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author|poplar

edit| zhang yue

the great master appeared on the other side of the screen. when we first spoke, she was at the airport, preparing to fly to shanghai. in the past few months, she has been traveling back and forth between chengdu and shanghai to participate in the recording of "talk show and his friends". in shanghai, she is very busy writing scripts, speaking at open mics, and competing. this is a high-intensity competition, but she is not the kind of belligerent player. she is afraid of the anxious competitive atmosphere. during the break, she will play billiards with her manzai brothers, or go back to chengdu to play for two days, and then come back to continue her creation. she strives to keep her creation and life from being overwhelmed by the tension of the competition.

as the first newcomer to appear, her philosophy on motorcycles received a high number of votes, 181. she stood on the stage, wearing a loose shirt, and looked a little embarrassed. it was her first time to participate in an online recording, and she felt nervous. she could be more lively offline, but fortunately all the jokes worked. she said that this was the best performance.

"my boyfriend broke his arm while riding my motorcycle. he needed to go to the hospital and pay for it. i did have some money at the time, but the motorcycle needed to be repaired as well!" she hesitated over which one to save first, her handsome boyfriend or her motorcycle. "life is like playing chess. should i save the king or the motorcycle?" "to redeem the motorcycle, i have to drive a motorcycle to make money. to make money from driving a motorcycle, i have to redeem the motorcycle first. others have the trolley problem, but i have the motorcycle dilemma. philosophically speaking, i have a car now, but i don't have one." these are some hell jokes about poverty. she likes hell jokes because they explore boundaries. she said, "i like to poke at everyone's moral boundaries."

at least before she came on the show, da guoshou was a poor master of philosophy. she has a casual personality and lives a casual life. when we video chatted, she didn't say any polite words, didn't care much about the camera angle, and often laughed with her face tilted up. chatting with talk show actor doudou, doudou asked her if she had ever applied for other online programs. she said bluntly that she had, but they ignored her. doudou was shocked. shouldn't she say "i don't match their needs"? some people discussed her not going to work on social media, saying that she is a master's degree holder after all, so she can find a class to attend. she felt that the other party didn't understand what she was saying, "i just don't want to go to work."

in order to avoid working, she did many things: part-time copywriting, art design, course design, philosophy teacher, and of course borrowing money. there are many cheap moments of happiness in her life, such as a vest that costs 13 yuan is better than a vest that costs 26 yuan, a fourth-hand motorcycle, and free cultural activities. she decorated a small house with second-hand items and small items given by friends, and planted plants and raised parrots in it.

in today's social environment, such a life seems too idealistic. we discussed the issue of freedom. people have different ideas about freedom. some people think freedom is a luxury, while others think freedom is a necessity. daguoshou is obviously the latter. sometimes she even thinks she is freer without money. "when i go to participate in the show, i feel that i am not afraid of wearing shoes when i am barefoot."

in the second round yesterday, the "barefoot" chinese national player was eliminated. some friends shed tears for her, but she felt that this matter was more important. "i cherish those precious moments."

she is 29 years old. this year, she wrote in her wechat account, "i don't want to be classified into any group, nor do i really want to complete the social sense of 'socialization', nor do i want to be labeled. i just want to walk between the mainstream and the fringe and shake my arms."

what kind of life story is this? i tried to go back in time to find the source of her self-consistency and freedom. three important things happened in her life.

she was born in a rural area of ​​hebei and spent her childhood in the vast wheat fields. because she was raised in a free-range environment, she lived a wild and undisciplined life. this formed the foundation of her life. "the power of nature will nourish some strange things." later, studying philosophy gave her the ability to grow again, allowing her to cope with the pressure of social culture, the pain of her original family, and her true self. finally, it was comedy. she said that if everything must disappear, the only way to resist disappearance is to live happily.

i realized that her self-consistency was not innate, but the result of hard work and growth. that's right, a person's life narrative cannot be so smooth and flat. there are dense burrs growing in the middle, just like our phone calls, disconnected and connected, sometimes stuttering, sometimes silent, and sometimes having to stop to think and sort out. fortunately, now she has decided to return to the wilderness where she ran as a child. after the call ended, i wished her a safe journey, and i heard her laughter in the receiver: "it seems that the wind can't fly."

i applied for this show from many sources. it was probably in march this year when i saw a talk show actor forwarding a recruitment notice on wechat moments. so i recorded a talk show video and sent the information. before going on the show, i had to go to a seven-day editing and creation camp to write scripts and screen. i was very happy at first and felt that i was selected. i like to do talk shows, and if there is a bigger stage, i will go without thinking too much.

i wrote the scripts in those days, and after finishing them, i went to an offline open mic to try them out and replace the weaker ones. the screenwriter was very interested in my experience. during the break, he pulled me aside to chat, and i told him about my life. we talked about the incident when my boyfriend broke the handlebars while riding a bike. i told him that i thought the motorcycle should be repaired at the time. i like hell jokes very much. the reason why hell jokes have some philosophical meaning is that they explore boundaries and turn established things into problems. for example, in daily life, everyone naturally has the answer "it must be the guarantor"; but when i say this, "guarantor" will become a question "guarantor or car". i like questions because questions mean open answers. i like to poke everyone's moral boundaries. the screenwriter laughed when he heard it, and he said, "why don't you write this? how funny!

the editing and creation camp and the program recording are both in shanghai. i usually live in chengdu, so i have been wandering between the two places recently. i am willing to compete and enjoy the creative process, but i can't stand the atmosphere where everyone is anxious and i can't stand the feeling of having to compete for the first place. i haven't worked for many years because i don't want to live this kind of life. so after revising the manuscript, i went back to chengdu to play billiards for two days, and then went to shanghai. before the competition, i talked about the open mic, and the venue was so cold that i had no confidence. my screenwriter friends encouraged me and said: it's okay! go for it! unexpectedly, the show was my best performance, and every joke was popular.

the first time i came into contact with talk shows was in january 2022, when a friend was going to host a folk spring festival gala. some people could play musical instruments, some could dance, and i couldn't do anything, so i said i would do talk shows. at that time, i couldn't do it, and i had never watched it, so i didn't understand it at all. later, i watched "talk show conference" for two days and wrote a manuscript that i called a speech. everyone is my friend, and they all applauded me.

at that time, we were talking about dressing. i paid more attention to my appearance for a while. a passerby came towards me on the road. he first stared at me, and then turned his head to look at me after he walked past. it was very offensive. i wrote about it in the joke. i felt that he was like the writer zhu ziqing, who wanted to use me to write an article "back view" (laughs).

i also told you something about emo. when you are emo, you will feel that others are bullying you no matter what you see. once i went to a friend's house and saw the clock hanging on his wall, i felt that the second hand was "tsk tsk tsk" to drive me away. i really like this kind of nonsensical joke.

at the time of the folk spring festival gala, i was just having fun with my friends, and i had never thought about (talk show). at the end of that year, a friend introduced me to a job in a small city in sichuan, which was to do some feasibility planning for engineering projects. at that time, i didn’t want to work, and i had never worked before. i thought this job sounded high-paying, 8,000 to 10,000 yuan a month. i was tempted by the benefits for a while, but i ran away after working for half a month. the main reason was that i felt it was boring. i wrote about the cycle and meaning every day. why can it be executed? what are the reasons for landing? i kept repeating these routines, without my own creativity.

i thought at the time that i could choose not to work, but i had to have a personal career. i know that everything has a price. if i don't endure this, i have to endure that. so i asked myself what i would rather endure? i thought of talk shows. my only experience was this job and the talk show i had tried only once. talk shows are often boring, and i would rather endure boring than boring.

it is easy for people to know what they don’t want. i don’t want to be a civil servant, nor do i want to be a teacher (in traditional education). i always wanted to find something i was sure i wanted to do, but i couldn’t find it. at this time, my life took a turn. i thought, maybe i will never be sure what i want in my life, but i want to do something, so i will start with something i don’t hate. talk shows have their own creation and expression, and they are definitely constantly iterating in the process of creation. even if i don’t do well at the beginning, it will make me feel that i am always moving forward.

in december, i went to several comedy clubs in chengdu and learned about it. at the beginning, i was just imagining it and hadn't really figured out what stand-up comedy was. now it seems that i am like a person who manages money or shops, trying a bite of food before buying it. i think if you are worried about something, you should learn about it first, and don't rush to make a decision. it's like entering a door, stepping over the threshold without touching the ground, and sticking your head in to take a look.

in march of the following year, i started going to open mics. i didn’t make any money from it, but i just went there to practice my jokes. the first time i went on stage, i was very natural. i prepared the script and went to speak, and i didn’t know what kind of reception i would get. everyone’s feedback was pretty good, so i was very happy. but after the first time, i had expectations in my mind, and i thought everyone would laugh, but in the end, no one laughed. from the second show to the fourth and fifth shows, the venue became very cold, it was simply hell mode. so i am very used to cold audiences. if it doesn’t work, i will just throw away the topic and change the jokes. i don’t think there is any need to be frustrated. what’s the big deal? why doubt yourself? at that time, i went to open mics two or three times a week, tried it for two or three weeks in a row, stopped for one or two weeks to write the script, and then tried it again. sometimes when there was really nothing to write, i would take a break.

the name "大国手" comes from my love of writing articles in college. i hope i can write better. i was embarrassed to tell others the meaning of this name before. i felt an inexplicable sense of shame. i was worried that others would judge whether i was worthy of it. now i feel that i still have to face my true self. there is nothing to be ashamed of.

doudou asked me to record a podcast before, and i said i had applied for another show, but they ignored me. doudou said, is it so direct? don’t they usually say “i applied, but my needs don’t match theirs” (laughing)? i haven’t worked much, so i’m less disciplined. i don’t usually wear makeup because i don’t want to spend time on it. it doesn’t matter if my hair is blown by the wind. it’s hard to explain. maybe i grew up running in the fields, and the power of nature will nourish some strange things.

my family lives in a rural area under shijiazhuang, hebei province. i have an older sister. our family has seven or eight mu of land. we harvest wheat in may and corn in october. we plant some cabbage and peanuts on the remaining small plots of land. in the summer, my parents watered the wheat and spread sheets in the fields. my sister and i slept on them. in the middle of the night, they put us on a tricycle and took us home. after the corn was harvested, the corn stalks were bundled into bundles and piled up like a yurt. my friends and i would go and hollow out the stalk piles and play in them. my parents were more of a free-range parent and didn't care too much about my studies. my mother was very funny. when i couldn't finish my homework during the summer vacation, she said she would help me write it. it was not until the second year of my graduate studies that they knew what major i was studying.

family photo©great master

i chose philosophy as my major. i was confused at that time. did my best friend treat me as his best friend? was i not good enough? was i worthy of the person i had a crush on? i was very worried and tossed and turned many nights. you will be happy and sad. i made a simple attribution at that time. i thought i was too emotional, so i wanted to study philosophy and hope i could be more rational. in fact, this is a stereotype of philosophy itself, or ignorance.

sometimes we are very vague about the issues that we really care about. we feel uncomfortable, but we don’t know why we feel uncomfortable. we are trapped in our emotions. now it seems that it is a small and clear thing, but when it hurts, we just can’t tell it apart. at that time, my biggest confusion was about my original family. it took me about seven years from feeling the pressure to actually solving this problem.

when i first went to college, my father wanted to find a live-in son-in-law for my sister and buy her a house. my sister was like a son. he asked my sister if she supported me going to college. he might think that going to college was useless, but in my interpretation at the time, i thought he didn't want to waste money on me. he hoped that i would learn to make money when i was in college. i spent 300 yuan to sign up for a swimming class, and he said that i was wasting money. i felt that he didn't want to support my studies and wanted to invest all the money in my sister. so i complained about him and felt that i was treated unfairly.

i remember when i was in the third grade, my dad and i went to a friend's house. the adults were drinking in one room, and my friends and i were playing in another room. my dad was drunk, and he walked into our room and said to me, "you have to stay at home from now on." he meant to find me a live-in son-in-law. he said if you don't stay at home, i will set off a firecracker and kill myself. i remember a friend said, "your dad is so scary."

i am a highly sensitive person. when i was a child, i played in the fields. it was a very pure and happy state. i call it a natural state, like a plant. that time i suddenly felt the pressure of social culture. when i was a child, because i was smart and flexible, i was popular when i took her out. my sister was a more boring little girl. i could clearly feel that my father favored me. i couldn't express it when i was young, but i could feel that this was a conditional love. after feeling this, i actually felt insecure in my heart. the third grade was the first direct shock. so later they asked me to stay in hebei. my first choice was sichuan, and my second choice was tibet. i must not stay at home for the rest of my life. i want to go further.

when i was a kid, i grew up running in the fields, so i naturally wanted to see the outside world and pursue freedom. rebellion was incidental. my inner purpose was not to rebel, but to move the stone in front of me on the road to freedom.

but in 2019, my father died unexpectedly. in those two years, i often blamed my father because of his partiality. after his sudden death, i breathed a sigh of relief, and i was shocked by my own sigh of relief. i wondered if i was inhumane and whether i loved him or not. at that time, i was writing my graduation thesis and paralyzed myself. maybe there was a self-protection mechanism for trauma in my heart. after graduation, the pain slowly surfaced.

i remember when i was little, he carried me on his back from my grandmother's house and i fell asleep on his back. i was malnourished for a while, and he brought a cow from somewhere to milk me to make me feel better, but the cow kicked me in the chest. i thought that he asked my sister if she would let me go to college, which might just be the confusion of a middle-aged man, because my sister didn't find a suitable job after graduating from college. he wanted to keep the child at home so much, probably because he was afraid of the future and the elderly. he had the limitations of his own time, and he was a person of traditional culture.

i used to ignore these things, and only got stuck in the hurt feeling that he didn't love me, and forgot about those things in my childhood. but the pressure he put on me during my growth was also real, so i was very conflicted. sometimes i felt that he loved me, and sometimes i felt that he didn't love me. i wanted to blame him, but i felt that i shouldn't blame him.

in the first few years after he passed away, i often dreamed about him and cried when i woke up. in the dream, it seemed like our family was doing something, and he suddenly said he was leaving, but i knew in my subconscious that he was going to die.

i didn’t work for two years after i graduated with a master’s degree in 2020, also because of some pain. at that time, there was a teacher in chengdu who had completed his doctorate and taught in domestic universities for a period of time. he didn’t like that kind of academic atmosphere. he liked philosophy and education, so he returned to chengdu and set up his own research institute. at that time, i studied philosophy as a graduate student, read a lot of philosophy books, and wrote some academic papers, but i didn’t really solve my inner problems. the teacher told me, think about what you are confused about first?

the arrangement at the institute is like this: there are two days a week of classes, during which everyone reads together and raises a question that they are concerned about through the book. after discussing this person's question, we move on to the next one, and there is no need to rush the progress, so that everyone's concerns can be fully discussed.

once in class, we read some postmodern books, which said that people in culture have an independent logic that drives them to become what kind of people. i raised a question that i was concerned about: if a person does something wrong under the influence of cultural logic, should i criticize the social culture or blame him? the direction the teacher deduced at that time was that these are two independent things.

the feeling at that time was not relief, but it made me think clearly. i can blame my father and truly love him at the same time. there is no conflict. human nature has many complex and three-dimensional aspects. after thinking about this matter clearly, i felt much better and reduced a lot of moral self-blame, self-doubt, and self-criticism. i think when people fall into this kind of self-doubt, their subject is very weak, and they think every day that they are a bad person.

after i solved the problem that had troubled me for a long time, i had another dream. i dreamed that there was a road in front of the house, and there was a field across the road. my father rode a battery car and passed by that road. he said he was leaving, and i waved goodbye to him. i think it was also a reflection of my true psychological state. i had reconciled and was no longer in pain because of the inner pressure, so i didn't cry that time. didn't they say that i had a "calm madness"? i think it was related to the death of my family. now i am more open-minded. i think as long as people are alive, everything is meaningful.

if we talk about nothingness, i definitely have nothingness, because i think many things in life, good or bad, including people themselves, will disappear. i have a kind of rebellion against disappearance. i think i want to live happily and transcend the inevitable disappearance of physics.

some time ago, someone commented on a social platform and asked me, what is the meaning? i replied to him at that time that everyone has their own answer, and for me, the answer is the moment. every moment of happiness makes me feel that life is valuable. happiness is not eternal, and unhappiness is not eternal either. if they cancel each other out, life is zero. but even if everything will disappear, i still want to make myself happier.

a few days ago, someone commented on a social media platform that a great player rides a motorcycle, has a boyfriend who is in a band, and studies philosophy, so her family must not be poor and she must be a second-generation rich. at that time, i thought that it is said that poverty limits the imagination of the lives of rich people, and i found that it is difficult for people to imagine the life of a poor person like me.

before the show, i had received less than 20 commercial performances. i never made any money doing this (talk show), and i even lost 5,000 yuan. i paid for some competitions and workshops at my own expense. there was a three-round competition, and the travel expenses were more than 3,000 yuan. the top three in the finals received prize money, and the third place was 2,000 yuan. i thought that if i was lucky, i would lose less than 1,000 yuan, but in the end, i didn't.

i am living an ideal life now, i wish i had more money (laughs). i will schedule more performances in the future, because the popularity may fade soon. i want to make money to pay off my debts first, i don't want to be on a show and not even earn enough to pay off my debts (laughs). after paying off my debts, i also want to buy commercial insurance for my mother, because i think the insurance coverage in rural areas is not enough.

i don’t have any social insurance or housing fund, and i haven’t paid any social security. during the two years i was studying at the institute, i basically lived by borrowing money from friends. i said on the show, “if you can’t pay it back in the next two years, lend it to me when you have spare money.” this is true. many friends are very nice and will lend me money, telling me not to rush to pay it back and spend it first. yesterday, my childhood friend sent me a wechat message saying that we will also be childhood friends of celebrities in the future (laughs). she also told me that if i really have difficulties in life, i can tell her. we haven’t been in touch for a long time, and we didn’t go to junior high school and high school together. many people also watched the show and sent me messages. she was the only one who noticed that i borrowed money, and i felt very touched.

my motorcycles are not second-hand, but fourth-hand. in march this year, i passed the motorcycle driver's license test. at that time, i wrote an article on my wechat public account, "a motorcycle taxi driver's job information", in which i said that i wanted a motorcycle so that i could do some copywriting or course design work, and i welcome friends to recommend it. as a result, a friend bought my philosophy course. eight thousand yuan, 45 times, is what i wrote in the joke. of course, it was exaggerated in the joke, but the unit price was about the same, and he really took it three times and didn't come back. that's how i got my own motorcycle.

at that time, i had the idea of ​​driving a motorcycle taxi, but i didn't dare to really do it. i thought that carrying people was dangerous and i had to be responsible for others, so i wanted to register as an errand runner first. as a result, i stopped halfway through the registration because i was stuck at the exam level. there were too many questions. later, i practiced with friends around me. sometimes i would take them somewhere and they would treat me to a meal. it was a very basic and ancient way of doing business. as a result, at the end of the year, my boyfriend crashed the motorcycle and left it in the repair shop. he had no money to pay for the repairs, so he redeemed it in april or may this year.

my boyfriend and i met in a cultural space. there are many such places in chengdu, which hold movie viewings and book readings. i met him at a music jam event. we were both off work, so we hung out together. we met at noon after getting up and had a meal together. we were so poor that we couldn't even afford mcdonald's, so we would go out for a rice bowl, attend some free activities, or just wander around the streets and chat.

there are all kinds of things in our house, such as alarm clocks, magazines, sofas, hats, plants, pots and pans, computer chairs, etc. many of them were picked up or given by friends when they moved, and some were second-hand. in may, a friend picked up a yellow budgie, which was about one and a half months old at the time. he has a dog at home, and the dog will chase the budgie, so he asked me if i wanted it. the day before he asked me, a friend came to my house and said that you have a lot of plants. my boyfriend replied that if we get some birds, our house will be a flower and bird market. as a result, the birds came the next day. later, i was worried that it would be too lonely for the bird to be alone, so i bought two lovebirds. budgies have a higher iq than lovebirds and are more interactive. i heard that budgies are easier to learn to talk. one day, i played "hello" for it for an hour, and i was tired of listening to it, so i gave up this business.

now they are really living a better life. the cage door is always open. after getting up in the morning, they go to the balcony to play and chew the flowers on the balcony. when it is a little hot at noon, they go back to the cage to take a nap. after waking up, they go to the balcony to play again and come back to sleep at night. it knows that the cage is its home. now if you stretch your hand over, the budgie will take your hand. the other two are not so interactive. they play happily by themselves and stick together every day. i often observe them when they are dazed, when they are very curious, when they are playing, and when they talk in their sleep and chirp all the time. i think they are very cute and it makes me happy to see them.

most of the plants in my house were brought back by my friends who were unable to move. there are monstera and morning glory given by friends. there is also one that i planted from seeds. the seedlings that grew look a bit like watermelons and were eaten by parrots. my current living conditions are quite ideal, just like the leaves of monstera, which are curled when they first grow out and then stretch out a little bit later.

i really like nature, it seems to be able to use it to describe my life situation. i haven't worked for four years, and i have achieved nothing in these four years, nothing in the secular sense, but i think i am pretty good. you asked if a life with unstable income will make you feel insecure? i once stepped on the wind outlet when i was in college, and i earned 100,000 yuan in four months, but my inner problems were not solved at that time, so i was not happy. later, i always felt that material abundance and inner happiness are not necessarily related. in the past few years, i have not been socialized in that sense, and i have not learned the so-called human relationships and social rules, but with this sense of socialization, i can communicate with people in a friendly and relaxed manner, and build trust and connection with others. in the past few years, i have been taking root downwards, and it is difficult to die after taking root. even if the leaves are cut off, they will grow again. (source: tencent news)