I’ve heard people say that overpopulation ruined life, and that sky-high housing prices ruined love. But really, population and housing prices are no more than a form of economic “conquest” — much like a colonizer’s conquest of a colonized people. Yet as the conquered, the local people still retain certain things that conquest cannot touch: ideals, convictions, traditions and customs. The real fallacy in saying that overpopulation ruined life and housing prices ruined love is this — as the conquered subjects of housing prices and population, Chinese people were not conquered by economics at all, but precisely by their own so-called ideals, convictions, and traditions.