A character created by the author and cultural critic Lu Xun in 1919, Chinese schoolchildren learn that Kong Yiji was a pedantic man of letters who stubbornly clung to tradition and failed to adapt to the times.
And yet we rarely speak with any degree of clarity or sincerity — out of fear of retribution, a dread of vulnerability, a pessimism as to the chances of being understood or perhaps stubbornly ingrained good manners.
They don't care about the motion of tectonic plates, so they can break the crust to create volcanoes in the middle of nowhere that stubbornly stay active as the crust shifts around them.
But under the surface, they all reflect his obsession with how people process the past — what they stubbornly hold on to, unwittingly forget and willingly distort.
He even wondered fleetingly what would happen if he simply refused to get off, but remained stubbornly sitting there until the first of September, when it would take him back to Hogwarts.