Not long ago, I was chatting with some first- and second-year students when, quite naturally, the familiar question came my way: “As someone who's been through it, how do you think we should spend our university years?”

It is a difficult question to answer. In the slower days before AI made such enormous waves, there was still breathing room between technological advances. The paths ahead were relatively clear. You could often follow one steadily for several years, and it was easier to anchor your sense of meaning in a sequence of orderly choices.

But models now develop so quickly that the idea of “seeing the field clearly and choosing the right direction” has almost become a false premise. Sometimes, just as you crouch beside the track to tie your shoelaces, the track itself has already been overturned or disappeared. Learn a little more slowly, and you may find you no longer need to learn it at all. I often think of the old saying about the new waves of the Yangtze pushing the old ones forward. Who knows how soon it will be the first-year students teaching me?

My lowest grade at university was in Engineering Graphics. The course demanded spatial reasoning and drawing skills, which happened to be my two great weaknesses. One suggested way to catch up was to use CAD modeling to help those of us with poor spatial ability understand what we were looking at. The trouble was that I knew nothing about CAD and was not particularly good at learning this kind of software. Worse still, I could not even make sense of the two-dimensional drawings. How was I supposed to build a three-dimensional model from them? In the end, it was entirely thanks to the teacher's kindness that I scraped through and kept my chance of pursuing further study. I am still grateful to Professor L in the School of Mechanical Engineering for giving me a hand. I am also relieved I hadn't preselected Professor Z's class—the “Venomancer”—or I would have been mercilessly finished off back then.

Looking back from 2026, the knot that once had me tearing my hair out seems as fragile as a sheet of paper. When an unfamiliar field feels intimidating, AI agents can offer both knowledge and endless reassurance, without the awkwardness of asking another person for help. As for three-dimensional modeling, you can simply feed the drawings to GPT, connect it to Blender, and have the model generated automatically in a few dozen seconds.

The “hard technical barriers” that once kept me up all night, anxious and losing hair, now amount to seconds of computation. If even these concrete skills can lose their usefulness in an instant, what were all those struggles for? What, exactly, are the younger students sitting in classrooms today learning for? Perhaps it is to hold on to the ability to learn—and to experience that peculiar part of being alive in which you cannot seem to learn something, yet have to keep trying anyway.

Thankfully, university is about more than studying. I ran a great deal during those years. On so many nights when my head felt stuffed with too much information and anxiety about the unknown, I would change my clothes and shoes and rush out into the dark. I would feel the solid jolt of my feet striking the rubber track and listen as my breathing grew rougher. Little by little, sweat would wash away the negative feelings. By the time I stopped, drenched and out of breath, all that remained inside was a pure sense of peace and joy.

For now, at least, that inner peace and joy seem able to remain steady amid the headlong rush of technological change. If I really have an answer to offer those younger students, my limited experience comes down to this: find the peace and joy that are yours.

In Penang, an ethnic Chinese driver told us, “You Chinese earn thirty years’ worth of money in ten.” In Hangzhou, even buildings that do not pierce the clouds glow with lights. Inside, the race against time plays out again and again. One winter holiday, I took my younger brother and sister to wander around in77 by West Lake at midnight. It was quiet and deserted. They asked where all the people of Hangzhou were. After a moment’s thought, I said, “Working overtime.” Having a late-night meal in a little roadside restaurant, I sat across from an influencer who was still discussing the results of a shoot with a photographer at half past midnight, with a livestream about to begin. And ten kilometres away, at Zhejiang University’s Zijingang campus, the second floor of the main library stays open twenty-four hours a day. Those “big papers” are forged night after night by researchers like my labmates. The miracles on this ancient land were built by its great people. The pyramids of ancient Egypt, South Korea’s Miracle on the Han River—history tells the same great story again and again.

Anyone who has struggled towards something will feel a lump in their throat at the hardship behind these stories. And they will understand a little better: it is good to slow down, ease up, and take a rest.

Comparing notes with Ji Jiamin, I realised we had travelled together in 2023, to the Greater Liangshan region; in 2025, to Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao; and in early August 2026, to Malaysia. We are both getting older. Graduate school makes you grow up fast, and our careers need to keep pace with that growth. Back to the lab, and back to work.

Some places take root in us the moment we first hear of them. We long to reach out and feel their textures for ourselves, as if keeping a long-awaited appointment, claiming, inch by inch, the scenes we have rehearsed in our minds so many times. I want to see a California sunset fall into the Pacific like an orange sweet, setting the horizon alight with a gentle flame. I want to see the penguins of Antarctica waddle awkwardly across the ice, through a vast, white silence. And I want to witness the northern lights in northern Europe tear open the night without warning, green ribbons drifting slowly overhead while stars flicker in the cold. One day, I too will stand in that light and feel the same wind against my skin.

I think the pursuit of happiness is one of our deepest instincts. I think of the place Andy describes from inside the prison in The Shawshank Redemption: Zihuatanejo, a small town on Mexico's Pacific coast, where he wants to buy an old boat, open a little hotel, and greet each quiet morning to the sound of waves that have “no memory.” However high the walls around us, however confined our days may feel, we can still long for a sea free of guilt and constraint. The body may be held in place for now, but as long as that thought remains, the soul has already crossed the walls and arrived at that expanse of blue.

That is why we are so deeply drawn to dreams we have yet to reach. On countless late nights, returning from the laboratory to my dorm room and setting down the day's exhaustion, I find myself packing for a journey, over and over in my mind. I may not have a ticket yet. I may not know when I can actually leave. But my heart has already boarded that flight, passed through the heavy clouds, and hurried towards the faraway place it has longed for. That impatient desire to make it all real, with my own hands, is itself proof that the spark of life has not gone out.

The world is still out there, and we are not ready to surrender.

When I graduated last year, I did not feel it quite so deeply. I was still here in Qiushi Garden: no sooner had I graduated than I enrolled again. But the people who filled my undergraduate memories were like dandelions on a mountainside, swept up by a gust of wind and set down gently on unfamiliar continents.

I watch today's graduates—those who arrived before me and those who came after—toss their mortarboards into the sky. From this moment on, they are out among the crowds, each setting off on the long road ahead. Suddenly I remember my first summer at Zhejiang University, a few years ago. The cicadas were deafening, and the sunlight made everything so sharply clear that I could almost believe time would stay there forever.

But time moves on. Like the lotuses in this lake, which bloom and fade year after year, while the people who come to see them change, one group after another. The ordinary things I once thought would last forever—the moon above me as I left the laboratory late at night, the fitness tests I could never book, the Zheda Tiyi sports-and-arts app crashing when I tried to check in—were all borrowed time. When it was due, it had to be given back.

A breeze crosses the lake, carrying the scent of lotus flowers. And suddenly I understand: graduation is simply finding another way to keep growing.

In January, I heard a talk by fellow alumnus Duan Yongping. His words stayed with me all year: do the right things, and do things right. Finding those right things became the thread running through my year. I went to Oxford to study artificial intelligence and machine learning with friends. Watching brilliant students from Tsinghua, Zhejiang University, and other universities excel in class made me more aware of how small I was, and how much I could not yet do. Even so, I became friends with many of them. Becoming friends with AI engineers—that was a right thing to do.

February belonged to DeepSeek in the news. AI took a great stride into everyday life in China. Even the older men in my village were talking about fellow alumnus Liang Wenfeng and DeepSeek, although saying “DeepSeek” and spelling it were their first and second challenges.

On the last day of February, I met a Nobel laureate for the first time: Arieh Warshel. Wang Jinqiang asked whether forty was too late to learn AI. Warshel joked that forty-five might be too late, but forty was just right. Learning AI in my twenties was a right thing to do, too.

So in March, I began exploring AI in earnest. Starting with Cursor, I built my first little game, 1024, and deployed it on GitHub. My friends' encouragement helped me take that first step. I then built a scheduling system of my own and began picking up pace along the path of vibe coding.

Of course, I was still running in the physical world. Looking after my body was a right thing to do.

In April, I finished the last course of my undergraduate degree. The presentation I had put so much care into was praised by the teacher and added to the course materials. Happy ending.

In May, I submitted my graduation project and finished visiting every campus of Zhejiang University. In the acknowledgments, I wrote about the trees and grass of Qiushi Garden, and found myself overcome with emotion. They held the sum of four verdant years. Earning my place at Zhejiang University through my own efforts was one of the best things I did in my youth.

Goodbyes always seem to come in June. My dear friends set off towards bright futures, some as far away as Pennsylvania, others as close as the foot of Cuibai Building. Yes, I graduated. I did not want to say goodbye to my intensive programme, but time cannot be held back. I remembered the motto: “Break through on separate paths; meet again beyond the circle.” We part so that we can meet again, further along.

In July, I worked hard at research. Looking back, though, I realised that hands-on experiments were not my strength. This was not the right path for me: I neither enjoyed them nor had a knack for the practical work. It felt like scratching a lottery ticket and finding the first character of “Thank you for playing.”

Even so, my supervisors, senior labmates, friends in my cohort, and even younger students were remarkably good at it. Asking them for advice was unquestionably the right thing to do. With their patient guidance, I made technical breakthroughs in simulation and device design, putting me on a clear path to graduation early on.

In August, I travelled with close friends. At Tencent, Huawei, and the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, I could hear my own inner calling clearly. Everyone has a life they want to lead. I want to work for myself.

That summer, I began exploring an experiment management system of my own and built a working version. It may have been the largest personal project I had ever undertaken. I learned a great deal from it, paying in advance for lessons that would help with the projects that followed.

In September, I officially became a graduate student. I continued studying devices while deepening my understanding of value investing. I watched Buffett's talk at the University of Florida several times, strengthening my commitment to integrity and my respect for time. Put simply: do good, and do not fret over what lies ahead. The future is there, in the compounding of time.

In October, courses taught by Professors Gu Zhen and Zhang Yuqi helped refine my judgment of research ideas. I learned to evaluate them using the 3P principles, formed my own understanding of where disciplines might be heading—biological intelligence and logical intelligence—and began producing new research ideas consistently, with my supervisor's support.

But I know what my dreams are, and what I am planning towards. Perhaps sharing my ideas with others in the lab is a right thing to do. They are devoted to expanding the boundaries of human knowledge, and I can offer them a broader view across disciplines.

I am especially grateful to my supervisors. They have a good eye for people. They found an appropriate place for me, offered me the option of a shorter degree programme, and gave me a good platform and room to grow.

Over the past two months, I have moved another step closer to my dream. There is only so much room in a WeChat Moments post, so I will leave that story for another time.

There are too many stories, too much to tell. And I am not someone who lives in the past. I added photographs, removed them, then added them again. In the end, let me leave just one: a view from behind, moving forward. Do the right thing.

A boundless sea of clouds, set apart from the sky at the horizon, flowing freely. Light scattered through them in broken waves, like gold in the melting, bathing everything in hope and nourishing a weary traveller’s parched heart. The wind came and went, washing away stray thoughts until only a purity like that of the clouds remained. At the farthest edge of sight, where light met darkness, rose-coloured cloud tips reached out to the couple in the seats ahead, bearing witness to the meeting of two souls in this life. The clouds nearby seemed close enough to touch, layered like bolts of silk, dense and soft. How did they know I was travelling west, and lay out a Silk Road for me?

Clouds, it turns out, are a mirror. When I look at them with hope, what I see naturally shines with golden light. When I am very old and all alone, perhaps I will find only the sorrow of “The sunset is infinitely beautiful, but dusk is drawing near.” As Jiaxuan wrote, “I find the green mountains so enchanting; I imagine they must see me in the same way.” The world reflects the heart. Our attitude towards life may be a kind of filter: look through a different one, and the world changes entirely. An ordinary scene, once infused with feeling, can become a thing of extraordinary beauty. No wonder people say that value is something we give.

I often marvel at the rich and colourful lives of others. Today it occurred to me that a colourful life must come with a colourful attitude. If you merely drift through your days, how could you ever inspire that kind of wonder? What makes Sun Shaoping in Ordinary World so cool is his attitude towards life: with the fading sun at his back, he still has the courage to greet the dawn. Our teacher Xiaobo says that life is about the attitude you bring to it. Joining the Intensive Training Program (ITP) is a positive attitude in itself: refusing to settle for the ordinary, pursuing excellence, doing better. I think it is precisely this attitude that makes life in ITP so much more colourful.

Dare to dream. Stay positive. Take responsibility. Keep smiling. DPRS!

It was well past midnight. Watching a video on my computer, I felt full of guilt. I remembered something from the Bible that I had read as a child: “The Lord Jesus is the good shepherd. He does not wish to lose a single sheep. He would leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness to look for that one, searching through every hardship until he finds it, then joyfully carrying it home on his shoulders.” I went downstairs to search again. After retracing what might have happened, over and over, I finally found it in a corner of the Biyi garage. How can I describe that feeling? I touched the saddle, and my anxious heart finally came to rest. I swung myself onto the bicycle. With nothing else on my mind, I rode around campus, feeling the wind, enjoying the moon.

My world had come back. The vast campus was empty. Even in the heat of summer, there was a little coolness in the midnight air. The wheels kept turning. Lights, buildings, asphalt—the scenery flew backwards. I loved this feeling. I loved everything before me. The uncertainty about the future, the unease about life, the doubts about myself—all cleared away. Wherever the future takes me, whether Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen or Hangzhou, or Xinjiang, Tibet, Sichuan or Yunnan, as long as I am on wheels, the road leads forward.

What is love? With you, the world feels safe. Without you, the world feels frightening. — Someone who loves freedom