2023-07-09

I discovered that a static website I made years ago to prank my college roommate is still online, which means he’s been paying for the domain all these years. This sent me down memory lane.
https://declaration.vanderchen.com/

My college roommates and I were incredibly close. The one who shared the wall with my bed was surnamed Chen. Since he showed up with a “Hello World” in C on the very first day of freshman year, while the rest of us knew nothing, we started calling him “God Chen” from then on.

What kind of person is God Chen? Let me list some fun facts about him:

God Chen gave himself the ID “VanDerChen,” pronounced “Van der Chen.” It sounds like a Dutch nobleman.
During the summer break of freshman year, God Chen pulled an all-nighter for several days straight, single-handedly carrying seven people to complete a major project for the summer term. After that, I started studying hard so I wouldn’t hold him back.
God Chen would stay up all night every night. I almost never saw him sleep at night. Of course, being awake might mean studying, or it might mean playing 4399 games.
Before exams, God Chen would activate his “Ultimate 24 Hours.” With those 24 hours, even if he had never studied a course all semester, he could still score high.
God Chen was quite sturdy, and since our beds shared the same wall, I often ended up getting “disciplined” by him.
God Chen is a 120% man—meaning his descriptions of events are often 20% more exaggerated than reality. Combined with other endearing qualities that invite teasing, we loved to roast him. The outcome, however, was usually getting beaten up.
God Chen missed the cutoff for the graduate entrance exam math by one point, but his specialized course scores were ridiculously high. The professors really wanted him as a student (unpaid labor), but unfortunately, our school was too rigid that year. So he was reassigned to the University of Science and Technology of China, and now he’s Dr. Chen. This just goes to show—people never know what’s coming. A person’s fate depends not only on personal effort but also on the course of history. A small-time college graduate like God Chen, ████████ (if I write any more, this post might not get through).
A few years ago, while slacking off at work, I suddenly missed God Chen. So I bought a domain, set up a small website on GitHub Pages, and made this “Van der Chen Declaration.”
Later, I visited him in Suzhou. After getting beaten up again, I transferred the domain to him.
Not only did he not take down this site used to roast him, but he also put up his own blog on the same domain.

Image 1: The Van der Chen Declaration (plagiarized from the Zen of Python—the more I think about it, the more embarrassed I get)
Image 2: While traveling in the UK, I found a forebear of the Van der family in some museum.
Image 3: A discussion between me and lxyl about this.

🫖 Tea Time