{"text":[[{"start":7.35,"text":"In the summer of 1996, I left China for America to pursue graduate study. I have now lived in America for 30 years, longer than I lived in China. Yet, the more I know America, the more I am convinced that the country manifests itself as a perfect candidate for one of Chairman Mao’s beliefs. The quote — at least it was credited to him when we grew up — roughly translated into English and cleared of some troublesome double negatives means: “Human efforts will always trump nature. What can be imagined can be achieved, so long as you dare to imagine.”"}],[{"start":40.85,"text":"One can be a little blasé or cynical about America, especially the country in its current 250th-year edition. However, one cannot help but feel a little awed by the American confidence in imagining the unimaginable. What was imagined and pursued by the first emperor of China — to live to 150 years, to be forever young, to be immortal — is the same urge that has led to a thriving business of longevity clinics in the US. To dictate the terms of global politics, to police other countries with a grand vocabulary of democracy, human rights and justice, while American students have monthly drills to prepare them for frighteningly regular school shootings — it takes a special kind of American imagination to celebrate the greatness, nay, the greatest-ness, of the country. Self-doubt is not a national sport here, nor is self-reflection."}],[{"start":90.55000000000001,"text":"Recently, in my creative writing class at Princeton, I taught Russell Hoban’s Turtle Diary, a novel in which two middle-aged Londoners, beset by loneliness and rudderlessness, nevertheless make a deep connection when they conspire to liberate some turtles from the zoo. I must confess that, when putting the book on the reading list, I forgot that Turtle Diary might not easily speak to my brilliant and ambitious undergraduates. I was particularly struck by one student’s comment. He said he did not necessarily love the book, but it made him think of the life choices he would make so as not to become either of the two protagonists. In other words, he thought, literature about people’s pains and sufferings could serve well as cautionary tales. This strikes me as an American phenomenon. History, full of cautionary tales, is easily dismissed or forgotten in this country, which seems to me, paradoxically, to be another American phenomenon. When I talk about tuberculosis with my students, for example, they often think it was a medieval disease. I have to explain to them that George Orwell, whom they like to quote all the time, died in 1950, at the age of 46, from TB."}],[{"start":159.70000000000002,"text":"Another sea-themed novel was also on the reading list that semester. On the first day of the class, I asked the students what they knew about Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick. None of them had read the novel, but most of them had a vague idea that it was about whale hunting, or that it was about a white whale named Moby Dick. During the following 12 weeks, I asked my students to read the novel slowly, taking detailed notes, and in a class of 32 students, perhaps only one or two did not fall in love with it."}],[{"start":191.60000000000002,"text":"I was joyfully surprised, and mentioned this to the novelist Marilynne Robinson when she visited. Marilynne welcomed the news and said the novel was “the birthright” for the students. That phrase all of a sudden explained my fascination with the novel. My first reading of Moby-Dick had been as a graduate student in Marilynne’s seminar at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in 2003. Since then, I’ve been reading the novel once a year. I am also hand-copying it to get even closer to the text. (It’s been some years, and I am on Chapter 61 of 135.) Moby-Dick, it seems to me, could only have been written by an American novelist: the book is unabashed, sometimes self-indulgent, often brilliant and never subdued or apologetic. It may be one of the most important contributions from America to the world; it certainly is one of the things that I’ve treasured most in my American life."}],[{"start":249.00000000000003,"text":"In re-reading Moby-Dick, a thought often occurred to me: there are more Captain Ahabs in the world than there is that singular Moby Dick. Some of the Ahabs must have gone through their seafaring careers without encountering and without being destroyed by the white whale, and thus without bringing destruction to the crews around them. But that thought, I now believe, was too optimistic. During my latest re-reading, along with a group of brilliant young people, I’ve realised that one true Americanness of the novel is this. Everyone can be a Captain Ahab, and every Ahab has a Moby Dick to chase and to conquer. Be it power or wealth or status or pleasure or leisure, be it religious or political or aesthetic or athletic prowess, what drives America to go upward and downward is this tireless and restless pursuit of something out there in the sea, beyond imagination."}],[{"start":300.90000000000003,"text":"Someone may argue that Moby Dick and Ahab are universal archetypes — more than purely American — and that is a good point. However, anyone without a white whale to chase in America is bound to be labelled as passive. And passivity, it seems to me, is more of an unredeemable sin in America than it is in other parts of the world. The turtles rescued in London would not exonerate the two characters in Turtle Diary from that allegation."}],[{"start":328.50000000000006,"text":"So here we are, witnessing a young country turn 250 years old this summer: still restless, glorious, gloriously messy, still full of contradictions, still short of self-reflections. America, large, containing multitudes, may as well become a multitude of Captain Ahabs and follow a multitude of white whales, to all the places beyond anyone’s imagination. "}],[{"start":353.55000000000007,"text":"Yiyun Li is a novelist and short-story writer. She won a Pulitzer Prize in 2026 for her memoir, “Things in Nature Merely Grow”"}],[{"start":362.55000000000007,"text":"We would love to make FT readers a part of our series about America at 250. What does America mean to you? In the comments below, please share a memory or experience that you feel encapsulates it. We will publish a selection of your responses on FT.com next week"}],[{"start":379.1000000000001,"text":"Find out about our latest stories first — follow FT Weekend Magazine on X and FT Weekend on Instagram"}],[{"start":394.6000000000001,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1783148691_8864.mp3"}