Zhao Vincent

Someone once observed a specific quality in me, calling it "compassionate anger."

This is not a light term. Anger is usually destructive, while compassion often seems soft or weak. Yet, these two seemingly contradictory emotions have formed the backdrop of my life for the past twenty years, and ultimately, they became the sole reason I founded the Bank of Time.

If you ask me how this trait was "cultivated," I must take you back to two places: the barren soil of the countryside, and the cold institutions of public authority.

I. Beings in the Soil (About Compassion)

The first half of my memories is mixed with mud.

I was born in a remote mountain village in Hunan. After working for a few years, I resigned to participate in rural construction training organized by Professor Wen Tiejun. During this process, when my feet stepped back into the rural mud, what I saw was no longer the "joy of harvest" broadcast on the evening news, nor the cold poverty alleviation data in official documents.

I saw specific, concrete human beings.

I remember the hands of the "left-behind" elderly, cracked like old tree bark, yet possessing shocking strength when they grasped yours; I remember the eyes of the children, clear yet prematurely mature, having learned to read people’s moods too early because their parents were far away. I saw how diligence becomes powerless in the face of blocked information and scarce resources—they farmed with all their might, yet were still left far behind by the train of the era.

In that environment, my heart would involuntarily soften.

I realized that poverty is not due to laziness, but is a structural trap. This realization made it impossible for me to turn away from suffering. This inability to look away is the origin of compassion. It is not condescending sympathy, but a pain born of shared humanity—a grief for one's own kind.

I hated this injustice, but I loved these people struggling to survive in the cracks even more.

II. The Roar Before the Iron Wall (About Anger)

If the countryside softened my heart, then my later experiences in the civic movement hardened my bones.

Carrying the doubts and pain accumulated in the countryside, I began trying to seek change, intervening in public affairs, and thus began a long engagement with government departments.

At that time, I was no longer facing specific individuals, but a massive, cold, and even arrogant machine.

I have witnessed what "passing the buck" looks like; I have seen reasonable requests defined as "trouble" or even "illegal." I have experienced being summoned for questioning, being warned, and watching friends around me silenced one by one. What I found most unbearable was not the physical threats, but the erasure of truth.

In this system, if you do not obey, they not only want to extinguish your voice but also tamper with your memory. What happened yesterday can become a "rumor" today; living, breathing people can instantly turn into a string of garbled code on the internet.

At this moment, compassion transformed into anger.

This anger is not the impulse of a street fight, but a physiological revulsion against the trampling of rules and the insult to common sense. I am angry that they not only manufacture suffering but also forbid people from discussing it. I am angry that they attempt to turn us into hollow men without memories and without history.

III. Bank of Time: Building an Ark with the Multitude

Amidst the repeated tearing between "the compassion of the soil" and "the anger at the iron wall," I came to the United States, to Texas.

Looking back at the past from this land of freedom, I suddenly understood what I had to do.

Pure compassion cannot save people; pure anger destroys oneself. I needed to combine these two forces into a constructive tool.

This is the origin of the "Bank of Time."

• Because I have compassion, I focus on "ordinary people." I don't want to record only the monumental achievements of big figures; I want to record the faces that have struggled in the rural soil, and the overseas Chinese running around for a living. Every tiny life deserves to be seen.
• Because I have anger, I am relentless about "technological sovereignty." I know how that massive machine operates, so I must use AI technology and decentralized means to build a place where the hand of censorship cannot reach.

What I am building is not just a commercial project, but a "Memory Ark."

In the future AI world, when reality might be distorted by algorithms and history might be smeared by power, I hope the Bank of Time can produce the hardest piece of proof:

Look, this is the evidence that I once lived. This is my pain, this is my joy, this is my anger. They are real, they belong to me, and no one can take them away.

This is my "compassionate anger." It once caused me pain, but now, it is my most powerful fuel.