Author|Jolene
After 45 days, Zhang Zetian's personal podcast "Xiaotianzhang" has been updated again. Under the trailer, she wrote: "New Year, let's climb the mountain together."
After the first episode of the conversation with Carina Lau aired, both Zhang Zetian and her fledgling personal podcast fell into controversy. Many people were surprised by her continued updates, but what was even more unexpected was that the person sitting opposite her this time was not a celebrity or a business celebrity.
In the recording studio, Zeng Yanhong (Ada) was wearing a black jacket and red running shoes. Once she fell into memories while narrating, she couldn't help but make gestures. The 48-year-old is from Hong Kong and was a middle school teacher. In 2021, Zeng Yanhong climbed to the top of Mount Everest in 25 hours and 50 minutes, becoming the first person in China to quickly climb Mount Everest. In 2017, the Hong Kong SAR government awarded her the "Outstanding Leader" award.
In the 66-minute podcast, Zeng Yanhong talked about her sixteen-year climbing journey: from a promise to students in the life education class, to countless failed summit attempts, to being seriously injured after experiencing an earthquake in Nepal, to climbing Mount Everest multiple times and setting a world record for speed climbing. It took her seven years to climb Mount Everest, and she saw the true face of life in nature while getting along with the snow-capped mountains.
She believed in climbing itself. Do whatever you are doing, and the next goal will emerge on its own. Looking back on her experience of wandering on the edge of life and death at high altitudes, Zeng Yanhong said: "The only thing I can't do is give up."
Zhang Zetian in the public impression seems to belong to two different worlds from the snow-capped mountain climbers. The title of the program gives people a strong sense of contrast.
In fact, during the conversation with Carina Lau, Zhang Zetian mentioned his experience of trying hiking in Bhutan and Longji in Hong Kong. It was also during the mountain climbing process that she met Zeng Yanhong.
In the self-introduction originally released on the "Xiao Tian Zhang" podcast, Zhang Zetian had already shown his interest in outdoor sports. In that two-minute audio, she hoped to communicate with people who had different life experiences and discover different ways of living.
However, the number of views of this introduction on the Little Universe APP is less than half of that of the conversation with Carina Lau. Most people may still follow the stereotype and think that this is a "rich wife's living room" that Zhang Zetian uses to build his own IP.
Inviting Zeng Yanhong was a smart choice. Zeng Yanhong is extremely talkative and can speak fluent Mandarin. She is an atypical and inspiring example of the "middle girl era": from a middle school teacher to the first woman in Hong Kong to climb Mount Everest, she has completed a huge identity leap, faced nature and the limits of life and death, and has endless rich stories.
In this program, Zeng Yanhong, who has a story, becomes the protagonist. As an "outdoor novice", Zhang Zetian listened and asked questions along her memories. Over the course of 66 minutes, she plays the role of a medium, rarely revealing her own ego: the story of her life already carries enough weight.
However, compared with the previous episode, there is no longer an obvious sense of "one party dominates" the dialogue in the second episode. This time, Zhang Zetian gave the spotlight to the guests, but he was not completely carried away by the other party's rhythm. Many comments found that she showed obvious improvement.
Maybe it’s still because of the topic choice. The first issue was about the broad life of celebrities, while the theme of this issue is a specific action that Zhang Zetian himself has performed: climbing. She clearly has a greater curiosity for details based on shared experience.
For example, Zeng Yanhong mentioned that there are dozens of ropes of different colors when going down the mountain. Some of them were old ropes from previous climbing seasons and were at risk of breaking, so she needed to focus on choosing new ropes. Zhang Zetian became interested in this detail: Since there are such clear risks and there is a professional team responsible for the road ropes, why not remove the old ropes?
This is not a simple question. Even Zeng Yanhong, who has climbed Mount Everest many times, remains curious about it. Based on her own climbing experience, she speculated that it was because of the weather: some teams made an emergency descent due to a snowstorm and may not have the conditions to clear the ropes they left behind in time.
Zhang Zetian chose specific and truly interesting topics, which gave her a desire to explore. Her thirst for knowledge kept her seizing the opportunity to throw the ball, and the other party would catch it and throw it back to her. The richer response gave the snow-capped mountains, which are still far away from most listeners, a more concrete image in the recording studio.
In recent months, the unexpected emergence of the "Ao Tai Line" has brought outdoor sports into more people's horizons. These accident videos show that countless people have given climbing too much worldly meaning: traffic, attention, group honor, economic interests…
Nature is pure, but humans are not. Mountaineering has always been a highly commercialized activity, especially the extremely expensive high-altitude mountaineering extreme sport. In just two decades, the total number of climbs on Mount Everest has increased nearly 10 times, transforming it from the mysterious highest peak on earth into a multi-million dollar industry.
However, in the recording studio, the climbing in Zeng Yanhong's words returned to the simple action of life itself. Before everything started, she was a middle school teacher, responsible for life education classes, teaching students how to treat themselves, their friends and the world in practice. She once rode across the Sichuan-Tibet Line and looked up at Mount Everest, feeling it was unattainable. In the first class, Zeng Yanhong asked her students to set life goals. Instead, the students suggested that she climb Mount Everest: If the teacher could even go to Mount Everest, they would dare to think about anything.
Zeng Yanhong agreed immediately and started learning ice climbing and rock climbing. In order to save her salary to pay related expenses, she kept only three sets of clothes and cycled 15 kilometers to and from get off work: "When you want to do something, you have to choose a lifestyle that allows you to get the result. So I welcome the difficulties that I have to face, whether it is money, time, experience or experience, all aspects are lessons that can be taught to students."
Seven years later, she reached the top of Mount Everest. Someone left a message and replied: "I'm very touched. I always thought that climbing Mount Everest was a matter of national will or a show off of the rich. I didn't expect that there is such a spiritual practice."
But the price Zeng Yanhong paid for this included leaving the starting point of everything. She had to resign from the school because mountain climbing delayed her classes: "If I had known at that time that setting this goal would cost me my job, I definitely wouldn't have set this goal."
In the end, Zeng Yanhong decided to leave her job and go to Mount Everest. She has a habit of agreeing first and then forcing herself to solve all problems, and feels that this motivates herself to a certain extent: "I rarely study clearly before saying whether to agree or not. I will ask myself whether I am very interested, and if I am interested, I will agree first. I think this is human nature. If you think about many things slowly, you will definitely not do it in the end."
Zhang Zetian feels the same way about this: "There are many things that after thinking twice, you find that you can't do them. But if you don't care about the three, seven, twenty-one, and take that step first, it seems that sometimes the road will be cleared."
After the first issue of "Xiao Tian Zhang" was launched, both Zhang Zetian and her fledgling podcast were caught in a storm of public opinion. After a month of silence, the second program she gave also had some "act first, talk later" "reckless" energy.
In the interview, Zhang Zetian mentioned an article written by Lindsey Vonn after she was injured in this year's Winter Olympics: "The only failure in life is when you don't try." She also needs to fulfill the promise made in that introduction to her own curiosity and diversity in life.
Zeng Yanhong mentioned that after successfully climbing Mount Everest, her excitement only lasted a few seconds. She had no distracting thoughts during the climb. She only took a photo but did not post it on WeChat Moments. Even though funds were tight, she never accepted commercial sponsorship because she believed that it would burden herself with excessive expectations: just like climbing Mount Everest is not the end, you still need to descend to the base camp, after you come down from the top in life, you have to go to the next destination.
To a certain extent, Zhang Zetian's summary of this also reflects her psychological process of being under public scrutiny in the past month: "Being too perfect or too imperfect is not the real you. In many cases, only you know who you really are. But it is difficult for me to do it, because everyone knows me, and it is difficult for everyone to see the truest state. But you must know in your heart who you are, where you are, and what others say is true and what is false."
"Never put yourself in your position in the eyes of others, otherwise you will lose yourself." This is Zhang Zetian's ideal state. She also frankly admitted the distance from her goal: "I can't do it, but I will still post (in Moments)."
Snow Mountain welcomes climbers of all backgrounds equally. She chose the medium of podcasting because it is inclusive enough: it can accommodate both in-depth interviews and natural chats. People with different purposes can explore and gradually grow in the process of preparation and listening.
In any case, the second episode has been launched. Many people are still speculating, where will "Xiao Tianzhang" go in the future?
In the two-minute introduction when the podcast was launched, Zhang Zetian envisioned a very diverse direction: she wanted to talk about entrepreneurs and share the latest business information. This is obviously the hottest trend in the podcast industry in this age of knowledge anxiety. Of course, as most people expect, she can also use her network advantages to run the "Rich Wife's Living Room" and conduct interviews with celebrities in the entertainment industry to gain direct traffic. However, she also wants to follow her curiosity and learn about different lives.
After 45 days, Zhang Zetian finally chose a more difficult but more sustainable path: she decided to respect her desire for knowledge, communication and expression, and turned the camera on amateurs like Zeng Yanhong who use their lives to write stories.
During the conversation, she talked about the live broadcast of Alex Honnold, the "god of free climbing", free climbing Taipei 101. It wasn't an overnight process or an impulsive decision, Alex had over thirty years of professional training. Not only did he hone his skills, he also had to deal with the instinctive fear of danger within the human amygdala.
Zhang Zetian described the process this way: "He did not choose to suppress fear, but chose to face it head-on. Through repeated practice, he expanded his comfort zone, completely dissipating fear, and became more and more confident. Step by step, he only focused on the point on his hand."
So detailed, it seems that I feel the same way. Faced with the fear of being watched and judged, what Zhang Zetian can grasp is to do a lot of homework. She was new to outdoor sports, so she watched related documentaries: "Aftermath: Mount Everest and the Nepal Earthquake", "Freehand Rock Climbing", and "Barehand Taipei 101 Climbing: Live Broadcast".
The 2015 Nepal earthquake caused psychological trauma to many climbers, and many never returned to the snow-capped mountains. After miraculously escaping from death and undergoing a year of recuperation, Zeng Yanhong decided to climb Muztagh Peak, which is slightly lower in altitude. After success, she planned to return to Mount Everest in 2017. This is done to tell students that the closer they are to their goals, the more reasons they have to give up. However, Zeng Yanhong believes that she will only consider giving up when she touches her principles: for her, the only principle is life. Now that he's fully recovered, "I can't see a reason not to go."
Zhang Zetian quoted "Dead Poets Society": the maverick teacher, and the students who stood at the table to support him. She understands that feeling: in essence, everything Zeng Yanhong does is to educate and influence lives. Even if it does not happen in the classroom, this is the value that has been internalized in the climber's life. But she still couldn't help but ask: "But I am also a mother and a daughter. I would imagine that when encountering such a thing, the feelings of a relative are very complicated… Have you two discussed it?"
Even if we have not personally reached the edge of life and death, people still have empathy. Zhang Zetian, who has done his homework well, leaves the stage to the other party, does not judge, only listens, and concentrates on being the bridge between ordinary listeners and climbers.
Zeng Yanhong mentioned that she made an impulsive decision in 2014: the five-year agreement with the student was about to expire, but she still had no successful mountaineering record. In order to give her students an explanation, she still went to Mount Everest. An avalanche occurred at an altitude of 3,300 meters. She waited at the camp until the last day and was eventually forced to descend. Zhang Zetian asked: "How did you feel when you encountered something like this when you went to Mount Everest for the first time?"
Zeng Yanhong thinks it’s normal: “When you do something, you probably won’t succeed the first time.”
Instead, she hopes the process will be "as long as possible." "You can come again next year. Because I haven't given up yet, it's not over yet, and you (students) aren't over yet either."
Near the end of the program, Zhang Zetian asked Zeng Yanhong: "When will you start thinking about your next goal?"
Zeng Yanhong said: "If you do the job, responsibility, and identity at hand well, the next goal will emerge by itself."
"Xiao Tianzhang" will find his goal in time, and so will Zhang Zetian.
