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学习在哈佛大学 Hongloumeng at Harvard In the course of my life, there has always been a constant battle between what I should do and what I want to do. In college, this tension played out in the form of courses I should take and courses I wanted to take, and by extension, the major I should study and the major I wanted to study. Should, meaning what was impressed upon me by people, social and environmental influences and pressures. Want, meaning what I desired to do based on an instinctive and organic inclination. During my freshman year of college, I compiled an exhaustive list of classes I should take, including economics, political science and other practical social sciences. However, every time I flipped through the course catalogue, I was drawn to literature, history, foreign language and all sorts of humanities courses. Being uncertain of my own convictions and inclined to listen to superior authorities, I allowed the voices of other people to tell me that these courses were “useless” and “extravagant”. What could I do with a course in 19th century British literature, really? Between exhausting sessions of selecting my practical courses, I visited the East Asian Studies section. I wanted to take nearly every course in the department. “Society and Culture of Late Imperial China”? Yes. “East Asian Cinema”? Yes. “Hongloumeng Seminar”? As soon as I saw this seminar for freshmen, I knew I needed take it, even if I had to add it as a fifth class. I had grown up with the English version of this classic novel in such a way that this book was the single strongest literary influence on my emotional life. I could repeat verbatim the exact dishes served at Jia family meals. I could tell you the convoluted family relationships, describe each and every maid’s personality. It was nearly obsessive. I knew the novel from front to end in terms of plot and story but had never had the opportunity to study it from an academic perspective. I assumed that everyone would want to ta