Joy That Forgets Sorrow, Unaware That the Year Is Drawing to a Close

Lately I have been watching videos of junior-high math, physics, chemistry, and biology on Bilibili, and before I knew it I was hooked; it feels like learning something new. As I learn, new ideas keep arising in my head, and more and more things fall into a coherent whole.

In the bullet-screen comments, many people are exchanging notes. It turns out that quite a few of those taking junior-high courses are master's and PhD students. Their purposes differ—some for exams, some for research, perhaps some to tutor their children—but their reasons for listening are much the same: for one thing, they have forgotten almost everything they learned; for another, knowledge is updated so fast and its shelf life so short that what we learned is already obsolete and must be relearned. Through this period of study I have realized just how fast society and science move; once a person stops learning, he falls hopelessly behind the times.

I have even come to thank those inactive officials in our province. Had it not been for them, I probably would never have mustered the resolve to start over from junior-high material; after all, people are creatures of inertia. I also feel for researchers—it is truly hard work (unless, of course, they love what they do), because they must constantly update their understanding of the world.

Those of us in medicine really should, every five to ten years, systematically relearn the basic natural sciences. Medicine is the integrated application of the basic sciences; when the basic sciences advance, medicine changes profoundly. Even mastering all the latest scientific knowledge, more than half of diseases remain unsolved, but without learning, the unsolved problems multiply. TCM physicians also need to learn the latest science, because new knowledge lets us understand the mechanisms of TCM treatment more thoroughly and accurately. As Zhu Liangchun put it, to study TCM one must "expand the ancient meanings and integrate new knowledge."

We no longer live in an age when doctors grow more valuable with age. Medical progress can be described as a thousand miles a day; like other high-end technologies, it is developing without end. A doctor who grows old falls behind unless he keeps learning. But no matter how hard an elderly doctor works, his energy cannot match a young person's, and his grasp of new knowledge and skills cannot keep up with the younger generation. So in twenty years, doctors may, like programmers, become unwanted by the market once they reach a certain age. We need this sense of crisis to go further professionally and enjoy a longer career.

I am still the student I was. Once I settle down to study, my heart grows quiet, and life and the outside world barely touch me; I study alone, absorbed and delighted. In our age, learning resources are easy to find; if you can settle your mind, you can receive a good education at home over the internet. After all, no key school, however good, has as many excellent teachers as online classrooms.

Feeling oneself improve every day is a wonderful thing. Reading has been my lifelong love—from school to the National Library, from the library to my own study, from my study to my home; it is just a matter of changing the place where I read. If I succeed in retaking the university exam, it will just be finding another place to read. It looks like moving from one state to another, but it is all just a scholar's life. I married and raised children, built a home, and settled down amid my reading, without any of it interrupting the reading. If there is such a thing as a past life, mine must have accumulated much merit, so that in this life I can enjoy such a simple, beautiful, and interesting existence.

If I could get into a Beijing medical university—any one of them—I would not care how long the program took and would happily attend. Because once in Beijing, I could balance family life and continuing education; after class I could ride my bike home, and it would not matter when I graduated. Life is long; why rush to graduate? Life in the ivory tower is the purest and simplest of lives.

But the cutoff scores for Beijing's medical universities are all very high. My wife and I agreed that if my gaokao score reaches 500 or above, then another year of review might get me into a Beijing medical university, and I would stay home and review another year to try for Beijing. That way, aside from going back to my hometown to take the exam, I would basically not have to leave my family to study elsewhere. If the score gap is too large, I will tuck my tail, attend a junior college, finish quickly, and return to Beijing to rejoin my family as soon as possible. I will not consider any bachelor's program outside Beijing, because five years away from home is simply too long. I have a rich home library and live close to the National Library, so studying at home is not much worse than at a university.

In my student days I would often sit alone in the back corner of the classroom, not listening, not joining the horseplay, buried in my own books. My teachers let me skip class and study on my own, taking only the exams; they even tacitly allowed me not to come to the classroom, arranging a separate self-study space for me. So loneliness has long been my habit and norm.

I live a rich inner life in solitude and feel no loneliness. If we want to think deeply to the very essence of a problem, solitude is indispensable. Only in true solitude can one see things as they are and speak the most sincere words. I often feel that who I am now is simply a continuation of my student life. An unchanging life may seem dreary to many, but to me it contains a whole cosmos, rich and interesting.

A friend once asked me, how do you forget the sorrows and unhappiness of life? I told her: if there is joy, sorrow does not last long. That remark is like a Zen koan; it can only be said up to this point. Beyond this, words break off, and any further explanation is redundancy.