The Tale of Incalculable Losses

By Zhou Hailiang

I lost my smart phone, which I won in an essay competition;and it was a big-time brand to boot. The day I won it I checked the price online: it was worth around USD 1,200. Losing it was about the same as losing USD 1,200. You can imagine how much that hurt.

I told my friends about this last night at a party. One of them told me I hadn’t lost twelve hundred bucks, but actually around six hundred. He said the twelvehundred-dollar price was for when it was new, but now it had depreciated to six hundred.

He was right actually. I didn’t lose my phone when it was new; I lost it now, two years after it was launched onto the market.

Right after that, another friend told me that I hadn’t actually lost six hundred, but three hundred.When I asked him the reason, he said it was because I had used the phone for two years. It was going for six hundred bucks new, but was only going for three hundred used, and so the phone was only worth the depreciated amount for a second-hand phone.

I thought about it and it really made sense.

So then, another friend chimed in and said that I hadn’t actually lost three hundred bucks, but just one hundred. In his opinion, that phone was a luxury for me. He pointed out that, were I to go buy a smart phone myself, I would spend no more than around one hundred.

I have to admit, he hit the nail right on the head. To me, a cell phone is just for calling, texting,playing around on WeChat, or occasionally checking the time.That’s it.

Another comment came after that saying, I hadn’t lost one hundred, and that I hadn’t even lost a single penny, because my phone hadn’t cost me anything. I had got it free.

What can I say? He had a point there. It had been donated; the one who had picked up the tab was the sponsoring firm, and in spite of the fact that it was lost, it could be chalked up to a loss for that company, not for me.

Opposite to that was another one commenting that I had lost a ton of money. Maybe it was hard to say exactly how much,but my losses were possibly even innumerable. He proposed the idea that, just supposing I had sold the phone at that time for around a thousand and invested the money into the stock market,perhaps I would right now have five thousand, seven thousand or even more in my pocket.

I lost my cell phone and everyone’s estimation of my losses yielded a different amount. At the end of the day, I have no idea how much I actually lost. When thinking anything over too much it’s easy to pick holes in every argument, especially in working out how much I “lost” with the loss of my phone.

(FromWindow of Knowledge,March 2018. Translation: Chase Coulson)

我到底丟了多少錢

文/周海亮

我的手機丟了。

手機是我在征文比賽中獲得的獎品，名牌。收到手機那天，我上網查了一下價格，接近八千元，這等于我弄丟了八千元錢，想想就心痛。

晚上朋友聚會，我將這件事告訴他們。一個朋友說：“你不是丟了八千元錢，而是丟了五千元錢。”我問他為何這樣說，他說：“八千元是這款手機當時的價格，現在，這款最多值五千元。”

他說得對，我的手機不是當時丟的，而是現在丟的。

緊跟著，又有朋友說：“你不是丟了五千元錢，而是丟了三千元錢。”我又問原委，他說：“因為這部手機你已經用了兩年，五千元可以買到新手機，你丟的是舊手機。所以，你的手機最多值三千元。”

我想，他說的也有些道理。

又有朋友說：“你也不是丟了三千元錢，而是丟了一千元錢。”在他看來，這部手機對我來說，其實是一件奢侈品。假如我自己花錢買，只會購買價格一千元左右的。

我必須承認，他說得對。對我來說，手機能打打電話，發發短信，偶爾當成手表，看看時間，就夠了。

還有朋友說：“你絕不是丟了一千元錢，而是一分錢都沒有丟，當初你的手機根本沒花一分錢買。”

這也沒錯。手機是企業贊助的，為我買單的是企業，即使有損失，也是那個企業的損失，而不是我的。

也有朋友認為，我丟了八千卻虧了無數。他說：“我認為你還是虧了很多錢。至于到底虧了多少，就很難說清了。假如你當時就把這款手機賣掉，至少能賣七千元。然后將這七千元投到股市，說不定現在早已經變成一萬元、兩萬元，甚至更多。”

……

丟一部手機，不同人看到的得失也不同。終了，我也不知道自己到底丟了多少錢。

凡事皆經不起琢磨，尤其在“失去”這件事上。