Back to School and Classes — Continuing My Writing in Spare Time

After spending the summer vacation at home, I returned to school at around seven o'clock on the evening of August 30. I picked up my new textbooks during the evening self-study session, and on August 31 we officially began classes.
I had been away for more than fifty days, and returning to a campus I had known for a full academic year, everything before my eyes felt familiar. Before the summer break, the lotuses in the pond had just started to open; by the time vacation ended, they were almost past their bloom.
Nearly all of my classmates had come back. My life began to settle into a routine again, and all the holiday chores could be cast to the back of my mind. Life at school is simple: classes during the day according to the timetable, and self-study in the evening. Three meals a day, a nap after lunch, and some basketball or jogging each day — everything follows a steady rhythm. This kind of regular life is, in fact, quite good for the body.
The coursework poses no great strain on me, and I still have plenty of free time to work on my manuscript — the only problem being that all my complete reference materials are at home. In my field of study, the school library is not as well stocked as my own collection, so my writing will inevitably be affected to some degree. Still, I will do my best to overcome this difficulty.
During the vacation, I discussed my writing plan with some old friends in the medical field, and they gave me a great deal of valuable advice. Even the title of the book was revised at their suggestion. The overall framework is now essentially set: the book will focus on exploring practical solutions to refractory diseases.
The general section will cover the principles of formula composition, while the specific sections will be organized by symptom and disease category. Each category forms a chapter, and each chapter is divided into parts such as an overview, categorized formulas, categorized medicinals, categorized case records, and suggested approaches to composing large compound formulas.
This structure is clear and closely tied to clinical practice. I will do my best to make it easy for readers to master the formula-composition techniques underlying my approach and, through the study of related case records, to improve the efficacy of their clinical treatment.
This architecture allows the book to be as compact or as expansive as needed. If I cover only the few disease categories I am currently researching, two or three hundred thousand characters would probably suffice. If I set out to enumerate as many disease categories as possible, it could grow to two or three million characters. And yet Li Shizhen's Compendium of Materia Medica, hailed as a monumental work of medicine, amounts to only 1.9 million characters.
To write a truly comprehensive clinical textbook of traditional Chinese medicine, I suspect my entire remaining life would be consumed. What the book will eventually look like, I do not yet know. It may drift toward ever greater breadth and completeness as I go along — or it may not.
Writing several million characters is no great feat for me; after all, I have already written 5.3 million characters. In terms of sheer volume alone, that equals two and a half Compendiums of Materia Medica.
In 2024, I proposed to my family that they grant me a ten-year leave of absence, so that I would not have to worry about earning a living and could devote myself fully to study, starting from preparation for the college entrance examination.
My family agreed. Time has passed in the blink of an eye, and two years have already gone by. These two years have been quite rewarding. I hope to continue living a pure life of research and study for another eight years, and to complete my work within that time.
Of course, during this period I will inevitably be engaged in clerkship and practice on the clinical front line. After all, for those of us studying medicine, the ultimate destination is medical institutions at all levels.
There are always aspects of the status quo that we wish to change, and I prefer to do something about them through action rather than words. Effort may not always bear fruit, but without effort there is not even hope.
I am grateful to the school for using its gate to shield me from so much noise, allowing me to focus more fully on the things I love to do. And I am grateful to my family for letting me be myself.