A College Admission Letter 27 Years Late

In 1998, when I first took the national college entrance exam, I just missed my first choice. Because I had chosen to accept reassignment on my application, I was reassigned to a key engineering university. I was utterly devastated, because what I most wanted to study was clinical medicine. Left to my own wishes, I would have asked my parents to let me repeat a year and retake the exam, so I could realize my dream of becoming a doctor.

But 1998 brought catastrophic flooding to Hubei, and my hometown became a vast sea. I remember that year we had to take boats just to leave the village; the low-lying houses and fields were flooded, and the water took a month or so to drain. My father's small business went under, and my older brother was a junior in Shanghai.

The family was in such straits, and I have always been a considerate person, so I gritted my teeth, chose not to repeat, and went to a university I did not want to attend. Years later, my father regretted not having let me repeat. But looking back, I feel that since fate arranged it this way, there must have been its reason; on reflection I do not feel much regret.

I also do not blame my parents for not doing more that year to help me realize my wish. This year, sitting the gaokao in my hometown, the day before the exam my father fell and hurt himself. While looking for his medical insurance card at home to take him to hospital, I happened on my high-school admission ticket, which my father had treasured for over twenty years. The document had yellowed, and some of the ink had faded, but my father had wrapped it like a treasure and hidden it in the safest place in the house. The moment I saw that ticket, my eyes grew wet.

My family was poor, but my parents gritted their teeth and sent us through high school and college—no small thing in those days. When my brother and I took the gaokao, university expansion had not yet begun; few people in our village even went to high school. My parents rose before dawn and worked into the dark, scrimping and saving, to send both of us to key universities—rare in the countryside. Without their persistence, I might not even have a high-school diploma. At my age now, I would not even qualify to sit the gaokao, let alone revisit a lifelong dream. So I am deeply grateful to my parents.

My childhood dream was to be a good doctor. I loved my mother deeply, and for as long as I can remember she had suffered from stomach problems, seeking doctors everywhere without a cure. As a boy I kept thinking: when I grow up, I must study medicine well and cure my mother. In high school my grades were excellent, and everyone around me thought I could get into any university in China. But fate took a strange turn: just before the 1998 gaokao I suddenly developed kidney stones and did not get my wish.

To resolve the family's financial problems, I had to bow to reality. But fate eventually drew me back to medicine: my mother was diagnosed with gastric cancer in my twenties. Though my business was then booming, her illness made me give up commerce and relight my dream of studying medicine.

I later chose the path of learning TCM through the traditional apprenticeship model, and studied for nearly twenty years. I combined self-study with apprenticeship: burying myself in the library on one hand, and following my master in clinical practice on the other. Later I also sat for the first national TCM specialist physician qualification examination. I have never stopped writing: while studying TCM I spent over a decade writing nearly ten million characters.

Once my son went to college, my life's task was largely done. I began to revisit my old dream and decided to sit the gaokao again, return to school, and study Western medicine as well. If conditions allow in future, I also want to complete formal TCM training. I hope through this study to raise my clinical level in both traditions. In medicine one studies until one's dying day; there is no end.

In June 2025, at 46, I walked into the same gaokao exam room as my niece. When she saw me there, she screamed with excitement and introduced me to her classmates: "This is my uncle; he's taking the gaokao this year too." The introduction drew waves of amazement; of all the candidates in the hall, I was the oldest. At the security checkpoint, a guard even stopped me, mistaking me for a parent.

After results came out and I filled in my choices, I waited and waited for admission. I refreshed the status again and again; seeing it finally move from "files submitted" to "provisional admission" to "formal admission," I felt a whirl of emotions—both gratified and, in waves, sad. Not quite tears of joy, but far from calm.

I had waited 27 years for this day, and at last it came. If I could go back 27 years, I certainly would not have been content with such a school. But the 46-year-old me is no longer the fresh high-school graduate; outward vanity no longer matters, and I do not fear however long a road lies ahead in medicine. All I needed was a ticket of entry—a ticket to bridge Chinese and Western medicine.

Without this entry ticket, if in the rest of my life I could not realize the dream I had failed to fulfill when young, my life would carry a great regret. I know studying clinical medicine will be hard; I must overcome many difficulties to finish and qualify to practice both traditions. But no matter the effort, I will not flinch.

Last night my admission status formally changed from "provisional" to "admitted." I could not help calling many relatives and friends to share the good news and my joy. My revered master congratulated me, remarking how hard the road had been—how much more I had endured than others for an ideal.

With a sense of release I told him that, looking back, every step of my life had been meaningful. Strictly speaking, not one step had been a detour that should not have been taken. Without those trials and setbacks, my mind would not have matured as it has, and I would not understand medicine so deeply. I am sincerely grateful for everyone and everything I have met these years; they tempered my heart, tore down walls that should not have stood, and made it possible that I might one day become a physician who bridges Chinese and Western medicine.

When I was 17, my master told our class: if you pursue scholarship, do not be bound by convention; integrate Chinese and Western learning, and become a master of synthesis. It may have been a casual remark, but it planted a seed in me that sprouted and grew, and became a lifelong conviction I cannot shake.

Only last night my master also said to me: perhaps in future you will be one of the physicians from our eastern-Hubei region remembered by posterity; when you have time, organize the stories and medical thought of the famous doctors of our hometown through the dynasties. I do not expect to become a famous doctor, but my mother's death did kindle in me a wish to achieve something in medicine. I hope to do some breakthrough research, raise the level of basic medicine, and spare patients like my mother some of their suffering.

I know it is hard to do this alone, but I am willing to become a trickle flowing into the vast ocean of medicine, contributing a little to its continuing growth. To that end I have already spent over twenty years on the cold bench at the National Library; after finishing this formal clinical training, I may spend the second half of my life, in spare hours, on that cold bench for another half, to fulfill my lifelong ambition.

Today I am 22 days short of my 46th lunar birthday; going to medical school at this age may be late. But Liu Yuxi wrote, "Do not say the sunset is late; its evening glow fills the sky." I still have full confidence in the road ahead. For the sake of my ideal, I have given, I have strived; on the day I leave this world, I will have no regrets. For me, that is enough.