Life Is a Wonderous Spiritual Journey

Doctor zhou November 15, 2020

I was born in a village surrounded by mountains in eastern Hubei. Our village was large—said to be the third-largest in our county, and the largest village in the whole county settled by a single clan; the other large villages were made up of several surnames, while ours had no outsiders. The houses and fields of the village formed a broad plain, but from the highest point in the village, looking in any direction, you could see the encircling mountains, and two rivers ran through the village. For thousands of years, my ancestors had multiplied and thrived on this land.

As a child I was intensely curious; I would sometimes spend the better part of a whole day watching how bees gather nectar, or carefully observe how ants live, and I was full of interest in how tadpoles grow step by step into frogs. In our countryside, children interested in such questions were laughed at by the adults as fools, because they thought these things were not worth studying.

I remember that in sixth grade of primary school, I even took the head teacher's young son with me to the rapeseed fields to catch bees; after catching them we kept them in glass bottles, then observed every detail of the bees through the glass. My teacher criticized me for not attending to my proper studies, scolded me thoroughly, and forbade me from doing such things again.

At that time I was also full of interest in how groundwater comes about, so I kept digging pit-wells behind our primary school. I do not know how this later became a game everyone loved; because of my lead, we dug hundreds of pit-wells, large and small, on the hill behind our school, and we finally even dug up a biogas pit that had been deeply buried and abandoned for many years. The adults were terrified that we might have an accident, so afterward, after school, a teacher would stand guard on the hill behind the school to stop us digging there.

In the Hubei countryside, winter was very cold, and there was no heating indoors. When I was small, our classroom leaked wind from every side; the windows were pasted over with newspaper or plastic, which did not keep the wind out at all. So in winter, attending class in the classroom was a real ordeal.

Fortunately, the floor of our classroom was earthed—the village school was too poor to afford a cement floor. So I took matters into my own hands, dug a pit under my seat, found a sheet of iron myself, and covered the pit with it. Then I brought some chaff and charcoal from home, lit the fire before class, and covered it with the iron plate; that way, while listening to the lesson, I could rest my feet over the fire pit and be much warmer. Later everyone did the same; the teacher felt it was understandable and not very dangerous, so he did not forbid it.

The teachers at our village school were all elders from the village who had attended junior or senior high school; not one had received specialized pedagogical training, and their teaching level was very limited. But the greatest advantage of being born in the countryside was that we could be in close contact with everything in nature. We did not need to read *Souvenirs Entomologiques*; we could directly catch all kinds of insects in the wild and play with them, and observe for ourselves the morphological features and habits of insects. Through all four seasons, we could observe the whole process of plants sprouting, growing, flowering and bearing fruit, and then the flowers falling and the leaves dropping.

We could also invent all kinds of toys and games ourselves. There were slopes everywhere in the village; we turned the long benches from our homes upside down, the seat facing the ground and the legs pointing to the sky, rode on the bench, grabbed the legs with our hands, and slid down the slope—that was our slide. Of course this game had a certain danger; I myself was bruised in one sliding game, and a scar remains to this day at the corner of my left eye.

The wild plants, insects, and butterflies were all our natural toys. We went about in groups of three or five, playing all over the village. Each of us was a little inventor, able to devise all sorts of ways to play, never tiring of it. My little companions must also remember some of their own childhood innovations.

Now, recalling the events of my childhood, I always marvel at how inconceivable life is. From early childhood we were full of curiosity about the external world; this natural ability to observe and learn can even be seen in animals. The world holds many mysteries that draw us to explore them, and time slips by imperceptibly in this exploration.

How happy children are; their curiosity drives them to take an interest in everything, never tiring of life. I often think how wonderful it would be if human life could remain in such a state. We move from ignorance to a little knowledge of the world, and from a little knowledge to knowing more and more. So-called growth is understanding principles we could not understand before, recognizing laws we could not recognize before, and mastering skills we did not possess before. If a person were to devote the great majority of his energy throughout his life to this process of growth, what a joyful thing that would be!

In the 1980s, China was generally materially impoverished. The life of most rural families was not much different from that lived by Chinese peasants for thousands of years. In my childhood, electricity had not yet come to the village; at night we lit kerosene lamps for light. To save kerosene, we usually finished dinner very early, and as soon as it was dark we were already in bed.

Only later did electricity gradually arrive. At first everyone used it just for lighting; each household had a few electric bulbs. These bulbs could only cast a dim, feeble yellow light, nothing like today's lamps that can brighten a room as if it were daylight. When I was in the upper grades of primary school, the village got its first black-and-white television set. On summer evenings, that neighbor would put his TV at his doorway and play it; almost all the young people of the village gathered at his door to watch, three layers deep on the inside and three on the outside, bustling with excitement.

Such a rarity as television did not occupy the main place in our spiritual life. The village elders loved watching operas; at every festival, most large villages would invite an opera troupe to perform village plays, and after one village finished, another would take its turn. We children were not that absorbed in watching the opera, but we had a natural fondness for the excitement. Besides, under the stage there were many peddlers selling all sorts of fun and tasty things; some peddlers even sold picture-story books, and there was a game of shooting balloons with a toy gun. So we would not miss such a lively occasion. The little pocket money we had saved up was thus taken away by the peddlers.

But for most of the year, we could not look forward to such good days. Our daily spiritual life could only be satisfied by books; many village homes had all sorts of wonderful novels, and these novels were always read until the pages yellowed and the edges curled, still passing from one person's hand to another's.

My fourth uncle's family had the most books; his collection was a grade higher than others'. Other families mostly had all sorts of wuxia and romance novels, some even pornographic. The books at my fourth uncle's were the likes of *Water Margin*, *Romance of the Three Kingdoms*, *Dream of the Red Chamber*, *Journey to the West*, *The Seven Heroes and Five Gallants*, *The Scholars*, *Guwen Guanzhi (Guanded Ancient Prose)*, and *Strategies of the Warring States*. In summer I did not like reading and preferred fishing, but in other seasons I liked going to my fourth uncle's house to get books most of the time. We were really too bored, with no other entertainment, so I do not know how many times I read through these books at my fourth uncle's—so much so that even now I still remember some of the words in them.

My elder brother also grew to love books under my fourth uncle's influence. Every New Year, when our parents gave us lucky money, my brother and I got the same amount. As soon as we received it, my brother would at once persuade me to gamble with him, and I always lost all my lucky money to him on the evening of New Year's Eve. Then I would cry and demand it back from him, complaining to our father that my brother had won my lucky money away. My father would tell my brother to give my lucky money back, but my brother always refused; when pressed to return it, he would dart out the door and ignore us. My father, at a loss, would then say to me: "Who told you to be so silly as always to gamble with your brother? You lose your lucky money to him every year, and still you learn no lesson."

My brother's greatest hobby was saving money to buy books. Every time he went to the town or the county seat, he would take his saved pocket money—part of which he had won from me—and buy a pile of literary classics to bring home. I cannot remember how many books he bought; his books were everywhere in our house. When I was in the upper grades of primary school and he was in junior high, the books he bought—*Gone with the Wind*, *Oliver Twist*, *Jane Eyre*, *The Three Musketeers*, *Eugenie Grandet*, *Pere Goriot*, *Madame Bovary*, *The Complete Works of Shakespeare*, and others—filled several chests in our home. My father always scolded my brother for wasting money and for buying not "proper books"; at that time our exam-oriented education did not encourage us to read so many extracurricular books. My brother later became the top liberal-arts scorer in our region in the college entrance exam, which had a great deal to do with this hobby. When he graduated from junior high, he had bought nearly most of the world literary classics then available in the bookstores of our county.

I read the all kinds of books my brother bought every day, immersed in the world of literature. At that time I had an ideal: to become a man of letters when I grew up. In the first year of junior high, I myself founded a literary society in my class; unfortunately, the Chinese teacher at our rural middle school strongly disapproved of such a non-study endeavor and forcibly disbanded the literary society I had organized. Of course, in recent years our former junior-high teachers have kept up with the times; I suppose that if a student at such a young age now spontaneously organized a literary society, they would mostly regard him as a rare promising talent.

My brother bought far too many books to dare bring them home at ordinary times; only during winter and summer vacations did he secretly bring them back. He calculated the timing of his return carefully, slipping back only when our father was out. Each time he carried a woven plastic sack full of all kinds of literary works. He hid the books himself, thinking that no one but the two of us could discover them.

In fact my father was a very shrewd man; he had secretly read both the books his two sons bought and the diaries they wrote—and how did I know? Once, when I was in high school, I caught my father secretly reading my diary at home. He did not even make a sound; even when he discovered that I was dating, he did not say a word, as if he truly had never known anything about my privacy. So at the time we thought our father was stern and stingy, but looking back now, my father was actually a rather tolerant and wise man. He always observed us silently but rarely interfered with our growth.

Just as I was immersed in my literary dream, one day my brother came back and said to me: "Little brother, I no longer look up to literature. Life is only shadows, and literature is nothing but the shadow of that shadow." At that time I was still rather conceited about the articles I wrote, but my brother already scorned them. He mocked me, saying: "The best essays under heaven belong to my hometown; the essays of my hometown belong to my younger brother; and I help my younger brother revise his essays."

At the final exam of the first year of high school, I was strong in both the arts and sciences; I did extremely well in every subject, with no lop-sided tendency. When it came to dividing arts and science classes in the second year of high school, I leaned toward continuing my literary dream, but my brother firmly opposed it. He was then a freshman in college, and told me that, having studied the liberal arts himself, his greatest feeling was that the liberal arts were utterly useless—though he has since realized how extreme he was back then. He said, little brother, your physics and chemistry are so good; it would be a waste not to study science. Back then I had only chosen the liberal arts because my chemistry was truly too poor. My brother influenced me more than my father did, and my father also listened to him, so I listened to him and chose science.

When I was in the second year of high school, studying under my beloved teacher, he happened to guide me toward the deeper humanities and social sciences—philosophy, psychology, religion, and sociology. My inner growth also reached a new stage; at the time I truly felt that literary books were too childish to read, so I increasingly enjoyed reading works that required thinking.

The books in my teacher's home were far more numerous than my brother's, and his experience was also richer; so, according to my situation, he provided me with a large number of books. Every so often he would select from his collection some books he thought suitable for me to read and give them to me. At that time, whenever I saw him carrying a large stack of books into the classroom, I got excited, because those books were basically all carried to my desk. Most of the time he said nothing at all; he just put the books on my desk and left. He would also give a book or two to other classmates, but he gave me the most—always three or five each time, sometimes even a dozen. When I finished a book, I would voluntarily return it to him.

Thanks to my teacher's guidance, I could also continuously engage in intellectual clashes with my brother, who was already in college. I cannot remember how many books my teacher lent me in all; I should think it was hundreds to a thousand. Every week he gave me a batch or two, each time a large stack. I could not actually finish them all, but my teacher never required me to read so many books. To be precise, at the time he simply kept bringing me books on his own, without ever making any demand of me. A few times I damaged or lost his books; I felt terrible, and when I told my teacher, he did not care at all. If I really loved a certain book and accidentally lost it, he would buy another copy and bring it to me to read.

Looking back now at the books my teacher selected for me, I realize that basically they had all been carefully chosen. When I read some of them, I could only describe the feeling as ecstatic. When I read Zhuangzi at the time, I imitated Zhuangzi's writing; when I read Liu Shahe's books, I imitated Liu Shahe. My reading and writing later reached an almost obsessive state, sometimes writing several thousand to ten thousand characters in a single day. After finishing, I would show what I had written to my teacher; he would occasionally offer a word or two of comment, but most of the time he neither approved nor disapproved.

I only remember that for a while I especially loved writing articles in ornate language; after reading them, my teacher said to me that it is better to write plainly, and that the essays of true masters are always approachable. After that he brought me many books written in very plain language for me to read. My present writing style can be said to be the result of my teacher's careful guidance. He especially advocated natural writing, so whenever he saw me imitating some deliberately abstruse or overly florid language, he would promptly correct me.

At that time my grades were excellent; I ranked first in every subject, and I wrote essays well, so that almost every exam my composition was used as a model essay for the whole school. The teachers in other classes also especially liked me; all teachers wish to nurture the finest talents under heaven, so the Chinese teachers in other classes were also glad to lend me books, and the math teachers in other classes were willing to set me difficult problems or discuss them with me. A teenager of sixteen or seventeen can indeed easily become arrogant under the doting favor of so many people.

My teacher saw all this, and always, beneath my compositions or when I took the initiative to chat with him, would seize the moment to remind me to hide my light under a bushel and not to show my edge too sharply, telling me that those who stand out are easily broken. What a rare and admirable teacher! Meeting such a teacher in life is the greatest good fortune. Not to be overly modest, many of the books I read in high school were ones that the great majority of people with a liberal-arts background might never have the chance to read in a lifetime—not because I was especially clever, but because I was lucky enough to meet such a good teacher, who saved me from many detours in my reading.

For most people, after finishing high school, the rudiments of their life are already set. Because in the life that follows, our path is basically chosen by ourselves. But people's horizons differ, and so the choices they make differ utterly. The broader one's horizon, the wider the range of one's choices. My own life choices were bound up with my teacher; it was he who let me see a vaster spiritual world.

In the works of many scholars I have seen them repeatedly mention the most important teacher they met in their youth; such a teacher has an enormous influence on their whole life. So I did not pay much attention to my son's primary and junior-high education, but I attached great importance to his high-school education. On the one hand, I hoped he would meet a good teacher; on the other, I influenced him with my own learning and with the rich collection of books in my home.

I buy a great many books, in almost every category; the collection in my home has already surpassed my teacher's in number and is richer in variety than his. The ancients said: "If a pupil's insight surpasses his teacher, he is fit to transmit it; if his insight equals his teacher's, he is only half the man." Every teacher hopes that his students will surpass him, as blue comes from the indigo plant. Times progress, and human knowledge changes day by day; each generation should surpass the one before it, so that society may advance. So I also try to guide my children and students with a broader vision than my teacher had. Last year I told my students that my study was open to them; if they wished to come here to read, they could browse and borrow the books in my study. The children were overjoyed to hear it. In their eyes, I as a teacher am very knowledgeable, but I believe that in future they will be even more knowledgeable than I.

After leaving high school, the teaching model of the great majority of Chinese universities held little attraction for me. I am a pure idealist; I chose to drop out of university and read freely at the National Library, and I read there for more than twenty years. But by this stage, books on philosophy and religion no longer could kindle my enthusiasm. I began to develop a strong interest in anthropology and the life sciences, and I devoted a great deal of time to the study of the human body, mind, and behavior. I do not know whether these two disciplines are the ultimate disciplines about human beings, but perhaps in my lifetime they are. In future, as human knowledge grows further, other, more fascinating disciplines about human beings may arise, but for now these two are enough for me to study for a lifetime.

My literary dream has faded from my heart for many years. My tireless writing is no longer the pursuit of a literary dream; it has simply become a way of life deep in my bones. I immerse myself in the world of genes, in the world of disease, in the exploration of the human body and the human spirit, so absorbed in joy that I forget my worries and feel not the passage of time. Just as in childhood, when I observed the every move of bees in the rapeseed flowers, this exploratory spirit born of human instinct is the source of my joy—it was in the past, it is now, and it will be in the future.

In my life, the proportion of material possessions and entertainment is almost negligible; I live in a pure spiritual journey, and I feel it is a wondrous spiritual journey. I feel that I am still just a child who has not grown up, always full of curiosity about this world; those phenomena I have not yet understood and those problems I have not yet solved always drive me to keep exploring.

I feel that all of humankind is actually in just such a state; from ancient times to today, human beings have lived on Earth without ever ceasing to explore. We truly do not know why the Creator is so wondrous, that it created human beings and yet lets them tirelessly struggle to understand the laws governing all things in nature. This is truly a thing too interesting, too worth having its principles uncovered.

Now that I have become a father and have the responsibility of educating my children, whenever I look back on my own growth, I feel that as long as we do not stifle this exploratory spirit that arises naturally in children, and provide as far as possible the materials and tools they need as they explore the world on their own, that is already enough. Every normal seed will sprout, and every normal child, driven by his inborn nature, will also undergo his own spiritual journey. As to whether this spiritual journey of their life is wondrous, that depends entirely on whether the growing space we provide them is satisfactory to them. Parents' interference is wholly harmful rather than useful.

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