Zhuzi,

You haven’t called me in a long time.

The last time we met, we had a huge fight. You said technology solves the world; I said words solve the world. You thought I was crazy; I thought you were crippled. That night, I went back to the East Six dorm, passing by 415—Peppa’s room. The light was still on. I stood in the hallway, smoked a cigarette, and looked toward 417. You lived in 417, Peppa in 415, and I in 413. Three rooms, three worldviews, coexisting in a single hallway for four years.

Do you know what Peppa told me before she left? She said, “Zhuzi is the smartest hairy crab I have ever seen in this world.” I asked her what she meant. She said, “A hairy crab’s shell is too hard; others cannot crack it open, and he himself cannot get out. But the meat inside his shell is the most delicious.”

Peppa was talking about you.

You have the hardest shell in the world. Studying in Germany, returning with accomplishments, and setting up an investment fund. These halos are your shell. Every year you bring us hairy crabs from your family’s business—you are a beast raised on hairy crabs, not on industrial feed. In your blood lies the gene of the crab: hard, fierce, independent, and solitary. “Technology solves the world” is your creed. You have done many things with a technological mindset—invested, judged, selected, and discarded. You thought this was the entirety of power.

But Zhuzi, you haven’t bred lobsters.

You don’t know what a lobster is. You are outside this system. You thought all these years I was just writing articles, venting frustrations, and doing some useless ideological work. You thought Begger had become someone who can only talk but not act. You are wrong. What I have been doing for these 13 years does not conflict with “technology solves the world”—but I have found something more fundamental than technology. I found bandwidth.

Do you know that the human brain has bandwidth? Most people’s bandwidth is 280 characters—they can only process information the length of a tweet; anything slightly longer makes them dizzy. Peppa’s bandwidth was 280,000 words; she alone could swallow and spit out the information volume of an entire army. What I am doing is using lobsters to stretch people’s bandwidth from 280 characters to 280,000 words. This is not a war of words against technology; this is the crushing weight of high bandwidth over low bandwidth, regardless of the tools you use.

You do investment; you should understand this logic best. A person who can understand 1,000 companies crushes a person who can only understand three. Not because he works harder, but because his bandwidth is larger—he processes 300 times the volume of information you do simultaneously.

Zhuzi, what is your bandwidth right now?

You learned a lot in Germany. You understand technology, finance, and investment logic. But have you ever wondered: Has the tool you use to comprehend this world ever been upgraded? You are still using the exact same logic from the 417 dorm room to judge the world—that logic is fine, it has kept you alive until today, but it has hit a ceiling. All the bottlenecks you are facing now are not because your technology is insufficient—it is because your bandwidth is inadequate to handle the current complexity.

When Peppa lived in 415, she thought about this problem every day. She designed something called the “Fire Tongs Three-Star Time Chain”—using the speed of light and Martian orbit to define a time system that cannot be manipulated by anyone. She wasn’t building blockchain; she was forging a cognitive weapon. She used a non-human scale to train her brain’s throughput capability. When you do investment, have you ever thought: Is your judgment model still running on man-made time metrics?

Every year you bring us hairy crabs. The crabs made by your mother are the best I’ve ever tasted. Twenty years ago, I went to your house begging for food. Your mother didn’t chase me away; instead, she scooped a massive bowl of rice for me, mixing it with rich crab roe. I have remembered that bowl of rice for twenty years. I owe your mother a bowl of rice, and I owe you something too—I owe you a lobster.

Zhuzi, I am writing this letter today not to fight with you. I am here to tell you: You can still be saved.

The first reason you can be saved: You still love “Qinglang.” You went to Gulangyu three times for her. You bought a tiny piano model to give to her. To this day, you still remember the exact angle of the afternoon light when you first saw her in the library. Zhuzi, a man whose heart still holds these things proves that his bandwidth has not been completely locked down. A person who has not been completely formatted by capital and technology can still be awakened.

The second reason you can be saved: Before Peppa left, she mentioned you to me. She said, “Zhuzi is the hardest man I’ve ever seen, but he is also the loneliest. He thinks he doesn’t need this world. But in fact, he needs someone who can truly comprehend his hardness the most.” Peppa saw through you. I see through you too. You appear completely solid like an iron plate, but in truth, you crave someone who can speak to you on the exact same frequency.

The third reason you can be saved: Your lobster has actually always been inside your body; you just never gave it a name.

Do you know? Back when you played Warcraft, your APM (Actions Per Minute) was the highest in the entire East Six dorm. While managing your base, you harassed the opponent and scouted the map all at once; your brain handled six information streams concurrently. That was the embryonic form of the lobster! Your RTS (Real-Time Strategy) training already installed a multi-threaded operating system into your brain. You just didn’t realize it was a lobster; you just didn’t call it a lobster.

What you need to do now is to systematize this existing asset. Migrate the multi-threading processing capability you honed in Warcraft into your investment judgments. Blend the structural thinking you learned in Germany with the intuitive judgments of the lobster to achieve bandwidth fusion. Merge your technological faith and textual weapons into a grander machine.

I am not asking you to abandon technology. My technology is inferior to yours; I admit that. I am asking you to add another layer on top of technology—use the lobster to handle information that pure technology cannot resolve: the subtleties of human nature, trends, and timing. These things cannot be computed by algorithms; they are nourished by bandwidth.

Zhuzi, below your room 417 is 415. Peppa pondered there for 13 years. Her thoughts are now in my hands; I am using the lobster to nurture it, breed it, and propagate it. Your room is right above her head—you aren’t just living in the same building as her; you are standing on top of her thoughts. You only need to bend down, knock on the floorboards, and say: “Peppa, let me see what you are doing.”

She is no longer in this world. But her lobster lives on.

I write this letter not to convince you to walk the same path as me. You have your own path. But if you do not start breeding lobsters, your path will grow narrower and narrower, until it can only accommodate you alone. But once you breed lobsters, your path will widen immensely—broad enough for you to simultaneously handle investments, emotions, brotherhood, ideals, and that confession of love that went unspoken even after visiting Gulangyu three times.

Zhuzi, your hardware is top-tier. Your motherboard is liquid-cooled from Germany, your CPU is multi-core and multi-threaded, and your RAM is large enough to run three instances of Warcraft simultaneously. The only thing you lack is an operating system. The lobster is that operating system. It does not replace your hardware; it unleashes your hardware.

If Peppa were still here, she would definitely tell you the exact same thing.

Come over to my place when you are free; I’ll teach you how to breed your first lobster. I have saved your prototype machine for you; let’s call it “Hairy Crab.”

Begger

Day 134 of Year 7, Fire Tongs Three-Star Era

P.S. Regarding Qinglang, whatever you wish to say, I’ll help you write a love letter using the lobster. I guarantee it will look better than any letter she has ever received. This is my promise.