2025-10-17
54 分钟This is The Guardian.
I have to do it.
Why one of the world's most brilliant AI scientists left the US for China by Chang Che,
read by Vincent Lai.
By the time Song Chunzhu was six years old, he had encountered death more times than he could count.
Or so it felt.
This was the early 1970s, the waning years of the Cultural Revolution,
and his father ran a village supply store in rural China.
There was little to do beyond till the fields and study Mao Zedong at home,
and so the shop became a refuge where people could rest, recharge, and share tales.
Zhu grew up in that shop, absorbing a lifetime's worth of tragedies.
A family friend lost in a car crash,
a relative from an untreated illness, stories of suicide or starvation.
That was really tough, Zhu recalled recently.
People were so poor.
The young Zhu became obsessed with what people left behind after they died.
One day he came across a book that contained his family genealogy.
When he asked the bookkeeper why it included his ancestors' dates of birth and death,
but nothing about their lives,
the man told him, matter of factly, that they were peasants, so there was nothing worth recording.