Our middle school has produced quite a few academicians over the years. But typically the school history just lists a number—often without even all the names. On campus, though, there are two statues. One stands in the square near the main gate: a statue of Confucius. I suppose any institution in the education business uses this vaguely defined figure as a kind of signboard.

Inside the school, several classroom buildings and crisscrossing corridors enclose a patch of the campus, leaving it exceptionally shaded and cool. In one corner of that neat, square courtyard sits the other statue. Usually, we would pass through the air on the second, third, and fourth floors, only occasionally catching sight of some statue down below—its exact form rather blurred from that distance. Sometimes, out of curiosity, I'd go up close to see what great figure it was.

It's a bust, and the face looks a bit like some older-brotherly neighbor. A pair of thin wire-rimmed glasses sits crookedly on the bridge of the nose; being a statue, there are no lenses. I didn't recognize him. But the large characters on the pedestal gave away the owner's name: Xu Xinghu.

The school generally has no special programs mentioning this man; it simply lets him stand there in silence, his slightly youthful face gazing ahead, without joy or sorrow. In the sound of the wind, amid shifting light and shadow, people come and go, and class after class of young students leaves the school.

Sometimes on weekends, with nothing to do, I'd sit there zoning out for a while, feeling a bit lost, wondering what my future self would become.

By the time I saw him, he had been gone for more than ten years. And now, I have been away from that school for more than ten years.