If someone argues with me in the future, he promised he wouldn't stay silent.

Tonight, while my mother was playing mahjong with her friends, they talked about being asked to find a partner for a girl in the building next door.

I know that girl; we used to go to school together often. She is two years older than me, just reaching the age where people start pressuring you to get married. But I remember she was a firm advocate of staying single.

"She doesn't even want to get married, why are you meddling in her business?" Thinking this, I interrupted their conversation. "How do you know she doesn't want to get married? If she doesn't get married, what is she going to do?" "Do what she wants to do. You people, as soon as you see someone of marriageable age, you want to set them up, acting as if the goal of life is just to get married." "What does doing what you want have to do with marriage? If a woman doesn't get married, how is she supposed to live her life?"

The three people at the mahjong table nodded in agreement simultaneously. My mother continued to flesh out the topic using my previous declaration that "raising a son is not as good as raising a dog." Even though everyone had heard it countless times, they still laughed loudly and said I really hadn't grown up.

"That's why I say you don't understand young people today. It's not like you can't live without getting married; marriage is actually the most troublesome thing." "What do you mean? You don't want to get married either? Isn't it just breaking up after dating? I didn't know you were someone so easily hurt."

As expected of a Chinese teacher, she easily extracted the key information and took the opportunity to ask what she had been wanting to ask all along.

"If you're trying to persuade me to get married, that's really duck不必." "When your father was young, he was once tricked into a sweatshop. He didn't have a penny on him and climbed over a wall in the middle of the night to escape. He walked along the main road until dawn before meeting a truck driver willing to give him a ride. When the route didn't match, he got off and kept walking. It took him two days, and by the time he got home, he could barely stand. What do you think made him walk home on an empty stomach? It was you, who was only five months old at the time. You young people today have it too good, so you think life is always easy. But how can there be so many smooth sailing things in life? When you encounter some trouble, there won't even be anyone at home with the lights on waiting for you." "Wasn't it you waiting for me when I got home the day before yesterday?" "Do you think I can wait for you forever? If you don't get married, after your father and I die, you'll be all alone. I have friends and relatives, but those are all fake. You don't care now, but when you're sixty, seventy, eighty... you'll know that life isn't that easy to live."

"That's why they call marriage 'living a life' (过日子)," Aunt Zhang chimed in from the side, and everyone at the table nodded again.

"As the idiom says, 'help each other in humble circumstances' (相濡以沫). When one person feels like they can't get over a hurdle, two people can lend a hand and get through it. When your uncle and I were young, we slept in the plaza and ate steamed buns, but we didn't feel it was bitter; we just felt that as long as we were together, we could keep living." Aunt Li always likes to talk about her family's history of building their fortune.

"But you all were just lucky to find the right person. I just feel like there's no one suitable right now. I don't mean the 'well-matched in social status' kind of suitable that you talk about when introducing people; if I were to marry the people around me, it just wouldn't be right."

"How can there be so many 'suitable' people? People aren't dolls. Environments change, personalities change, and you probably wouldn't even appreciate the non-mainstream stuff you liked in middle school anymore. Expecting to meet someone and be set for life is a childish idea. As long as the part that doesn't change during the process of change is acceptable, then that is 'suitable.' So, besides being well-matched, didn't I also say 'as long as their nature isn't bad'?"

"But I just don't like them. You think we are too fragile, and you also think of marriage as too beautiful. I just feel that marriage is very oppressive; it's a process of turning yourself into someone else. From then on, I feel like I'm being restrained."

Grandma Liu laughed out loud and pushed her tiles down, "Hu! I've understood half of it now. This child thinks too much and has lived too little." Aunt Li nodded, "Experience these things more yourself, and you'll figure it out in a few years."

"The problem is that time doesn't wait for you. People study for too long nowadays. Even if you don't go to grad school, you're over twenty when you graduate. There's no time to wait for you to think it through slowly. By the time you think it through and want to find someone to marry in your thirties, no one will pay any attention to you."

Fortunately, this is a dialogue I made up to share this song, so I don't have to worry about leaving either side speechless if it continues.