningful.”
“Is this also the reason why you have disappeared from public view for so long, are you willing to speak again?” the reporter asked.
“Yes.” Li Zehua said.
Walking by Lake Ontario that morning, Li Zehua hummed Cui Jian’s “Let Me Sprinkle Some Wildness on the Snow”. He is preparing to graduate and start a new life. He said that although he never thought about facing the life of a bank account bottoming out, which is a bit “frustrated”, but he is at home with peace of mind. He plans to use the self-media and the newly learned computer major Do something to popularize science and interpret technology centralization for Chinese audiences.
People in a foreign land are looking for jobs and self-identity again, but their homesickness is always inseparable from their homeland.
How to define this new self?
“I think it should be… a fighter who is destined to fight. I will definitely fight those things that I don’t like, like totalitarianism and tyranny, and use my methods to fight them. Of course I am not alone, I I think more people will walk with me in the future, maybe I will be a leader, maybe I can just be a promoter,…”
In the snow in Rochester, Li Zehua suddenly uttered this new identity imagination, his eyes lit up, and his hometown 10,000 kilometers away seemed not far away.
Reporter: Tang Jiajie Editor in charge: Shenspade Editor: Hong Wei