My favorite motto in life is:

Those who have a will, things will come true; if the cauldron sinks the boat, a hundred and two Qin passes will eventually belong to Chu; If you don't fail, if you lie on the firewood and taste the courage, three thousand Yue Jia can swallow Wu.

This is the motto of Pu Songling, the father of the Cow Demon and Snake God; some people believe that this couplet was written by Jin Sheng (alias Zhengxi), a famous anti-Qing general.

When I was young, reading and studying was a process of active hard work. I always had to find some inspirational things to support myself, so that I could find a reason to persist in my dreams that I was not sure about. This passage became My motto.

This is a pair that Chinese people like. It has the perfect rhythm of Chinese poetry, and the upper and lower couplets are extremely neat. A couplet, two idioms, two allusions. Xiang Yu, the desperate man, and Gou Jian, the brave man, were both unparalleled heroes when I was young. The key is that this sentence only has thirty-four words, and it eloquently explains the perseverance and indomitable spirit of our Chinese nation, which is heroic and heart-stirring.

One summer vacation when I was in college, I met a French woman named Anna on the bus home. She spoke Mandarin better than me, an authentic Chinese, and she knew more about Chinese culture. It's very clear. I was extremely unconvinced at the time, so I told her my motto, and she finally said she didn't understand. Only then did I regain the self-confidence that I had lost during the conversation. Feeling a little proud, I instinctively muttered in dialect: Shit foreigner, you know everything? When Anna asked me what I said, I could only play dumb in embarrassment.

That time, I was talking to my mother about my childhood, and as we were talking, we talked about this motto of my youth. My mother laughed at me for being so lofty and unrealistic.

That conversation became my mother’s last scolding of me. I often think that if it could be exchanged, I would spend the rest of my life in exchange for my mother's criticism of me again.

Suddenly I realized that my motto is really useless at all. I am indeed unrealistic!