The hardest part of a story is not the beginning, but how it ends. A great beginning doesn't mean a great ending. Likewise, a universally accepted ending may come from an unremarkable beginning. I believe some people will have this experience. When telling a story to a child, they will always be asked frequently: "So what happened next?" Most of the answers the children get are: The prince and the princess lived happily ever after. life. At least for the moment the story is being told, we all believe this is going to happen.

Scheherazade's problem is not that each night comes, but that he is ready for the next story to begin before the night is over. And every story she hesitates to tell can help her live at least one more day. In the stories of "One Thousand and One Nights", the most anticipated turning point usually occurs at dawn. If you put aside the stories in "One Thousand and One Nights" and focus more on Scheherazade and the dilemma she faced, it is like a huge fable. After every “So what?”, the story ends forever. Even though we know that Scheherazade finally no longer worried about her life, what is melancholy is not the happiness she gained, but that this story that lasted for one thousand and one nights seemed to have no longer the tension to continue.

Nothing represents the end, there is no end at all, anything that is told is the beginning of another story. As for what the other story will be, no one can predict it in advance. Just as in the past few years, Liang Wendao also told his own story of "One Thousand and One Nights". With the help of modern technology, Liang Wendao's "One Thousand and One Nights" stories not only have readers, but also viewers and listeners.

When I think of the opening song of "One Thousand and One Nights" composed by Zhang Yadong, the night will also come in small steps. The familiar "Taoist" usually will be at the subway station. Appearing and winding down the stairs, it is no different from our usual travels. It's just that the "Taoist" usually carries a book under his arm. Liang Wendao also said in "One Thousand and One Nights": He has been to countless Beijings at night. For him, the biggest problem is not what book to talk about that night, but where to go?

In this era where readers, viewers, and listeners are linked together by different media, Liang Wendao's reading in "One Thousand and One Nights" seems a bit special. If an audience asks which book is the best, I think the best standard answer to this question is: the next one. These seemingly silly questions offend readers, viewers, and listeners. Since you have to face the public, you need to tolerate these stupid and boring questions. In common perception, many people think that books may contain answers, but they do not realize that books may be the place where most questions are asked. It is because there are too many problems that cannot be solved, and the problems have not been condensed into a book. I think this difference may be the biggest difference in reading comprehension. I don't know if anyone has sorted out the list of books Liang Wendao talked about in "One Thousand and One Nights". The world built up by those books is the same as Zhang Yadong's song, with sadness after loneliness - not sadness caused by self-pity.

I can’t help but compare Scheherazade’s dilemma to that of Liang Wendao. The demands of readers, viewers, and listeners always want to know more, but for Scheherazade and Liang Wendao, what they are best at doing is: enough is enough. Perhaps in a story that has already been unfolded, few readers, viewers, and listeners have enough patience to stop for a moment. In a situation without a story, there is no difference between stopping to think and standing stupidly.

There are opportunities in Zen and problems in the book, but most of these are wrapped in stories and presented to readers, viewers and listeners. It’s hard to predict how many people’s thoughts will take another step after the story ends. Regardless of Scheherazade or Liang Wendao, in addition to whetting their appetite at the end of every night, they still expect that some thoughts will take a step forward after the end of their stories.

It is said that when Cangjie coined the Chinese characters, "the sky rained millet and the ghosts cried at night". Judging from our current knowledge, the time between the beginning of a carved symbol and the time when the symbol was given meaning and spread widely took at least tens of thousands of years. For countless nights, the ancestors of mankind sat around the firepit, resisting the fear of the night with stories, and passing on memories with stories. The reason why "ghosts cry at night" is because the ghosts and gods believe that starting from Cangjie, an insurmountable dividing line will be drawn between humans and ghosts and gods. From that moment on, every night's story will no longer be teased by changing language, but will become a fixed template.

Compared with such an extremely long night, Scheherazade's night and Liang Wendao's night are just a drop in the ocean. We also know that in the future, humans will still face endless nights, but the stories of resisting and enriching those nights will also be greatly enriched. Before each coming dawn, these stories will be told and told countless times. New stories will follow soon after. To comfort the frightened and helpless heart, apart from a meal, we also need a story that only has a beginning but no end.

Perhaps using the word "story" to describe the present and future of mankind is somewhat shallow, but I still feel that this word is the one that most people can understand.

In academic terms, it is one of the greatest common denominators of human life. Socrates said: This world belongs to those who can tell stories. Judging from what we have learned so far, our lives today are still permeated by the wisdom of Socrates. Although Socrates' word "story" has become very different today, its fundamental essence has remained the same. Even though we no longer need to sit around the fire and listen to those stories, we will still find that there are always lonely moments at night that need a story to pass the time, and we can laugh and cry with the story late at night. And imagine countless development threads for stories that will never end. It is true that everyone has the opportunity to become a story, whether it can spread more depends on luck. I think this may be a question that Scheherazade and Liang Wendao did not have time to think about after a thousand and one nights.

Let us return to the story at night. Apart from the cookie-cutter ending of the prince and princess, is there still such a question and answer:

-----Later , so what?

-----Later! The prince and princess lived happily together and had a child.

-----What happened next?

-----Later, when the child grew up, he would listen to a story every night and ask: What happened next?