National Paper I

Read the following material and write according to the requirements. (60 points)

Words are vessels for expressing thoughts and emotions, and they are also windows through which changes in social life may be seen. Today, changes in the world, in the times, and in history are unfolding in unprecedented ways. Youth is always renewing itself. In the course of your growth, which word has changed in meaning for you? This change bears the imprint of your growth and holds a special significance for you...

What associations and reflections does the material above inspire in you? Write an essay in response.

Requirements: Choose an appropriate angle, establish a clear central idea, define the genre, and create your own title. Do not rely on formulaic writing or plagiarize. Do not disclose personal information. The essay should be no fewer than 800 Chinese characters.

The car stopped. The tremor of the engine dying traveled up through the floorboards, and then everything stayed quiet for a long time. He did not come upstairs.

He did not used to smoke. Now, that faint, flickering point of light in the garage is the last stretch of time that belongs to him after he gets home and before he walks through the door. Only after the smell of smoke has faded does he push open the car door and come up. We wait upstairs, pretending we know nothing.

When we were little, we called him Dad. It was a simple word. So simple that it did not need to be understood, only used. When we were hungry, we called Dad. When we were afraid, we called Dad. Even when I was beaten until my nose bled, I called Dad—the only time I was ever beaten until my nose bled. I can no longer remember why he hit me. I only remember the warmth of the blood, and something indescribable in his eyes before he turned and walked away—perhaps regret, or perhaps a deeper anger that had frightened even himself.

But it was the same man. Once, I scratched someone else's car. He did not hit me. He only said: You should apologize and take responsibility. His tone did not sound like he was teaching a child. It sounded more like he was stating something he himself believed. At the time, we did not know that he would later fail to live by those words.

Some things we learned very late. Gambling, enormous debts, Mother leaving—none of this was suddenly announced to us on a particular day. It spread slowly, like a water stain, pieced together bit by bit from the cracks under doors on many nights, from phone calls that abruptly ended, from holidays that were deliberately skipped over. Outside, he was a respected doctor, his white coat crisp and straight. At home, he was a man broken by desire, carrying debts so large he did not dare let anyone know the number. Both things were true at the same time. They did not need to be reconciled.

During my high school years, he changed. He was no longer the father who would hit you, nor the man who taught you to apologize. He grew quieter, and the air at home grew quieter with him. He said nothing, but you could feel it—he was supporting you in a way he could not put into words. Perhaps because he no longer knew what else to say. Perhaps because life had worn down his own sharp edges, too.

The person he later found left as well, but left behind my younger brother. He did not leave. Not because he did not want to, but because he could not. A person you call father wakes up every morning facing a bill he cannot afford to owe, and a face he must take to school. This inability to leave turned "carrying a heavy burden forward" from a metaphor into the daily setting and rising of the sun.

At some point, without knowing exactly when, we stopped calling him Dad. The word "father" took its place. It was not a deliberate change—we did not consciously correct ourselves. The word simply changed on its own. Perhaps "Dad" had become too light. It could no longer hold all those years of wear and silence. We needed a heavier word, one that could contain our entire understanding of him: the hatred, the gratitude, the inarticulate pity—and that small terror of suddenly realizing we were becoming more and more like him.

That point of light is still there in the garage. Grandma used to scold him for smoking. Now she only says, "Smoking again"—and in her voice, it is no longer prohibition, but heartache. Everyone knows why he smokes. No one says it. He understands the harm of smoking better than most, but he needs an act of self-harm to bear the weight of things that cannot be spoken. A doctor, hiding in the garage, secretly doing something that will kill him, just so he can seem normal in the instant he opens the door and steps into the house.

We stand upstairs, looking at that flickering point of light. We have not gone down to call him yet. Perhaps whether we call him or not is not the most important thing. The word "father"—we are still learning what it means.

Translated from the Simplified Chinese original.