Objectively Speaking

　　Capable and wealthy people are always the focus of the society.

　　Capable people are usually marching ahead of others and may not be properly understood, hence causing various kinds of comments, more criticism but less support;

　　Capable people can easily succeed, thus causing both admiration and comments, more jealousy but less appreciation (only their good luck is recognized);

　　Capable people can be sought for help and attract the attention of the society, thus causing a lot of comments, more complaints but less gratitude (even though they didn't ask anyone for help, if only they were not able to help others in a satisfactory way, it's already their fault);

　　Capable people can also suffer setbacks (some even experience ups and downs many times), experiencing fully the warmth and coldness of the human world, more hurts but less helps.

　　Wealthy people are non the easier. No doubt there are cruel-hearted rich men, but it is also wrong to think that no wealthy people are kind-hearted. They are capable of devising and managing and they often need to take risks to get the chance. But who care about these?

　　Whenever a group are dining or entertaining, everyone will take it for granted that the rich should pay the bill instead of going Dutch. If the rich doesn't pay, then he'll definitely be regarded as a miser;

　　Among good friends and relatives, the rich should often help the poor, otherwise he will surely be blamed for his cruel-heartedness;

　　From the ancient times, people have been used to killing the rich to save the poor, without thinking about how the rich became rich and the poor stayed poor. The policy of “allowing some people to get rich” has balanced people's mind to some extent, but there is still a long way to go before we can get rid of “the hatred toward the wealthy”.

　　Capable people or rich people are just human, neither sages nor perfect men. They have their own faults, and they may also commit mistakes. But objectively speaking, some mistakes are forced on them, which are the expectations of the public. They are expected to do this or that, but when expectations become disappointments, they have to take the blaming. In fact, it's the public's fault to demand for perfection or counting on unrealistic expectations of the rich.

　　I encourage people to work, even though they may commit mistakes.

　　I advise those enjoying commenting to make some effort to do something for the others.

　　I hope people can make comments objectively instead of subjectively, without going to extremes, and not out of preference.

　　I also hope that the hard-working people do not care too much about what the others say, even what the others criticize. You should believe that public opinions will finally decide what's right and what's wrong. What we need is just time.

　　Translated by Zhang Baodan

　　June 25, 2004

　　北京外國語大學(xué)北戴河外語培訓(xùn)基地校長 宋遠(yuǎn)利

　　世界上總有一些人在做事，總有一些人在說事。做事的人不閑著，或者包個飯店，或者搞個買賣，或者辦個工廠，或者建個學(xué)校，或者專心科研，或者從軍從政。也許對，也許錯；也許成功，也許失敗，但很投入。他們擔(dān)著天下的風(fēng)險（并非都是忽略，大多還是敢于面對），扛著雙肩的責(zé)任，奮然前行，又戰(zhàn)戰(zhàn)兢兢，常常是在賭運、也賭命。他們沒有時間去說別人的事，也沒有精力去理會別人的事。他們抬頭看路，埋頭做事，任由別人的飛短流長。