洒脱 free and easy？ I read an article from a public homepage on we chat. It argues that why Chinese girls panic about their life. The author said a teacher of hers just received a fellowship from Yale. Her teacher called H who is also a ‘her’ is 40 years old already. From her view, someone can go back to school at this age needs great courage. H also totally changed her major to a completely different major which also makes H admirable. There’s another girl, her roommate, was born in early 1980s who decided to do a master again instead of go to PhD. In China, a woman of this age would worry if she will be left of getting married because of studying. But this girl doesn’t, she doesn’t mind do a degree for several years at this age. From her view, Chinese girls rarely have this kind of courage or power. In China, our parents always tell us to do things at one fling and we should always keep busy studying, working so that we could save some time. In Beijing, everyone looks busy and everyone has a quick pace of life. So I think most of us won’t sit down and think why we are busy like this and why we can’t slow down a little bit. No one said we can’t get married after 30 years old though it would be hard, also no one said we can’t do a degree after we get married. But we are still rush to study and hope to graduate earlier no matter if it is a right time to do a master or PhD. I’m in a rush myself either. I really need the mentality of those two girls. In Chinese, we say “洒脱”, this word was translated as “free and easy”. But actually I don’t think free and easy is the perfect translation of this word. Because the word “洒脱” include free but I don’t think it includes easy. I suppose “洒脱” means follow your own heart, don’t mind what other people say or do and don’t have to follow the trend of others.