Sick Boy[s] Paddle Club↓

Memorial to the Ordinary

SnowcoveredCrow 雪背乌鸦

Translated by: Sophie Feng

1. The Death

An ordinary man died last night.

No sudden disaster. No major illness. A young man living alone lay in his own bed and died peacefully.

How ordinary was he?

He turned off his 6:00 alarm to sleep for another half hour in the morning, then finally woke up at 6:38. Breakfast was a sandwich. He made it himself: two pieces of bread, tomato, fried egg, and sausage slices, slathered with way too much ketchup and mayonnaise. When he bit into it, all the fillings slipped out, smearing sauce all over his hands.

He made it to work just in time despite a traffic jam on his way, so no one noticed him. He immediately began to work once seated. Some of the tasks from yesterday had bled into today. When a colleague brought him a new assignment, he was still a bit away from finishing yesterday's leftovers. The colleague handing it over with a smiling face had just won "Employee of the Month". Such honors were never for this man, whose performance was always mediocre, right in the middle of the pack.

He spoke exactly three times that whole day: to the cafeteria worker at lunch, to the colleague who gave him the assignment, and to a friendly desk neighbor to crack a few casual jokes. For the rest of the day, he kept silent.

By the end of the day, he still had a little undone, and his neck ached badly.

Finally, it was time to go home and eat dinner. He took frozen rice from days ago out of the fridge and boiled it into congee, alongside yesterday's leftover dishes re-fried into a "new" dish. After he stuffed them into his stomach, he went to bed shortly before 11:00 PM. He rarely dreamed.

That was the day before he died.

2. The Memorial

No one ever pays mind to a life ending in the city. But this time, people abruptly built a memorial for him, simply because he was ordinary. He was too ordinary; it seemed impossible for anyone to be ordinary to such an extreme degree.

And so, they built a memorial for this utterly unremarkable man.

The venue didn't take up much space, and the interior was simple—even crude—with barely a handful of items inside that looked like things you could find anywhere: the documents he left behind at the office, his unfinished ketchup, his performance reports, and the leftover works from before he died, all cataloged in a list hanging on the wall.

These things were what the living called a "memorial."

His distant family came to mourn, his friends came here to wipe away tears, and even his colleagues and his boss came to bow their heads and sigh. They found it helpless, sad, but somewhat fascinating.

If this were to come to the public's attention, people would find it bizarre. For the man this memorial honored never received so many sighs while alive, he had no reason to be memorialized either—he was "too ordinary," and the memorial itself seemed almost meaningless. The only praiseworthy thing about this little building——it exhibited what it said: this was truly a Memorial to the Ordinary.

Just like that, a recently hired colleague visiting the memorial let out a hollow sigh and suddenly spoke: "What was his name again? It was... something like...?"

3. The Tombstone

If they didn't erect a stone for him, it would probably take no more than two or three years before nobody knew what this hall was even for.

His monument was placed in the center of the memorial the day after it was completed. Chiseled from stone, his name was carved tiny in the upper-left corner. Dominating the dead center were a few massive words:

"THE ORDINARY MAN"

This was his tombstone.

The visitors had something new to look at. Hundreds crowded in dense layers around the crude stone, pointing and murmuring with curiosity, judging, critiquing. Strangers and friends whispered into each other's ears, as sighs and snickers rose time to time from among those rows of black-haired heads.

Those large words radiated a chaotic, silent light under everyone's gaze. It completely overshadowed his small, real name in the corner.

The crowd strained their necks to look at those words, staring at that object like a nest of newborn babies. Strangely, though the stone was made of no fine material and its craftsmanship was quite crude, its surface seemed extraordinarily smooth. Besides the carved words, everyone could see the faces reflected on it, including their own.

4. A Thief, the Street Musician

The Memorial to the Ordinary was no different from a convenience kiosk on the street corner. After a few days, the traffic of visitors stabilized—neither too much nor too little, lukewarm and mediocre, just like the life of the man it honored.

Most visitors maintained a polite restraint, wandering around, pursing their lips, or rubbing their temples. Their eyes revealed either immense curiosity or a feigned, artistic pity. At most, they whispered secrets. Within ten minutes, in a harmonious silence and without interfering with one another, they could thoroughly explore this tiny memorial inside out.

Until one day, a street musician arrived.

Carrying a beat-up guitar on his back, he went straight to the tombstone in the center of the room, dropped himself to the ground, carefully took out his instrument, and began to sing while leaning against the stone. At first, he merely mumbled fragmented words. His guitar hesitated as if a string were about to snap. The remaining visitors only cast a few surprised glances as they passed by, undisturbed and with no grounds to stop him.

"Look, isn't that the guy who plays in the square...?" someone muttered as they passed him. "He’s always been a bit crazy, making a fool of himself in the square. Who knew he’d carry his madness all the way here..." Her companion snickered behind her hand, nudging her to leave, her eyes flashing with a look of pity.

Most visitors didn’t comment at all. He was just an ordinary street musician, after all.

However, he gradually escalated his performance, throwing all caution to the wind. His throat slowly tore open to a high pitch, and his hands flew frantically across the strings. The noise from his voice and guitar began to ferment and explode within this confined space. He sang until his throat was raw, as if he were shouting to the whole world.

Consequently, he finally caught people's attention. All the visitors in the hall furrowed their brows and quickened their steps, wanting nothing more than to hurriedly finish looking around this place and leave.

The musician didn’t care in the slightest. He had let go completely. His music and singing turned into wild roars and sobs, looking as though he was about to charge into the crowd and violently cleave into people's brains. At last, the audience could take no more.

"How can someone like this come in here...!" someone spat, flinging their arm out.

"Yeah, what an insolent lunatic!" another person yelled, raising a fist.

More and more people converged around the tombstone, curses erupting in the center of the memorial. Yet the musician sat calmly in the eye of the storm, playing and singing, spitting verses stuffed into the melody.

"What on earth is he singing?" someone fumed in anger. "Kick him out, fast!"

"Throw him out!"

The singer was forced to stop. His guitar was slammed heavily onto the ground amid the angry shouts, and he was hoisted up by two security guards, just about to be dragged out. He had to shout. "This is the stuff I found when I sneaked into his house! The things he wrote... these short poems! These things belong in this memorial... I’m just singing them out loud! Listen... these are the poems of an ordinary person, they're mine, yours, everyone’s poems!"

"What raving nonsense! Absolutely ridiculous. Take him out quickly!"

"Gosh, he stole things! He's a thief! Drag him away!"

Amid the echoing shouts to grab him away, the musician, like a dog with a broken leg, was hauled out of the memorial, still defiantly screaming out lyrics.

The crowd eventually erupted under the noise. They scattered in all directions, covering their ears, steps flying fast.

5. The "Poet" and the Resignation

The farce of the street musician resulted in people discovering that the ordinary man actually had some content worth displaying in the memorial. Specialized personnel were dispatched to his home, where they retrieved all his works and brought them to the memorial hall. Among them was a vast collection of what were called "manuscripts of poetry"—the very lyrics the musician had performed that day.

The entire process went smoothly. It seemed so open that he didn't require any locks; the only minor obstacle people encountered was a small cabinet in his bedroom, which was secured with a nylon rope chain lock. However, this kind of makeshift chain was easy to break. With a snip of the rope, the contents spilled out: a collection of tattered notebooks containing his works from his childhood and youth.

The creator of the memorial hall saw a new content to attract tourists. Raising his eyebrows, he and his colleagues tore out every single page of the ordinary man’s work and pasted them all over the walls. The originally drab gray walls suddenly looked as if they had been painted with a layer of black-and-white ink.

The number of people visiting the memorial hall swelled once again.

People began to enthusiastically critique the ordinary man’s works.

"Look at these arrogant words!"

"I could never write stuff like this. Unrealistic, either too pessimistic or too conceited. Completely lacking an accurate sense of self. He was just an ordinary man! How dumb!"

"He probably didn't expect he'd live an ordinary life forever... But then again, we seem to be ordinary people too. Who hasn't been arrogant once in their life? How is he any different from us?"

"...Hey, look at this line, it actually seems to mean something."

"I can write stuff like this too."

People stood in the position of gods, observing a naked little infant, looking down with a mix of "fondness" and "scrutiny." They cast their gazes outward, reaching out two fingers to point at the sheets of paper, smudging the black ink until it blurred. This piece was too flavorless, that piece was too frivolous, this other piece seemed a bit too profound. More importantly, "we can write stuff like this too." Aside from genuine poets and writers, any random person could have penned them. These were poems and articles ordinary to the absolute core; any ordinary person could have been their author.

The indignant voices of the people grew strangely loud. We can produce the exact same content, yet he gets so much appreciation simply because he died!

The chairman found these voices weird. But he simply ignored them.

He was the chairman of the local area's most promising company, having achieved enviable success before even reaching his forties: a career at its absolute peak with widespread praise. Almost everyone, from rivals competing with him on equal footing to ordinary citizens tightening their belts just to buy their daily breakfast, could praise his various achievements and closely followed his and his company’s development.

The chairman seemed light-years away from an ordinary man, so who would have thought that he, too, would visit the Memorial to the Ordinary?

"How wonderful... how beautifully this little poem is written," he said, lightly touching the ink on the paper, afraid to press too hard on the already smudged writing. "I used to write things like this when I was young." He reminisced. "Now it's been so long since I've spent any energy on this."

"I say, sir, you are already a billionaire now," his companion frowned, his tone filled with bewilderment. "Why do you still care about a word or two?"

"No. I am just an ordinary person. I might prefer to care about 'that word or two,'" the chairman replied swiftly. Without turning his head, he paced forward, his gaze locked tightly onto the words on the wall.

"Sir," his companion's brow furrowed even deeper, "why would you say that?" 

The chairman acted as if he hadn't heard a thing. In response to his companion's question, he squatted down, touching a small scrap of paper in the corner, and let out a profound sigh.

"This is introduced as a work from his youth. It’s truly magnificent." He looked at it with great cherish, exactly like a connoisseur appreciating a rare treasure, or like someone caressing his own soul. "...You know, I feel that essentially, there is almost no difference between him and me. It's just that he and I are ultimately not shared one body. We are distinct yet identical." He said. "I, too, am an ordinary person. I even feel that this memorial hall is actually memorializing me."

"Sir..." The companion stared at the deeply absorbed man sighing before him. His brow slowly unfurled, and after a long silence, he stood up and tugged at the corner of his expensive suit jacket, which had creased from bending over.

The next day was heavily overcast. Thick clouds covered the earth airtight, making it suffocatingly hot. The afternoon sun seared through, making the heat even more unbearable. The streets were filled with pedestrians—some playing on their phones, others waving fans—flowing slowly down the street like thick asphalt.

Suddenly, the city’s large advertising screens blared to life. Everyone halted their steps and cast their eyes toward the screens.

"Isn't that the insanely successful chairman?"

On screen, the man wore a tracksuit and sat on a sofa, with a can of soda and half a portion of fried rice visible in the frame. If his face and voice weren't so universally recognized, this person could have been almost any woman's lazy husband.

"Hello to all my friends who have been caring about me."

The corners of the citizens' mouths curled up slightly, their eyes revealing looks of yarning

"Yesterday, I went to visit the Memorial to the Ordinary. Inside, I discovered a fascinating piece of work from the youth of that deceased poet—I am willing to call him a poet. In it, he wrote: Man should exist in the form of a headwind."

Someone's face dropped. "That ordinary man again."

"The exact same thought occurred to me when I was in high school. Back then, I believed that a person should be true to their own heart, living freely and unrestrained. But now, I am swept up in fame, fortune, and glory. Is this truly what I craved?"

The crowd fell silent, lifting their heads as they waited for the chairman's next words.

"His work felt like pulling out a younger version of myself, forcing the current me onto the execution block to demand: What do I really want? To submit to the world, go with the flow, be pushed onto a divine pedestal by money and status—is that what I need?" He asked the world. "Have I unknowingly betrayed my heart long ago? I possess everything that people envy, all the medals that define success... yet I abandoned myself. Did I succeed? Did I fail?"

A brief hush. The fruit-selling vendor put down the apple in her hand, the old man playing chess took a sip of tea, and the screenager girl locked her screen.

"His work feels like it could be my work too. I suddenly realize how similar I am to him—or rather, how similar I am to any person in this world. We can resonate..." He continued. "I have been proud, but I suddenly understand: I am also an ordinary person. We are all the same. The 'chairman of the most promising company' is what's special; it doesn't have much to do with me as a person."

The chairman smiled, grabbed the soda can, and took a sip.

"...Therefore, I have decided to go seek my original heart. I am going to become a completely ordinary person again..."

The crowd gasped, as if foreseeing what came next. In the crowd, the companion who had visited the memorial with him the day before took off his glasses, sighed repeatedly as he wiped away the tears from the corner of his eyes, and stripped off the suit jacket he had worn yesterday.

"I resign." The chairman announced.

With those final words, the screen went black.

6. The "Carnival"

The chairman’s resignation shocked the entire city. This sudden piece of news occupied the headlines of newspapers, television, and radio broadcasts; even casual conversations began with it.

"The chairman resigned! Did he really?!"

"How could this happen? It’s so sudden!"

"Just because of some ordinary person and his writing... he resigned?!"

Talk of this sort spread everywhere, and naturally, it didn't miss the workplace where the ordinary man had worked during his lifetime.

"Who would’ve thought this guy had so much power that he could shatter someone so successful?"

"He couldn't even have imagined it when he wrote those things, let alone us."

His colleagues gathered around that empty desk, chattering animatedly.

However, the discussion was interrupted by the slamming open of a door. The ordinary man’s friend pushed through the crowd, slamming several cans of beer onto the ordinary man’s desk. He popped one open and drank straight from the can.

"You people feel absolutely nothing."

"He’s not like us!" someone in the crowd sneered. "We don’t engage in that kind of self-indulgent whining or pretend to be deep, and we certainly can’t move people like that!"

"Suit yourselves. May none of you ever end up in a memorial," the friend said without looking at them. He stared at the empty seat beside him, pouring beer onto it and the chair.

The ordinary man had sat here, quiet, spending most of his day working, occasionally leaning over to chat, joining group discussions.

Sometimes he would stick a couple of post-its onto his computer: little encouragements he wrote himself, or quotes gathered from god-knows-where. But the notes never lasted long. He would tear them off in frustration, throwing the scraps into the trash can, only to stick new ones on a few days later, full of hope again.

On the partition to his left, he had taped two planning sheets: one for spiritual discipline, and one for daily conduct. They stayed up a long time, but he never once executed them properly, not even the day before he died.

The ordinary man sometimes posted his writing online, occasionally receiving sincere praise and messages. He socialized, touching the crowd yet staying apart, finally disappearing into it forever. No one ever fawned over him; he was never surrounded by friends.

No one could say for sure if the ordinary man was lonely.

But now, he was boisterously surrounded by many colleagues, who watched silently as his friend drank at his desk. A restless chill spread between them.

After a long silence, someone pulled a can of beer out of the bag. "You know what? I think the one who died was actually me. A man like that—it could be me, perfectly."

Following that, even more people reached into the bag to grab a beer. "We seem to be completely identical. Everyone is special, but we are also ordinary people of the exact same mold."

The ordinary man’s friend put down the beer can in his hand, burst into tears, and wailed aloud. Some opened their mouths to comfort him, but their own tear-filled eyes stopped them. At last, the friend stood in the center of the crowd, cracked open a new can of beer, and poured all of it onto the ordinary man’s desk. "Everyone, a toast to my departed friend. For him, this is the carnival of the ordinary!"

"To us!"

The tightly constrained crowd suddenly erupted. Everyone threw their alcohol at one another, and those who didn't get a beer splashed the drinks from their bottles and the warm herbal tea from their vacuum flasks. Neatly dressed men and women, employees, managers, and visiting clients—all turned into drenched sparrows together, turning into ordinary people together.

They spilled into the streets, marching to the memorial, splashing beer onto his tombstone. Visitors inside froze, watching the sudden crowd embrace in the downpour, hearing them roar in unison. 

"This is the carnival of the ordinary!"

7. Memorial to the Ordinary

The world erupted.

The tombstone was splashed until it gleamed even brighter. Every single person who passed in front of it saw their own face reflected clearly, displayed inside the hall to be memorialized alongside the two words in the center of the stone: "ORDINARY MAN".

People began to weep bitterly. This memorial hall was memorialized for every ordinary person. He doesn't possess a name. He's no one; he's everyone. He was an ordinary man like everyone else, and everyone else was just like him. We all live similar lives, harbor similar thoughts, can be as close as brothers, and can embrace fiercely, because we are all "ordinary people."

Those visiting, those passing by, those maintaining order, and those running the memorial hall—every single one of them joined the carnival. They hugged each other tightly, embracing the tombstone in the center of the venue. To hug them was to hug a tangible version of their own soul.

The Memorial to the Ordinary collected the heart of every human being.

SnowcoveredCrow

SnowcoveredCrow, an undergraduate currently battling a severe case of graduation anxiety, and therefore sincerely wishing to be an actual bird. The absolute ideal life would be growing a coat of sleek black feathers, soaring triumphantly through the sky, dropping nuts all over the streets, and randomly pecking at cats' behinds.