Forty Days of Mixed Feelings

From registering at school on September 7th until today, my second stint of university life has passed 40 days. Many things that happened in these 40 days have deeply touched my heart.

Before registering, I was actually quite reluctant to come to school, because the school that admitted me is out of town, and going to school meant leaving Beijing. I had somewhat wanted to prepare for another year and retake the college entrance exam in Beijing next year to see if I could stay in Beijing for school. But finally, after repeated persuasion from relatives and friends, I chose to come register rather than waste a precious year.

After arriving at school, I felt more than a little uneasy. After all, I was already 46 years old, while my classmates were basically all only eighteen or nineteen. I worried there would be a huge gap between us and that I wouldn't be able to fit into the group.

At the moment my child and his mother, who had driven me to school, left, I felt very sad and reluctant to let them go. Watching their taxi drive away, my eyes even welled up. I walked back to the dormitory desolately, greeted my roommates, and briefly introduced myself, and that was how I got to know them. These children were actually quite at ease; before I even knew where the school bathhouse was, they voluntarily took me to take a shower.

The very second day after arriving, classmates from other dorms started approaching me on their own, curious about this classmate who was obviously not their age. The first to come up to me was a boy from Ganzhou, Jiangxi, who later became my desk-mate and basketball friend. His parents were born in 1985, six years younger than me.

I was sitting in the front row by the door. He walked up to me and carefully asked: you're not the same age group as us, are you? I said, that's right, I'm 46. He then asked how I ended up at university with them; I told him I was interested in clinical medicine, which is why I retook the college entrance exam and applied here. He admired this rather courageous act of mine and wanted to get close to me and learn from me; I of course welcomed him.

During the October 1st holiday, this classmate, together with another classmate, came to Beijing to visit me. I took them to the National Library; when they saw the spectacular architecture, the collections, and the readers inside, they kept exclaiming how awe-inspiring it was. He said our school library is a real bumpkin compared to this. My reaction the first time I saw the National Library at his age was basically the same as his.

The news that there was an older student in the class spread through class like wildfire. So in those first few days, whether I was walking on the road or eating in the cafeteria, classmates would come up and greet me, asking about my situation. Almost every time I ran into classmates in the cafeteria, they would bombard me with questions.

Later, I simply took the opportunity of a class where the teacher asked us to go onstage and introduce ourselves, and gave the class a brief introduction of myself. Of course, during the self-introduction, I made some technical adjustments to my personal information, concealing some of the truth, because otherwise I would never have a moment's peace here.

In fact, even so, it is still hard for me to live a low-key and peaceful life here as I wish. Today the military training instructor said to me: Uncle, you've already gone viral among our instructor crew; we all want to come see you for medical treatment. We all train together; the instructors come from the same unit, and after training ends during the day, they go back at night and gossip with each other. I am the oldest student at this school, and the instructors aren't as naive as these freshmen; they quickly guessed the general outline of my background.

Even before the instructors, the psychology teacher guessed my off-campus identity. On September 10th, Teachers' Day, I sent her a WeChat message wishing her a happy holiday. She replied: "Dr. Zhou, wishing you all the best!" At that moment I knew that my deliberate concealment could only fool my classmates in class, but not these teachers with rich life experience.

Of course, even my classmates in class couldn't be fooled for long. These past few days, I've begun to notice that among the new followers on my official account, there are classmates from my class. I had to greet them and ask them to keep it secret, so as not to disrupt my peaceful life at school.

A boy I'm quite friendly with looked up my resume, took a screenshot, and asked me: "Uncle, is this you?" I was too embarrassed to keep hiding it from him, so I had to ask him to keep it confidential too. He said, Uncle, turns out you're so impressive; you're way too low-key at school, aren't you? I countered: if I weren't low-key, what could I do? Actually, no matter how low-key I am, a 46-year-old middle-aged man retaking the college entrance exam and coming here to study clinical medicine is an eye-catching thing. So maybe I'm only doing a kind of ostrich-like self-deception.

I don't know how long this struggle of mine can last. I only hope that my years at school can be more peaceful and less disturbed by the outside world. Leaving aside the troubles brought by the age gap, many things that have happened since I came to university were entirely unexpected to me.

Coming here, I often have the feeling of traveling back to the distant past. Yesterday on the military training field, as everyone sang military songs together, the military song from my own military training at another university 27 years ago suddenly rang in my ears: "One-two-three-four, one-two-three-four, like a song; the green barracks, the green barracks, taught me..."

This familiar melody reminded me of the brothers and sisters who trained alongside me in 1998. Two of those old classmates have already passed away, and another has endured a painful prison term and the loss of a loved one - this brother was my inseparable friend back then. I was an extremely needy student back then and could barely afford meals; he often treated me to meals with his own living allowance.

At that moment my tears were uncontrollable. Luckily no one around noticed me, and I secretly wiped the corners of my eyes. Time is relentless; 27 years of wind and rain have changed many people and things. In old photographs, the brothers and sisters of yesteryear looked radiant, but not every one of them is safe and sound today. If I am still alive 27 years from now, perhaps among this batch of classmates training with me today, someone will leave this world before me, and others may suffer devastating life setbacks. This impermanent life is so unfathomable, so lamentable.

Equally lamentable is that when I went to university 27 years ago, I was dirt-poor and didn't even have three full meals a day; 27 years later, when I come to university again, there are still classmates as hard up as I was back then, and not a few of them.

I eat and live together with my classmates, and have witnessed firsthand how they get by. Some classmates really struggle even with basic survival. To save money, several classmates in the class buy instant noodles on Pinduoduo and basically live on cup noodles for all three meals a day. Some have developed malnutrition and disease as a result.

Some classmates have told me that people around them have been cutting their wrists. When they told me these things, they just mentioned them as curiosities, but I cannot pretend I haven't seen and heard these things. Young people are the age group with the highest suicide rate; wrist-cutting is a very dangerous signal, a cry for help expressing their inner pain to the outside world.

Honestly, these observations weigh heavily on me. The extroverted classmates are easy to communicate with and basically psychologically healthy. But there are very few extroverted students at our school; more than half are introverted.

Because these students' college entrance exam rankings are basically around the 50th percentile in their provinces, they were the most inconspicuous middle-of-the-pack group in high school. This group is even worse off than the underperformers: if the underperformers are a bit rowdy, at least people pay attention to them, while they may have been the "silent majority" since childhood. They are unknown; from enrollment to graduation, few people notice them at school.

I think many of their talents have been buried, stifled by this gaokao system. I see that some of them are quite creative and have good talent in certain areas, but because they have never been recognized, their abilities have never been well developed.

The vast majority of students at this level are game-addicted, some severely so. Although the school has rules against overnight absences, they often stay out all night gaming. One classmate told me frankly that only in games do they feel recognized; the sense of achievement games bring them is something they cannot extricate themselves from.

His words made me ponder for a long time: when we blame children for being addicted to games, have we ever considered that this may simply be the only way they have to escape their own distress? If we provided them with better ways to showcase their talents and develop healthier hobbies, would they still be addicted to games?

Since arriving at school, I have actively organized them to play ball, go on outings together, and form study groups, hoping to pull them away from unhealthy lifestyles and develop some positive, healthy hobbies. Today a female minority-nationality student said to me: Uncle, you really have charisma; now our class is full of your people. It's rare to find someone in their forties as energetic as you. The girl was right; I have indeed thrown stones into their dull collective life, and these stones have sent out ripples. But whether these ripples will bring them any change is still unknown.

I hope they can set their attitudes right, study hard, and become good doctors in the future who relieve the suffering of ordinary grassroots people. The sanctity of the medical profession is beyond question; when we save a life, we preserve the happiness of a family. During my time at school, the best friend from my high school underwent tumor resection; a younger sister of mine was found to have a high-risk pulmonary nodule; the families of two very close friends were respectively diagnosed with cancer recurrence and suspected malignant tumor - that latter one even being a young woman who hadn't yet graduated from university. They all came to me in agony to pour their hearts out.

Once I had to ask the military training instructor for leave on the training field to call and calm down a family member who had a mental breakdown, because at that moment, if I hadn't intervened, she was at risk of breaking down and committing suicide. Even the instructor who came to school for military training sought me out because of intractable insomnia, but I felt that what was truly troubling him might be the family pressure brought by the economic downturn.

The Buddha said there are eight sufferings in life: birth, old age, illness, death, parting from those loved, meeting those hated, not getting what one seeks, and the flourish of the five aggregates. The first four of these eight sufferings are physical problems, now basically handled in hospitals; the latter four are mental problems, now also basically handled by psychiatrists. Doctors bear the heavy responsibility of saving the world from suffering.

But these medical students around me are also ordinary people; they are flesh and blood, without wealthy family backgrounds, and some at school don't even have enough to eat. They can hardly escape the various problems that ordinary people encounter growing up. We expect them to take on sacred duties in the future, relieve others' suffering, and endure all kinds of pressure and grievance; we should also create a good growing environment for them, shouldn't we?

Thinking about such questions also weighs on me. I have been in business and have some financial means; when I studied medicine I had no worries, no need to fear future work and income, driven purely by ideals. But my classmates are different: they need to feed their families, need to bow for a handful of rice, and even have to worry about whether they have enough to eat and wear warmly during their studies.

In the ideological and political class, the teacher asked: what can make you feel happy? The answers were almost uniformly the single word "money." This could be seen as a group of students deliberately being funny, or it could be a true reflection of their psychology. After all, for anyone, survival comes first, and they can hardly be blamed. The real ways of the world are not a simple moral test question.

Returning to campus to study in middle age is an extremely unusual life experience, one that can to a certain extent change a person's many perceptions.

Society always has all kinds of distrustful talk about young people, some of which amounts to prejudice. Actually, young people of every generation share certain universal qualities that don't change with social changes - for example, kindness, simplicity, and gratitude.

Before coming to university this time, I had also thought that the post-2000s generation might not know how to be grateful and care for others the way we did when we were young. But after living together with my classmates for a while, I realized that past perception was wrong.

Once in PE class, a girl borrowed my badminton racket; at the time the racket was being used by other boys. This girl is one of the neediest students in our class. I went to the school store and bought her a pair of rackets as a gift. She insisted on transferring the money to me, but I refused to take it. The girl then insisted on treating me to milk tea, but I said that as a middle-aged person I needed to control my figure and didn't drink milk tea. She kept feeling bad about it, and finally brought me some special homemade food her mother had made. I knew that if I didn't accept it, she would keep feeling uneasy, so I happily accepted it to put her at ease.

For several boys in my class, when they get injured I give them iodine for disinfection and band-aids; when they wake up late I go wake them; when they game too late or stay out all night I admonish them. They genuinely know that this uncle of theirs has their best interests at heart, so they listen. Not only that, every time I run into them going up the stairs, they voluntarily help me carry things and look after this older uncle, even though my stamina is actually no worse than theirs.

During military training, whether boys, girls, the counselor, or the instructors, all advised me not to push my body too hard. The instructor even said to me: Uncle, it's awkward for me to train you, and awkward not to train you; you'd better just ask for leave more often - as long as you ask, I'll approve it. You just sit on the side; you're in your forties, don't take military training so seriously. These instructors are also young men born around 2000; with me not in the training ranks, they actually feel less pressure.

These small things changed my perception of this generation of young people. Away from their families, when they enter group life, they are very polite and willing to help others; they are not selfish people. Their nature is not bad, and each has their own talent. Create good conditions for them and let them grow naturally, and they will eventually grow into outstanding people capable of shouldering social responsibility. If they can get good guidance, they can even accomplish great things in the future.

When I first started school, I often wavered in my heart, wanting to go back and try harder to get into a Beijing school. But gradually, as I built all kinds of connections with this group of young people, I felt that fate arranging me here is actually more meaningful than having me at some Beijing school.

The children at elite Beijing schools don't lack resources; their upbringing is far better than my schoolmates'. To the students at our school, I might actually be able to offer some help, and they have grown fond of this uncle. They come to me for antiseptic and band-aids when injured; they want to confide their troubles to me; when confused they like to ask my advice; when I call them together for group study, they respond enthusiastically. Perhaps I can exert a little positive influence on them.

So gradually, I let go of the thought of leaving. Acquaintance is a kind of destiny; I hope our destiny can bring them a little help. If my late mother and my late classmates and relatives have spirits in the heavens, they would surely want me to do this. Because planting a seed of kindness in the heart of a future doctor will benefit many patients; we must do something for the future.