I don’t know how you define friends; I treat “friend” and “the most genuine friendship” as the same thing. You can have many playmates, but you might have only one friend, or none at all. A friend should be someone who shares a common language with you, who really knows who you are, and who gives you respect and a sense of value. I feel like I’ve failed in this regard; right now I only have one person who truly understands me. As they say, if you gain a true confidant, you gain the world.

All Those Things In College Life

My first year of college was the first time I left my poor little county to see what the outside world was really like. The first roommate I met was from Guangdong, and the other two didn’t really talk much (they also weren’t the type to start conversations). The roommate from Guangdong was the one I took a liking to at first glance; I went up to chat with him. He was straightforward, a bit careless and rough around the edges, but actually quite attentive.

Later during military training I met two other classmates from the same class, and when the training ended, we took a group photo together. (Side note: it’s totally possible not to know your own classmates well, because everyone tends to just stay in their own small circles.)

Thanks to my own patience for self-study, in their eyes I became a “grind dog” (overly studious person). Compared to other conflicts, this was already hitting my bottom line. I think studying is a rare and precious thing, especially for someone like me who self-studied for two years in high school to get into this place.

In the second semester of freshman year, I think we went to Beijing for a trip, around April 4th or so. If I remember correctly, the other two booked a four-person room for just the two of them. Conflicts came up because of the travel arrangements, and I won’t go into the details now. We went out to play together, but the whole trip felt tight and exhausting.

The real conflict happened when we went to Tangshan, in the first semester of sophomore year. It was a rare chance to travel again. Toward the end of the trip, we booked an all-night KTV session. Since they didn’t allow outside drinks, the staff said they would charge 1 yuan as a service fee and bluntly claimed they were “doing us a favor,” saying that in the north people value loyalty. That really put me off. Once we got inside, I saw small cockroaches everywhere, which made me even more uncomfortable. Everyone saw how upset I was and stopped me from going to the front desk to confront them; they let one person go and ask to change rooms.

After that, they started to distance themselves from me, thinking I was too petty. At the end of that first sophomore semester, I found out they had been arranging study sessions with each other. At that point I already knew I had lost three playmates. So I decided to draw a clear line with the roommate from Guangdong, stopped talking to the other two as well, and just focused on my own things. First, there was no respect; second, there was no sense of value. I even sent a message on QQ about paying back the money; who really cares about that one-plus yuan anyway?

Old Friends Are Hard To Reach Now

Brother Zhang is someone I got to know in my second year of high school; we were in the same science class and he was particularly strong in certain subjects. His mathematical way of thinking deeply attracted me. He was very hardworking. On weekends or after evening self-study, I often did problems with him and asked him about his unique ways of understanding them. Many times we’d have meals together at the end of the term or chat on weekends. Compared to other friends, friends who share the same hobbies are the most comfortable to be around; you don’t get into other messy topics. What surprised me even more was that after the college entrance exam he applied to a teachers’ college and was assigned back to our original school. Because my level of math was no longer enough to really talk with him in depth, we lost our chance to chat much after just half a year of college.

Brother Jiang is someone I’ve known since my second year of middle school. I often hung out with him and two other friends, and later we all got into the top class together. One of the things we did a lot was go home at night, finish copying our homework, and then compare speed: “I’m done already!” “How are you so fast?!” The rental place I lived in was very far from school, and many times on the way he would give me a ride partway home. We’d chat about all kinds of things on the road, including sexual topics (we were all teenagers, after all). Once, during an exam, I even relied on a cheat sheet he had hidden for me when he went to the bathroom (seriously, don’t cheat; you’re only fooling yourself). In high school we were in different classes, so we couldn’t see each other as often, and it’s been the same in college.

He should be considered a “normal” friend: neither based purely on shared interests nor on benefits. It’s more about him staying by your side, truly understanding you, offering strategies and advice for you, and even being willing to sacrifice a bit of himself to help you. After high school ended, he held a banquet to celebrate getting into college and invited me. Later, I think I mixed up my cup with someone else’s when drinking water. I felt embarrassed, so I left early that afternoon. After my freshman year, I went to his home for a visit. A year of college had passed and I’d gotten very thin. At that time I often stayed up late and spent most of my money on servers and such, hardly spending anything on food. He gave me 200 yuan as meal money and told me not to spend it on anything else.

Nowadays we don’t have many chances to hang out together, which might actually be why we’re still able to keep talking whenever we do catch up; getting too deeply involved might not be a good thing.

Postscript

I really want to know how you define a friend. Feel free to leave a comment in the comment section!