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)

我到底丢了多少钱

文/周海亮

我的手机丢了。

手机是我在征文比赛中获得的奖品，名牌。收到手机那天，我上网查了一下价格，接近八千元，这等于我弄丢了八千元钱，想想就心痛。

晚上朋友聚会，我将这件事告诉他们。一个朋友说：“你不是丢了八千元钱，而是丢了五千元钱。”我问他为何这样说，他说：“八千元是这款手机当时的价格，现在，这款最多值五千元。”

他说得对，我的手机不是当时丢的，而是现在丢的。

紧跟着，又有朋友说：“你不是丢了五千元钱，而是丢了三千元钱。”我又问原委，他说：“因为这部手机你已经用了两年，五千元可以买到新手机，你丢的是旧手机。所以，你的手机最多值三千元。”

我想，他说的也有些道理。

又有朋友说：“你也不是丢了三千元钱，而是丢了一千元钱。”在他看来，这部手机对我来说，其实是一件奢侈品。假如我自己花钱买，只会购买价格一千元左右的。

我必须承认，他说得对。对我来说，手机能打打电话，发发短信，偶尔当成手表，看看时间，就够了。

还有朋友说：“你绝不是丢了一千元钱，而是一分钱都没有丢，当初你的手机根本没花一分钱买。”

这也没错。手机是企业赞助的，为我买单的是企业，即使有损失，也是那个企业的损失，而不是我的。

也有朋友认为，我丢了八千却亏了无数。他说：“我认为你还是亏了很多钱。至于到底亏了多少，就很难说清了。假如你当时就把这款手机卖掉，至少能卖七千元。然后将这七千元投到股市，说不定现在早已经变成一万元、两万元，甚至更多。”

……

丢一部手机，不同人看到的得失也不同。终了，我也不知道自己到底丢了多少钱。

凡事皆经不起琢磨，尤其在“失去”这件事上。