I Have No Dream

There was once an elder who told me,

“Young people today have no dreams.”

He was a person of high social standing and considerable means. He once asked me,

“What is your dream?”

He often said that young people today were afraid to dream.

I kept thinking about it afterward.

What would my dream be?

And am I brave enough to dream?

​

________________________________________

This elder had grown up in a privileged environment, with many resources at his disposal.

Of course he could afford to dream. And he had the means to turn his dreams into reality.

But what about me?

I want to open a hairpin museum.

That is a dream.

But how could I possibly make it happen?

________________________________________

I am just an ordinary person paid by salary every month.

In my spare time, I do the things I love. I research hairpins, search for them, collect them, travel to the places where they once existed, and try to write down the stories I encounter along the way.

I don't have a museum.

In fact, I don't even have a proper place to preserve these things.

I have an old, dilapidated house.

Whenever the rainy season comes, water pours into it again and again.

And my collection is kept in that old house.

Because, for now, it is the only place I can offer them.

I know it is not a suitable place for preserving a collection.

I have always wanted to renovate the house, but doing so would require a great deal of money.

If I really started the renovation, I might have to take on another ten or even twenty years of renovation loans—especially since I have not yet finished paying off the mortgage on the house itself.

I might still be paying for it by the time I retire.

Whenever I think about this, I ask myself:

Under these circumstances, what kind of dream can I possibly have?

________________________________________

That elder once said to me,

“Unless you win the lottery, how are you ever going to change your life?”

Eventually, I understood.

So if he ever asks me again,

“What is your dream?”

I might simply answer,

“To win the lottery.”

It sounds rather vulgar.

It sounds like the dream of an ordinary person who simply loves money.

But if I really won the lottery, I wouldn't have to worry about whether I could afford to renovate the house, or whether I would have to give up the things I want to do in order to take on another twenty years of debt.

I wouldn't have to make such painful choices between reality and my collection.

I could continue searching for the stories behind these hairpins.

I could continue to travel.

I could continue researching the stories behind them.

I could continue bringing back, one by one, the things that are slowly being forgotten.

So yes, I want to win the lottery.

Not because I particularly love money.

But because some dreams need real-world resources in order to continue.

________________________________________

Among my collection is a Manchu doll dating to around the 1930s.

She is a German-made porcelain doll dressed in an exquisitely detailed miniature version of traditional Manchu clothing.

She has qixie, the traditional Manchu platform shoes. She wears a yajin, a decorative pendant, and there is even a tiny mirror on her clothing.

Every detail of her costume is not simply decorative. It is a miniature reproduction of the actual clothing of that period.

But what amazes me most is her hair.

It was actually styled using real human hair.

She wears the hairstyle of a Manchu woman of the Qing dynasty, complete with a miniature silver-gilt and kingfisher-feather hairpin.

Today, when we can only look at old photographs to imagine how women a century ago styled their hair, dressed themselves, and lived their lives, she stands before me as a three-dimensional figure from that world.

Her clothing, shoes, hairstyle, hairpin, and even her hair are all miniature reflections of the material culture of Manchu women of that time.

I have always wanted to understand exactly how her hairstyle was constructed.

But I cannot take it apart or risk damaging her.

So, in order to learn more about her, I did something rather unusual:

I took her to have an X-ray.

I hoped that the X-ray images might reveal more about how she was constructed.

To me, she is almost like a living fossil left behind by history.

That is why she means so much to me.

Someone once wanted to buy her from me. I can ask for quite a good money.

But I didn't even consider of it.

I know that she is more than a collectible doll.

She is a piece of “living” archaeological and research material.

 

 

________________________________________

But what if one day I really do begin renovating my old house?

What if I really take on twenty years of renovation debt?

I don't know.

I don't know whether, by then, I would still have the ability to keep her with me.

That is the cruelest part of having a dream.

Sometimes it isn't about whether you love something, your passionate, or if you work hard enough.

Reality simply asks you:

Can you afford it?

________________________________________

So, do I have a dream?

I do.

But am I brave enough to pursue it?

I want to win the lottery.

Not because I love money.

But because I know that pursuing a dream requires real-world resources to support it.

I could give that elder a very grand answer:

“I want to open a hairpin museum.”

But after saying it, I might have to turn away and quietly nurse the wound inside me.

Because I don't know how to make it happen.

With my current work, income, and circumstances, it really is only a dream.

A dream for which I still cannot see a practical way forward.

________________________________________

Sometimes I even wonder:

If I stopped dreaming, would it hurt less?

If I never said it out loud, could I pretend it didn't exist?

If I had never spoken of it,

would I no longer have to face the enormous distance between the dream and reality?

But I have not given up.

I simply have not given my dream a concrete form.

I have not given it a deadline.

What I can do now is give everything I have to doing the things that are within my reach, and doing them as well as I possibly can.

Continue collecting, researching, traveling and writing down these stories.

Keep doing what I can afroad.

Continue leaving behind the stories of hairpins that were once worn by someone, once accompanied someone through their life, and then slowly disappeared from history.

Perhaps one day, I will find a way to make that unspoken dream come true.

For now, I want to see—

what kind of door the heavens will open for me.

So, if someone asks me again,

“What is your dream?”

I will smile and say,

“I want to win the lottery.”

But only I will know that behind that lottery ticket, there is actually a museum that does not yet exist.

And perhaps,

I can find a place where all the things I am only temporarily caring for

can finally have a place to call home and stay safe.