Humble as Dust, Free to Come and Go

Once a reader asked me: why do you always keep thinking about your rural hometown? Wouldn't staying in the city let you help more people? I said to her: in the animal kingdom, some animals imprint on the first animal they see after birth as their kin and never forget it. Humans have this instinct too; for me, the village that so many people want to leave is my true home. Every other place is merely a temporary place of drifting.

Before the pandemic, I often traveled between my hometown and Beijing; more than half of my life has been spent in the village. Many patients who sought me out have also visited the small temple on the back hill of the neighboring village where I used to go—that is my spiritual home.

After my mother died, I even thought of spending the rest of my life in mourning by her grave. But after the pandemic, everything changed dramatically; social controls made travel less convenient than before. I, who used to commute frequently between Beijing and my hometown, have only returned home once in the last two years. I do not know when this kind of life will end.

Now I increasingly want to stay in the village long-term. In another year and a half my child will take the college entrance exam; once I have fulfilled my responsibility as a father, I want to return to the village and quietly read and write in my old home. On this recent short trip back, my father and I planned how to make the courtyard more beautiful, planting some Chinese medicinal herbs and flowers; after I move back, I will properly tend the few mu of land at home, growing grain and medicinal herbs.

Many of the village fields have been abandoned, which is a great pity. In the past I very much wanted to cultivate Chinese medicinal herbs in the village, putting the abandoned land to use. It was just that the previous village party secretary asked an exorbitant price—one million for the stretch of forestland I wanted to contract. Such a price naturally could not be let out; in fact, many nearby small villages are already uninhabited, with even more abandoned land there. Contracting land to grow medicinal herbs is not difficult.

The countryside is being abandoned by "country people." There are hardly any "young people" under fifty left in the villages—only some left-behind children and the elderly. China's industrialization and urbanization have drained the rural labor force, leaving large swathes of farmland fallow. It is a pity to waste such precious resources.

I love rural life, love being a person humble as dust, love freedom, love a life of coming and going at ease. My life experience tells me that whatever everyone scrambles for cannot bring ease and complete freedom. But there is a type of person—like me—who pursues complete spiritual freedom from the marrow of their bones. Only by being the most inconspicuous person, surviving on the resources in this world that are least valued, can one break free from all bonds and obtain the maximum freedom.

On this trip home, I bought a very comfortable bicycle in the county seat. I was immensely satisfied and joyful; riding home from the county town, I felt as if I owned the whole world. I look forward to the day when I can retire and return to the fields, lay down my armor and go back to farming. Fully returning to the village—"rising at sunrise to work, resting at sunset"—a simple life, combining mental and physical labor, self-sufficiency, getting around by bicycle.

I have many study plans. I want to systematically finish learning Chinese medicine, Western medicine, and biology, integrating the whole of life science. I want to properly relearn English to a level where I can easily read English literature and understand the latest research results of colleagues around the world.

I hope to spend the rest of my life in the village, connected to the whole world through the internet—quietly pursuing scholarship while enjoying the peace and joy of farming. For me, as long as I have a legitimate license to practice medicine in the village, that is enough; my home can also be my clinic. Let others contend for fame, professional titles, and positions; I will not bother competing with them. I have my own passions, and everything I love brings me a joy that money and status cannot buy.

Compared with greatness, I love humility more. There is a fine passage in Caigentan (Vegetable Roots Discourse): "Only after dwelling in lowliness do you know how dangerous it is to climb high; only after staying in the dark do you know how blinding the light is. Only after keeping still do you know how exhausting constant motion is; only after cultivating silence do you know how rash excessive talk is." Our era has provided the best proof of this saying: those high in power today may tomorrow become prisoners; celebrities at the height of fashion may, in a twinkling, be denounced by all society. Grandiloquence is also dangerous; there is always someone who will grab hold of our tail and choke us to death. In this torn and intolerant age, standing out is a very unsafe thing; how many strivers after success have to live in fear.

When success becomes tied to insecurity, society inevitably sees a new "mystic wind," with more and more figures in the mold of the "Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove," immersed in the study of "the learning of nature and life." Whether society will regress as a result I dare not say, but our world is indeed no longer as full of friendship and consensus as it was in the period after World War II. Perhaps humanity cannot escape the fate that "what has long united must divide, and what has long divided must unite," forever oscillating between war and peace, between violence and tranquility.

Though the outside world never stops churning, as long as one is content to be humble, living serenely is not difficult. No one chases a speck of dust, because it is so insignificant that chasing it is unprofitable. Dust poses no threat to other beings; no one wants to conquer it. That is why dust is the freest: the carefree dust can dance in the wind or rest quietly in some corner of the earth. Ah, what in this world is more precious than such freedom?