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I spent my first ten years old in the rural area of ​​Xinshao County, Shaoyang. After I turned ten, my father had a fight with his brother, and the two brothers hacked each other to a bloody pulp. We could no longer stay in that village, so the whole family was forced to move to the eastern district of Shaoyang, and I went to Qianjin Primary School.

I had always had good grades in elementary school and was the top student in the class, one of the top three students that the teacher loved the most. Every day after school at noon, we three top students had special treatment and could go home to eat first, while all the other students had to stay and make up for another 20 minutes of class.

In the 1990s, Chinese grass-roots teachers really worked very hard. In order to improve their credits, they took the initiative to give students free tutoring.

I was sure to get into Shaoyang No. 2 Middle School, but in the second half of sixth grade, I was taken to an arcade by some male classmates to play games. "Romance of the Three Kingdoms", "Dino Fight" and "Captain Hook" were so fun. How could a simple country kid like me resist such temptation? After playing for an afternoon, the trajectory of my life changed. From then on, I loved to daydream in class, and my grades plummeted in half a semester. I failed to get into No. 2 Middle School and finally went to Zhaoling Middle School.

I later became nearsighted because of playing arcade games. I clearly remember that when I was in the second grade of junior high school, I was playing "Snow Mountain Doll". The graphics of this game were too bright and too harmful to the eyes. In just a moment, the picture in front of my eyes became blurred and I could not see things that were a little far away. From then on, I was forced to wear glasses.

Looking back, I can say responsibly that incorrect addiction to games can indeed cause great harm to children, but we cannot simply deny games, because sometimes children choose games because they have no choice.

When I was in the second grade of junior high school, I played football once in physical education class. I felt so happy at that time. It was much more exciting than playing arcade games. An adolescent boy loves sports so much. But in the 1990s, Chinese schools did not allow students to play football, not even volleyball. Once the school held a volleyball match for teachers, and I went down to watch for ten minutes. The head teacher saw me and told me to go back to the classroom to study.

"What's so interesting about volleyball? Studying is the most important thing."

When we were born in the 1980s, the school did not allow us ordinary students to play sports, for fear that we would get injured or that we would delay our normal studies. We missed out on basketball, football, volleyball, swimming, and mountain climbing, which were particularly beneficial to the body and mind and could release our growing energy. We were not even allowed to touch martial arts and romance comics. If we saw them, their names would be confiscated. The only thing we had to do was to read, read, and read.

Of course, it is wrong to indulge in arcade games, but playing games was the only form of entertainment for us teenagers. Who would play this when we have football to play? Really, we had no choice back then.

Teenagers are a particularly restless group of people. You can't just block them without guiding them. You can't block them from playing games or watching martial arts movies. Even sexual impulses can't be blocked when they reach puberty. When we were in the third grade of junior high school, a dozen male classmates went to Sanyanjing in a group to watch three-level movies (I didn't go) after school. A classmate named Liu Tao even went there wearing our school uniform. When he returned to school the next day, all the male classmates laughed at him, saying that he was hanging around in the video hall in his school uniform, bringing shame to our Zhaoling Middle School.

The best way to deal with playing games is to give children more choices and let them find the most suitable interests and hobbies. Being addicted to games was an option our generation of teenagers had no choice but to choose. Games have even developed into a way of socializing for us boys, and many people just stick to this path until the end.

It was from then on that I began my gaming journey in the game hall on Shaoshi Street in Shaoyang. I saved the 50 cents I had for breakfast every day to buy two coins. The games I was best at were "Samurai Shodown" and "Goukokudera", which were at the quasi-first-tier level on that street.

There is another good thing about Shao Shi Street. There are several noodle shops next to the game hall. The pork rib noodles are delicious and the chefs are first-class cooks. The aroma often wafts over from the side when I am playing games. I drool while playing ping-pong.

Men are born to like to think about things. After playing games for a long time, I chatted with the owner of the game hall and asked him where he bought the game motherboard. The boss said he bought it in Changsha. I asked where in Changsha they got the goods from, but the boss’s knowledge limit was this and he couldn’t answer me.

Later, I thought about it again and found that none of these games were made in China. The fun games all had the Capcom, Sega, and SNK logos, and they were basically from Japan and the United States. I guess there aren't any serious game companies in China.

In 1996, the first CD game room opened on Shao Shi Street. Note the name, it’s called the CD game room. It’s actually the PS1 console game room of that year. You have to put the CD in to play the game, and it also has to be equipped with a handle, which looks very professional.

But this thing costs 5 yuan an hour, 5 yuan. My neighbor was selling vegetables in the vegetable market at that time. At the worst time, he could only make 5 yuan a day. That was in 1996. 5 yuan was the income of the poorest people in Shaoyang city for half a day.

Whenever an adult played "Resident Evil", we, a group of poor kids, would stand behind them and watch it. Seven or eight of us would surround one adult to watch the plot. When a zombie suddenly stretched out its hand from the window, the kids would scream in fear.

The owner of the game room was a short middle-aged man wearing thick glasses. Every time he passed behind us, all the kids who were watching the games for free felt embarrassed for taking up other people's space. Some scratched their heads, some looked at their watches (all of them were broken), and everyone pretended to be very busy.

It was in 1996 that computer game rooms started to become popular. Nowadays, children certainly don’t know about the existence of such a thing as a “computer game room”, as this thing only existed for about four years in history. In 2000, they were all called Internet cafes.

At that time, computers could only be connected to a local area network. If several people played a game of "Red Alert" online, they had to watch the screen and wait for five minutes. It was also expensive, 5 yuan an hour. But for this novel experience, everyone was willing to try their best to play a game. The shocking feeling brought by "Dune" and "Duke Nukem" is difficult for people at that time to describe.

Arcades began to fall out of favor from then on, and the business eventually died out.

Computer game rooms were also popular for a while. Every time a new computer game room opened in the city, it would always offer free data usage for 72 hours. The city's little hooligans and ruffians would go there with their bowls to grab a seat, and would not move for 72 hours. They would ask their family to bring them food and drinks, and would ask other ruffians who didn't have a seat to play for them when they went to the toilet.

There was a little hooligan among them who robbed me of my money when I was in the second grade of junior high school. I was very curious about what became of these people, so I asked them what they did a few years later. Some of them went to repair motorcycles, and some went to work in Zhuhai.

Few gangsters and hooligans can live to the age of 20. Once they reach 20, the huge pressure of life comes upon them. They have to be workers as workers or social animals as social animals.

After computer games came out, if you didn't talk about games in the boys' circle, you would have no way to survive, because when everyone got together, they would only talk about "Red Alert" and "Dune" - this "Dune" is actually "Command and Conquer", the game room has been reporting the name wrong for many years. This is the spiritual theme of all boys and the core of popular communication.

Teenagers cannot understand things that are too profound and need time to digest. When I was sixteen, I watched Wong Kar-wai's "Ashes of Time" with my classmates for the first time. I just felt that this thing was very cool, but I couldn't figure out what was so cool about it, and I couldn't express it. People must experience more things before they can understand profound truths.

With no other options, everyone can only have games, so everyone can only talk about games.

What is popular belongs to the world.

But growing up, I found that of all the good games I played, none of them were made in China.

China can produce cars, refrigerators, televisions, etc. The Chinese men's football team can even enter the World Cup, but when it comes to good games, there is a kind of despair. There is not a single good game recognized by the world that is produced in China.

From computer games such as "Warcraft", "Starcraft" and "League of Legends" to console games such as "The Legend of Zelda", "The Last of Us", "The Witcher" and "Red Dead Redemption", none of them were made by Chinese people themselves.

Especially for console games that are designed specifically for gaming, the first time I saw the God of War cutscene on a big-screen TV, my friends and I stood in front of the TV, stunned.

We can still produce some low- and mid-end daily necessities, but if it is a spiritual product, even if it is a little bit advanced, we are completely unable to produce it.

High-end spiritual products actually also include movies, music, books, etc. In those years, it seemed that everything from Europe, America, and Japan was inherently nobler than us.

Gradually, we have come to realize that China cannot produce any advanced gadgets, and that advanced gadgets are only played by Europe, the United States, and Japan.

That is to say, when it comes to producing physical objects, we could still fight them and barely last ten rounds, but when it comes to producing spiritual products, we can't even take a single blow. It was so miserable that even Zhang Yimou at the peak of his career was determined to make a movie to win the recognition of an Oscar. Even now, Chinese musicians are trying their best to win a Grammy.

Some artists who survive by receiving awards from foreigners unconsciously speak for foreigners and automatically belittle the Chinese.

Therefore, our spiritual world, apart from what we learn in the classroom, has actually been unconsciously dominated by Europe, the United States, and Japan.

The collapse of our spiritual world from childhood to adulthood will make our nation very unconfident, and even some of the things we produce ourselves will not recognize their own value.

The most obvious manifestation of this spiritual admiration is luxury goods, because many bags are not difficult to produce at all. Many luxury bags are made by Times Leather Goods in Houjie, Dongguan. Many of the so-called luxury goods originating from Italy are made by Italians who take orders and then sell them to Wenzhou people in Italy. But we subconsciously think that "this kind of good stuff can only be paid for by European, American and Japanese brands, I won’t buy brands from other countries."

Why do we have this subconsciousness? It is because all aspects of life have affected us, from the means of production to spiritual products, including high-end visible daily necessities such as cars, watches, computers, mobile phones, and products of the spiritual world, such as movies, music, books, magazines, and newspapers, which have deeply affected us.

This world is full of European, American and Japanese discourse power and serves the European, American and Japanese world.

Let me give you an example. The Shining, which ranks number one in the world, is actually incomprehensible to most Chinese people. It is not to the Chinese people's taste. It must be understood in the context of the profound American history, and the history of the American westward movement, caravans, and the massacre of Indians, to understand what it is about. Otherwise, the Chinese will be confused after watching it.

In fact, what Chinese people feel more terrified are definitely Eastern-style horrors such as "The Old Corpse in the Village", "The Grudge" and "Double Vision". Western horror does not fit the cultural background of the Chinese people, so it is difficult for them to resonate with it all at once.

But ordinary Chinese people have no say, and even if they think a movie is not good, they have to say it is good, because if you say it is not good, it means you have no taste, you are ignorant, and you don’t understand what real art is.

And often, those who stand up and scold you are not foreigners, but some senior intellectuals in China. These people have studied abroad, taught in universities or worked in the media, and received hands-on guidance from foreigners. Whenever you think that foreigners are not right in something, these people will jump up and accuse them of being vulgar and ignorant.

When Europeans and Americans simply print a few geometric patterns on a piece of white paper and say it is a rare work of art, and we spend millions to buy it, we are complete idiots, the ones who are taken advantage of, and the ones who are forced by them to admit their worldview.

To crush the discourse power of Europe, the United States and Japan, we must first prove ourselves materially, that is, to build better cars, ships and airplanes than theirs. With this material foundation, we can attack their spiritual world and start a major counterattack from movies, music and games.

Think about us in the 1990s. All the high-end things we came into contact with in life were not produced in China. What we ate and wore were not as good as others. The only games that teenagers could use to vent their energy were all produced by foreigners. How could we be confident when we saw foreigners?

This world is material first and then spiritual. How can you talk about spirituality if you can’t handle material things?

Some people say that China also had satellites, nuclear submarines, and nuclear weapons at that time, and that these were no worse than those of the great powers. This is true, but these were not accessible to ordinary people. The knowledge of a game hall owner ends in Changsha. You cannot expect ordinary people to understand such a grand worldview.

We need to make products accessible to ordinary people, and the things produced by the Chinese themselves become increasingly advanced, so that ordinary people will increasingly recognize this country and have more and more national confidence.

When I visited Russia in April 2024, people doing import and export business in Russia told me that because Chinese cars are well made, their perception of Chinese products has greatly changed.

They used to think that Chinese products were cheap substitutes for European products and were unwilling to pay high prices for Chinese products. However, ever since China's Ideal, Zeekr, Tank, and Starway models have entered Russian families, Russians' ideas have been shaken. They feel that if the Chinese can produce such good cars, then their other industrial products must be good too, so they are willing to pay for China's high-end products.

When advanced material products appear, we feel that Europe and the United States can fight; when advanced spiritual products appear, we feel that Europe and the United States are nothing special.

China's progress in recent years has been gradually advancing in accordance with this law. First, it had world-class home appliances, then world-class cars and mobile phones, then world-class conventional weapons, and finally, it began to gradually attack the spiritual world.

As an ordinary Chinese man, when I used China's best mobile phones and cars for the first time, once I thought of the life we ​​lived as teenagers in the 1990s, and looked at the QX4 M9 and Tengzhong N7 I usually drive, and the Honor Magic 6 in my hand, I felt extremely emotional and always felt so excited that I couldn't help but shed tears.

Some people may say that I am blindly patriotic. Are the M9, N7, and Magic6 as good as you say? You underestimate me. I started my business in 2015 and have been a boss for nearly 10 years. I have owned luxury cars such as BMW and Mercedes-Benz, and I have used Apple phones for a long time. It is only after comparison that I feel that Chinese products are really world-class.

When I visited Japan and South Korea, I often had arguments with people from both countries about car issues, but in the end I always said one thing: stop talking, go try our cars, go try our self-driving cars. Let's speak with facts, facts are above all else.

Yes, facts are above all else. We must be first-class in the material world and also in the spiritual world.

"Black Myth: Wukong", which was released on August 20, is the first cross-era product of our spiritual world and the first shot in our counterattack in the spiritual world.

Moreover, our spiritual products are selling extremely well, with sales of 1.5 billion in just two days. This will inspire us to produce more first-class spiritual products.

The foundation of every luxury item sold to us by Europe, the United States and Japan is the accumulation of their material world. Combined with the rendering of their spiritual world, we are willing to spend dozens of times the premium to buy their luxury goods.

It is more difficult to support a company that provides spiritual products than to support a company that produces material products.

The production company of "Black Myth: Wukong" is Game Science, which has 120 regular employees and 500 outsourced teams. Online data shows that the average salary of regular employees is as high as 24,000 yuan.

The production of "Black Myth: Wukong" took seven years, and the production and distribution costs were as high as 500 million. This is not a high cost that can be supported by the ordinary market, and it cannot be developed while being sold like physical products.

Once the first product is successful, the second and third will follow, and then more excellent blockbuster productions will be produced. A large number of talents will engage in this high-paying job and make money from all over the world.

The once huge network woven together by material and spiritual elements between Europe, the United States and Japan is being broken down and reorganized.

Every time I see huge crowds of people outside stores of brands like LV and GUCCI, I wonder when China will have its own luxury goods, so that it can go abroad to earn money from these high-profit products and make the lives of its people a little better.

I also want to buy Chinese luxury goods, but they are really not available on the market.

But I know this takes time. We must first have good cars and good mobile phones, then good games and good movies. Then, we can tell them Chinese stories and sell our luxury goods at high prices.

Only then can we say to the French, the British, the Americans and the Italians:

This bottle of authentic Beijing Lao Hutong soy milk, which is hand-mixed by 24 generations of Ming Dynasty royal chefs with 500 years of accumulated technology during the Jiajing period, is only 1,300 yuan per bottle.

Do you drink or not?