Some thoughts on my recent chat with the webmaster of Gengwen Web.

　　Ten years ago, I had just come into contact with online literature not long before. At that time, I was still an ignorant middle school student. After reading two novels, I resolved to write an immortal masterpiece and become a god with one book. But reality would not put on a show with me. Every time I wrote, I would 'flop' (an early online literature industry term, derived from the Cantonese 'puk gai', meaning the work had no popularity and failed).
　　At the time, I was not only interested in writing online novels, but also interested in building websites. I thought being able to build a website of my own was a very cool thing. But as a middle school student at that time, I had not dabbled much in computer knowledge; I was only at the level of opening 4399 to play games.
　　So, driven by curiosity, I clicked on 'Fanke Website Builder', registered an account, built my first website, and had a lot of fun with it. Although the website looked very rough, and none of the domain name, server, or program was my own, the advantage was that I could make changes to the website like building blocks without any coding foundation, so I enjoyed it greatly.
　　Not long after, I came across Hostinger's free virtual hosting and the free open-source forum program Discuz! X. This combination let me, who had zero coding foundation at the time, come into contact with real code in practice for the first time (though I later found that PHP was merely one of the easiest programming languages to understand). I began trying to modify some small details at the code level, but a single detail often took a long time to change. Back then, modifying code was especially troublesome. Hostinger's web-based file manager had very slow network speeds, and because it was free virtual hosting, the steps to modify code were especially cumbersome: I had to first download the source file, open it with Notepad, modify it there, save it, and then re-upload it to overwrite the original.
　　During the time I was playing with Dz, I met quite a few author friends. Although many years have passed, when faced with the problem of surviving in reality, everyone unanimously chose to abandon their (online literature) pits. Among these author friends was Zeng Xiaojie (online name), the webmaster of Gengwen Network. At that time, Zeng Xiaojie was promoting his Gengwen Network in author groups. Out of curiosity, I visited the Gengwen Network website. Perhaps because I had long been tinkering with Dz, I was quite familiar with this program, and for the first time I discovered that forum programs could also be used this way: the homepage could imitate those novel websites and add recommendation slots for novel authors' works (in fact, at that time many flop authors like me were eager for their works to be featured in recommendation slots; this vanity almost obscured the essence of recommendation slots—traffic exposure on the homepage). This behavior was undoubtedly self-entertainment, but I enjoyed it endlessly.
　　After finishing repairing THENAME.CN last night, I suddenly remembered the previous Gengming Network. With curiosity about the unknown, I entered its website and pressed Enter, only to find that what appeared before my eyes was a pornographic website.
　　To be honest, this made me feel somewhat disappointed. I had originally thought that even if Gengwen Network was gone, the domain name would still be in the webmaster's hands, right? So I went to check the domain's WHOIS information and found that the domain had been registered last year. This meant that Gengwen Network's domain name had been registered by someone else and was being used for a pornographic website.
　　I was a bit worried, so I first went to an ICP filing query website to check the filing information for Gengwen Network's domain name. After finding that it could not be found, I breathed a sigh of relief.
　　Then I contacted Zeng Xiaojie on QQ. So many years had passed, and I did not know whether he still used QQ.
　　Around 10:30 p.m., I said hello. About half an hour later, he replied, and then we started chatting.

　　To be honest, hearing him say that, I was not surprised at all. After all, so many years had passed; the young man who had once been full of passion was now bent over by the responsibilities of reality. Everyone unanimously buried their former dreams and crawled forward toward realistic goals.

　　When I think of my childhood dreams, I still feel a bit dazed. As a child, I wanted to become a police officer who eliminated violence and maintained public order, an astronaut carrying humanity's dreams, or a farmer who could let all humanity have enough to eat. The only thing I never thought of becoming was a teacher. In fact, my original intention for becoming a teacher was very simple: I was influenced by my high school Chinese teacher, so I just went and did it.
　　Of course, there was a certain selfish motive in my becoming a teacher. Compared with other professions, teachers have certain holidays. My thought was that through these holidays, I could continuously improve myself while persisting in my hobbies.
　　However, becoming a teacher now comes at no small cost. Under the nationwide trend of declining newborn population, the ratio of primary and secondary school teachers to students is reversing, showing a pattern of 'more teachers and fewer students.' Many places are laying off teachers who are not on the official payroll, which means that if you don't move up, one day this cleaver will fall on your own head. To cope with this trend, continuing to improve one's academic qualifications and competitiveness, and following the students upward, is also a helpless choice.