Watching in 2024 : Various Approaches to Coexisting with Fate

Xiangzi dies believing that he simply had not worked hard enough. That is because he looks only outward. He thinks he has seen the world clearly, yet misses one crucial thing: when one only looks outward, one may see every corner of the external world and still fail to see oneself. And without that, one cannot begin to speak about the relationship between the self and its age. A protagonist lives inside events and therefore sees outward; a reader can see both the world and the self at once, and then turn inward in reflection. That is why Lu Zhishen says, “Only today do I realize who I am.” I think that is exactly the point.

The best television dramas often contain this reversal. A beautiful painting may already move us through its surface alone, but if its hidden structure and underlying ideas move us even further, then it becomes art.

The works discussed here approach fate in two broad ways: the chronicler mode and the absurdist mode.

“Blossoms Shanghai” and “The Long Season”

“Blossoms Shanghai” and “The Long Season” both belong to the chronicler tradition. In them, people are overwhelmed by the movement of history and by forces larger than themselves.

In “The Long Season,” Wang Xiang cannot understand why he, a “model worker,” is laid off, why his son becomes implicated in murder, or why no one around him seems to have figured out how to live. A single snowfall seems to last for twenty years. He never truly gets past it; instead, he keeps excavating ghosts from the past. When Shen Mo asks Wang Yang whether he believes in fate, the question hangs over everyone. Wang Xiang and Biaozi can no longer make sense of life, and so they begin to call it fate.

In “Blossoms Shanghai,” Wong Kar-wai stages a series of missed encounters. Ah Bao and the four women around him, Xuezhi, Lingzi, Miss Wang, and Lili, all pass by one another at the wrong moment. Differences in wealth, place, identity, and experience turn emotion into endless detour and misalignment. As the drama puts it, once Zhi Zhen Garden begins, the ending is already inscribed. Everything becomes “inevitable fate.” In the end, those caught in the whirlpool of fate drift apart, and each is left alone.

“Only the River Flows” and “Journey to the West (sff)”

“Only the River Flows” and “Journey to the West (sff)” belong to the absurdist tradition. Their power lies in the way unlikely events pile up until the world itself begins to feel irrational.

In “Only the River Flows,” Ma Yuan refuses to acknowledge that the madman committed murder, drifting further away from the truth. The film quotes Camus: “Humans cannot understand fate, so I disguise myself as fate. I put on that stupid and incomprehensible face of God.”

In “Journey to the West (sff),” Tang Zhijun believes that fate is guiding him toward extraterrestrials. Every coincidence appears necessary. When we stay inside the protagonist’s perspective, we too are tempted to look outward and mock figures like Kong Yiji. But as viewers, we can also recognize the very different ways these characters confront fate.

“The Long Season” is about reconciliation

A snowfall that lasts twenty years resembles a truth withheld for just as long. Like the snap in Wang Yang’s poem, distant things shatter while those nearby still know nothing.

Wang Xiang is the human counterpart to that snap. A single case traps him for two decades. At first, he believes that hard work and merit will be enough to save him from being laid off. But at the workers’ meeting the truth finally breaks through: the factory owner can dismiss or retain workers at will, and the stripping of assets was organized from above. In that moment Wang Xiang’s lifelong pride in Northeastern industry collapses. Behind the criminal mystery lies the decay of an entire industrial world.

An individual cannot resist the violence of an age. Like the impulse at the heart of “One Sentence Is Ten Thousand Sentences,” all one can do is try to seize the answer one longs for and keep moving forward. Fate cannot be conquered, but life still demands motion.

“Blossoms Shanghai” is also about reconciliation

Ah Bao can become Mr. Bao when he enters the game, but when he steps out of it he is still willing to remain Ah Bao. That composure¹ echoes the motto of “The Count of Monte Cristo”: in the face of fate, there are only two words worth keeping: wait and hope.

Absurdists always pose dilemmas without providing answers.

“Only the River Flows” is madness

Absurdism offers dilemmas, not solutions. People cannot defeat their age; that is where the road ends. Once you grasp that, you begin to understand the logic of Cthulhu. When something cannot be resolved and yet one insists on resolving it anyway, madness follows. Absurd events have no answer precisely because they lie beyond our powers of understanding.

“Journey to the West (sff)” is an awakening

At the end, the film tries to turn inward. The point seems to be that the search for extraterrestrials is finally unnecessary, because humanity itself is already miraculous. Yet the film does not make that transition entirely convincing.

The group mirrors Journey to the West itself: Tang, Sun, Sha, and Zhu traveling westward together, with Tang Zhijun seeking his own scripture in the form of aliens. On the surface he is searching for extraterrestrials; underneath, he is searching for an answer. A failed marriage, a bleak job, a life whose meaning has come loose: if human beings cannot answer these questions, perhaps aliens can. In that sense, the film is less about science fiction than about spiritual drifting.

From within the protagonist’s perspective, of course, anything still seems possible. But from outside it, we see something else: the relationship between individuals and a world they cannot fully understand. When human smallness collides with an opaque age, the word “fate” becomes a convenient cover.

Most people question fate and receive the usual answers: “there is only relative fairness, never absolute fairness”; “heroism is loving the world even after seeing it clearly”; “the world kisses me with pain, and I answer with song.” At that point, truth no longer matters very much. What matters is preserving the will to go on living.

But once one insists on understanding the relation between the individual and the historical tide, those answers no longer suffice[^1]. Then only two roads remain: either one falls into madness, or one learns to compromise, accepting what cannot be changed and living toward tomorrow.

That is survival as philosophy. Some things have already been proven unattainable, and yet one still cannot stop wanting them. This is the knot between fate and human beings. To stop thinking is one answer. To think until one collapses is another. To keep thinking until one reaches compromise is yet another. These, perhaps, are several of the ways one learns to live with fate.