Another Murder

A few days ago I finally watched Miyazaki’s 2009 film Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea (崖の上のポニョ), in which the little mermaid Ponyo and the boy Sosuke end up together and live happily ever after. I hadn’t even had the chance to remark on how naively fairy-tale-like the film’s ending felt before reality hastily handed me a horrifying piece of news. That’s right – fairy tales are usually wonderfully, foolishly naive, while reality is so often dark and cold.

Nine days ago, a murder happened at Sichuan University. Zeng Shijie, an undergraduate in the Information Resource Management program, class of 2008, in the School of Public Administration, killed a female student and injured two male students by Mingyuan Lake on the Jiang’an campus. At the time, our class advisor gave us some so-called ideological education during a political theory class, telling us the school would resolve the matter satisfactorily. But after a few days, there was no follow-up at all, and no one seemed to care whether things had been swept under the rug. Then, on the night of the 7th, two male undergraduates from the same class and same dorm room in the School of Economics, class of 2008, got into an argument; one of them, surnamed Chen, used a fruit knife to injure the right carotid artery of the other, surnamed Wang, and the victim eventually died from blood loss despite emergency treatment. (original article).

Incidents like this keep happening, and they leave us with essentially two possible reactions: shock, or numbness. Of course, maybe there’s a third – a kind of morbid excitement. Many people place the blame on the perpetrator’s “criminal psychology” or “reckless behavior,” but I think there’s no longer much point in assigning responsibility – first, if psychological issues were never addressed, the school bears the greatest dereliction of duty; second, anyone capable of an act like this has already departed from the realm of norms, and their nature and character can’t simply be dissolved through “understanding,” because what drives them comes from the most primal emotion at the bottom of the human heart – fear. Of course, I admit this view of mine may be overly harsh and not without its own bias.

Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea, as always, gives everyone a fairy-tale-style happy ending. The red-haired woman, who symbolizes the boundless power of the sea, delivers everyone from suffering like a saint. Meanwhile, in The Little Mermaid, the beautiful mermaid princess can only let her body dissolve into sea foam, her corpse floating up beneath the crisp morning sunlight, wringing more than a few tears from us.