Few people are like Wang Han: Uncorrupted by the World

In this money-oriented society, most people are eager to pursue fame and fortune.

Especially in the glamorous entertainment industry, people are eager to squeeze every ounce of their value, impatiently accelerating the growth of young plants.

Greed, anxiety, confusion, and fear—they are like dogs in a lost family, only seeing the endpoint while pursuing this road.

No matter how many times they extol the virtues of ‘it’s just the scenery along the way’, in the end, they never ‘slow down’ and ‘wait’ for their souls.

And Wang Han, seemed to live slowly in this money-making world.

He was the last disciple of Mr. Yu Yi Fu, a Confucian scholar and calligrapher.

Slowing down is the adage taught to him by his teacher, as life is only a few decades, if you rush through it, you will miss many times of reflection.

Just like his pen name ‘Zha Xu Shi Yuan’ – ‘Zha Xu’ comes from *Zhai Zi* (Zhuangzi): ‘You Qi, , .’

Meaning to cleanse one’s mind of superficial and vulgar thoughts, and to purify one’s heart and spirit, maintaining a state of abundant and full-bodied mind.

Dedication was one of his most distinctive labels.

One episode of *Everyday Upward*, Wang Han suffered from gout, and the director persuaded him to rest. He prioritized his health and explained it to the audience himself.

But Wang Han retorted, ‘How can I do that? I must account to the audience,’ so we saw Wang Han leaning on his black umbrella on the show.

Uninformed viewers thought it was a special design, but he was actually struggling to smile throughout the whole episode.

Not only that.

In 2007, due to continuous work, he suffered from liver disease and even bled from his nose and his eyes were full of bloodshot.

During that period, Wang Han was extremely haggard, he had to inject interferon three times a week, take 30 pills of medicine, and he lost 12 kilograms in a month, fortunately his condition improved.

But he didn’t rush to rest, he instead invested himself again in the show’s production, because he saw his colleagues beside him, they thought he would not bring down the sky.

He was everyone’s ‘heart soothing pill.’

High EQ was another label associated with him.

As a ‘pillar’ of Hunan Satellite Television, he and He Jie had always been compared, arguing who was the ‘one brother.’

In response to this question, Wang Han said, ‘He Jie is the one brother, I am his elder brother, and Hunan Satellite Television is like a big mansion, He Jie and I are two stone lions. I hope He Jie’s *Happy Together* and my *Everyday Upward* – one has viewership, and the other has reputation, let these two stone lions stay there for ten or twenty years.’

A simple analogy, skillfully resolves difficult situations, giving face to the other party and avoiding embarrassment for himself.

There were many such moments of glory.

For example, during the third season of *I Am a Singer*, when Sun Nan temporarily withdrew from the competition; at the Golden Eagle Awards, his comments on ‘sense of crisis’; and when Wang Han, Guo Jing, and Nan Zhang performed a supportive role for Depo in *Everyday Upward*.

In addition to being good at talking, his extensive network was also one of his virtues.

A staff member of *Everyday Upward* said:

’When we need to invite some difficult guests, the most common way is to tell them, ‘Wang Han especially likes you, we must invite you.’ If the other person hears it, few will refuse.’

And he once called Gao Hong in Copenhagen to retrieve 400,000 yuan and chat with the President of the Czech Republic, and became a confidant with Jack Ma.

But he didn’t care about these things.

With his influence, he gained both fame and fortune, but he lived with fear and hesitation, always considering his words and actions, and demanded that he discard turbidity and desire, and walk steadily.

In the bustling streets of Changsha, there is a place called Pei Rong Bookstore.

The room has three reading areas, the interior is bright and clean with windows, and has antique tables and chairs, old chairs, elegant bookshelves, and elegant books.

On one wall of the bookstore hangs Wang Han’s poems: ‘Rivers and mountains, trees and flowers. When the rain stops, people avoid walking; dogs bark in the countryside. Lush grass leads to the courtyard, coarse pottery carries mellow tea. The elderly woman smiled and asked the guest, ‘Where do you come from?’

He was very low-key, never promoted the bookstore, nor did he commercialize it, he only hoped that someone would come and read peacefully.

Located about 10 kilometers from Changsha, there is a place called Zhanggang, where there is a private school called Zha Xu Yuan.

Mr. Yu Yi Fu gifted this mountain house to him, and advised him to use it well. Wang Han converted it into a private school, teaching traditional culture and handicrafts, aiming to enlighten, educate, and guide.

This was one of his dreams – to utilize vacant mountain houses across the countryside, gather little and make much, and make education no longer remote.

His second dream, to protect dialects.

We often heard Wang Han's fluent dialects and conversations with guests on the show, such as Mandarin, Shanghai dialect, Chongqing dialect, Cantonese, etc.

This was due to his childhood experience in a multilingual environment, his family had relatives and friends who spoke various languages, he was influenced by them, so he mastered Mandarin dialects.

He firmly believed that people should not forget their roots, and dialects are the carriers that remind people of where they come from.

He established a project team at the Hunan Provincial Museum, with team members including doctoral students from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and they divided Hunan into 57 districts, planning to take five to ten years to record all these dialects.

The final results were all donated to the Hunan Provincial Museum, and the expenses were mostly borne by Wang Han himself, initially, he invested 5 million yuan.

Wang Han said, ‘Actually, dialects are romantic. With the progress of society and the development of technology, languages and dialects are gradually moving forward with people, and they are getting further and further away. He can feel this sense of urgency.’

He hoped that more young people could also feel it and participate in dialect protection, and give them more confidence to speak their local dialects, so they can remember their origins.

Simply saying a dialect is like saying ‘I love you’ to a lover, isn’t it?

He did have doubters.

The first is his wife, Yang Lele, who asked him, ‘Everyone uses fame to make money, but you spend it.’

Wang Han smiled and replied, ‘With money, I can be willful.’

Someone once asked him, ‘What does a mature man look like?’

A popular answer was, ‘Like Wang Han, he has a calm and steady appearance, he has a vast inner world, and he does things in a just and appropriate manner, he doesn’t flaunt his talents or hide them.’

At first glance, it seems to be praising, but if you look at it carefully, Wang Han is indeed like this.

He is grateful to his benefactors, he is sincere to his lovers, he is loyal to his brothers, he is respectful to his elders, he is grateful to his teachers, he is diligent in his work, and he is open-minded in his social life.

“He is a light that wanders through the ages, calm and elegant, seeking clues in the past, he roams the shadows with grandeur and composure.

He has experienced the vicissitudes of life, but he lived in the world with independent personality and profound knowledge, like a world-weary sage.

That’s Wang Han.

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