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Li resigned from TAL in December 2018.
2018年12月，李剑雄从学而思辞职。
Around the same time, he’d developed the idea of leaving China for the US, alone.
大约在同一时间，他萌生了独自离开中国前往美国的想法。
Early in the new year, he applied for a fellowship to Columbia’s Weatherhead East Asian Institute and received an offer four months later.
新年伊始，他申请了哥伦比亚大学韦瑟东亚研究所的奖学金，并在四个月后收到了录取通知。
Soon, Rose became pregnant with their second child, but Li still resolved to go.
不久，罗丝怀上了他们的第二个孩子，但李剑雄仍然决定赴美留学。
Li’s family thought he had lost his head.
李剑雄的家人觉得他失去了理智。
“You’ve got young kids and elderly parents at home. How can you go so far away with no income and no idea when you’ll be back?”
“你上有老下有小，怎么能去那么远的地方，还没有收入，也不知道什么时候能回来？”
Rose recalls his father asking, though it seemed clear that she had similar questions.
罗丝回忆起他父亲的质问，显然她自己也有同样的疑问。
Li’s father never fully approved, though Rose eventually allowed him to leave.
即便罗斯最终让他出国了，李剑雄的父亲也从未完全同意过。
On the day she drove Li to the airport, she was three months pregnant and recovering from a severe case of morning sickness.
在她开车送李剑雄去机场的那天，她已经怀孕三个月，刚刚渡过严重的孕吐。
“Jianxiong is the type of person who, once he’s focused on something, he gives it his all,” Rose told me with weary acceptance.
“剑雄是那种一旦专注于某件事，就会全力以赴的人，”罗丝无奈地告诉我。
“He doesn’t think much about things like, ‘Oh, my wife is several months pregnant; I should check in on her more.’”
“他不会多想，比如，‘哦，我妻子已经怀孕几个月了，我应该多关心她。’”
The strangeness of Li’s adventure went beyond the personal: he was embarking on a journey into the centre of western capitalism – at a time when Donald Trump was president and million-dollar sales of crypto art dominated headlines – to find a spiritual elixir to save Chinese souls.
李剑雄的冒险之旅超越了个人层面：他踏上了一场深入西方资本主义核心的旅程——正值唐纳德·特朗普担任总统、加密艺术百万美元交易占据头条之际——以寻找拯救中国灵魂的精神灵药。
Yet Li was also following a well-trodden path.
然而，李剑雄走的也是前人走过的路。
A century ago, Lu Xun found inspiration in western literature to help launch a cultural movement that reinvented China.
一个世纪前，鲁迅从西方文学中汲取灵感，助力发起了一场重塑中国的文化运动。
Westerners, too – whether it was the Beats of the 1950s or Elizabeth Gilbert’s 2006 memoir Eat, Pray, Love – have regularly looked to the east in their own hope for spiritual renewal.
西方人也一样——无论是20世纪50年代的“垮掉的一代”，还是伊丽莎白·吉尔伯特2006年的回忆录《美食、祈祷、恋爱》——他们常常将目光投向东方，寻求精神的重生。
“I wanted to understand what other countries, including the US, were doing in psychology and community culture,” Li told me in Beijing.
“我想了解包括美国在内的其他国家，在心理学和社区文化方面在做些什么，”李剑雄在北京对我说道。
In his application letter to Columbia’s programme director, Li warned of an impending moral crisis unfolding in China.
在写给哥伦比亚大学项目负责人的申请信中，李剑雄警告说，中国正面临一场迫在眉睫的道德危机。
Materialism had overwhelmed the country, anxieties were “piling up” and values were “breaking down”.
物质主义已经席卷全国，焦虑感“堆积如山”，价值观“正在崩塌”。
His proposed antidote was a mixture of western psychology and traditional Chinese culture.
他提出的解药是西方心理学与中国传统文化的结合。
In New York, Li began frequenting the city’s many museums and parks until he experienced something of an epiphany.
在纽约，李剑雄开始频繁光顾城市的众多博物馆和公园，直到他体验到某种顿悟。
Three decades of fast-paced growth had deprived Chinese society of “third places”.
三十年的高速增长使中国社会失去了“第三空间”。
Beijing, unlike New York, didn’t have the social infrastructure that helped foster a sense of belonging.
与纽约不同，北京缺乏有助于培养归属感的社会基础设施。
His whole society seemed to feel weightless.
整个社会似乎都失重了。
At Columbia, Li began hosting discussion groups with other Chinese burnouts about midlife crisis.
在哥伦比亚大学，李剑雄开始与其他疲倦的中国人举办关于中年危机的讨论小组。
The hackneyed western concept, which evokes Lamborghinis and extramarital trysts, has recently found new use in China, where personal ruptures are being connected with societal upheavals.
这个陈旧的西方概念通常会让人联想到兰博基尼和婚外情，可它最近在中国找到了新用途，个人破裂与社会动荡被联系到了一起。
For Li’s community in New York, as well as many of those back home, the midlife crisis was national as much as it was personal: it was not a coincidence, in other words, that a new stage of individual life had arrived just as the nation had moved into a slower, more chastened era of growth.
对于李剑雄在纽约的社区以及许多在国内的人来说，中年危机既是国家的，也是个人的：换句话说，在个人生活进入新阶段的同时，国家也进入了一个增长放缓、更加克制的时代，这并非巧合。
“People of all ages are experiencing a crisis now,” Li says.
“现在，各个年龄段的人都在经历一场危机，”李剑雄说。
When the pandemic reached New York in the spring of 2020, Li decided to return to Beijing.
2020年春天，疫情蔓延至纽约时，李剑雄决定返回北京。
Possessed of a newfound resolve, he launched Heartify in April 2021 with a single format, which he called the life-story salon.
带着新获得的决心，他于2021年4月推出了单一形式的“心愈”，称之为“人生故事沙龙”。
He borrowed the concept from Alcoholics Anonymous – which was, perhaps, an unlikely inspiration for a culture that still values saving face, or mianzi, over revealing personal vulnerabilities.
他从“匿名戒酒会”上借鉴了这一概念——对于一个仍然重视“面子”而非暴露个人脆弱性的文化来说，这或许是不太可能的灵感来源。
Yet Li says that surmounting this barrier was key to his own recovery.
然而，李剑雄表示，克服这一障碍是他自我康复的关键。
“I think I was healed through stories,” he once said.
“我觉得我是通过故事被治愈的，”他曾说。
During the initial session, he planned for three female volunteers – a former journalist, an influencer and a cosmetologist – to spend 15 minutes sharing their personal growth journeys.
在最初的活动中，他计划让三位女性志愿者——一位曾经的记者、一位网红和一位美容师——每人花15分钟分享她们的个人成长经历。
But after the women finished, other salon attendees felt compelled to share.
等这三位女性分享完后，其他参与沙龙的人也产生了分享欲。
The spontaneous outpouring convinced Li that he’d discovered something real and overlooked.
这种自发的倾诉让李剑雄确信，他发现了一些真实且被忽视的东西。
