Books Recount My Life of the Past Twenty-Plus Years

Since I moved to my current home in 2009, I have not moved house for sixteen years. At the end of this year I need to move once—an enormous project for our family; just eleven bookcases of books are a headache to move.

Shortly after getting up this morning, I began packing books, cabinet by cabinet, into cardboard boxes and leather trunks to move to the new place; my son is helping me. The two of us worked all day until nine at night, finally emptying eight of the eleven bookshelves. In the new place’s two bedrooms, I set them against the walls for now; I will arrange them properly once the bookcases are moved over.

I love buying and reading books, but I never realized I had bought so many. Moving them was like reviewing my own life of the past twenty-plus years. These books span a huge range: literature, philosophy, history, sociology, psychology, archaeology, music, religion, economics, international trade, business management, programming, medicine, and more.

Medical books make up the largest share; over 80% of my collection is medical, including Chinese-medicine, Western-medicine, and psychiatry titles. These are the books I have loved reading over the past two decades, and they also record the trajectory of my life.

After leaving school, I once made a living by writing. Later I went into international trade, which laid the foundation for establishing my family in Beijing. That work required programming, so I taught myself programming and search-engine-related technology. After my mother fell ill, I lost interest in business and began studying medicine—first Chinese medicine, then psychiatry, and now Western medicine.

Few people may have crossed so many fields of study over twenty-plus years as I have. Most of my spare time these years has been spent in the National Library, which is near my home. I have kept a lifelong love of reading and learning, and life and work have led me to read widely. I have benefited greatly, because it keeps my brain constantly exercised.

In fashionable terms, I am a “compound talent,” with rich life experience and a broad command of fields; in more elegant terms, I have practiced the ancient Chinese ideal that “the gentleman is not a single vessel”; in my own words, I have lived a great life, sampling whatever interested me, never bound by convention.

Sampling widely when young has a great advantage: the mind stays nimble, not trapped inside a single professional circle. Much human knowledge looks different on the surface but is actually interconnected; the wider you sample, the more you can draw on. In principle, every mind should be whole, full, and alive, but since the Industrial Revolution most people have become mechanized, specialized and narrowed too early. This is a great damage to the human spirit, preventing a person from fully experiencing the goodness of life—which is why so many modern people live in low spirits.

I do not regret the road I have walked these past twenty-plus years. I have not achieved great things, but my mind has had many experiences and my life is rich. This wealth is more precious than anything.