Mid-Autumn Plus National Day: 13 Days Off in Total

This year the Mid-Autumn Festival and National Day fall close together, and many universities nationwide are giving a connected 13-day holiday. Our school's leaders have generously followed suit. When the holiday notice went out, the whole campus celebrated, and train tickets were snapped up in an instant.

I wish every reader a happy holiday and a joyous, harmonious, and prosperous time with family!

I took the train back to Beijing on the night of September 24 and will spend the next 13-day long holiday at home in Beijing. I will be with my family, help my child recover his health, and try to avoid various after-effects.

Only just under a month into term, and already such a long holiday—how happy. I have to say that, compared with when I worked, university life now is truly comfortable, with more than enough holidays.

But the month after the holiday will not be so comfortable: every Saturday in October is made up as a workday to recover the hours lost to the break. So our October weekends have only a single day off, not a double weekend. Each weekend I can only go home Saturday evening and must return to campus after lunch on Sunday, so I cannot arrange any in-person meetings on October weekends.

During the holiday I will spend good time with and care for my family, and put some work into my vegetable plot. Before I started school my garden already looked unkempt; after full-time study it has grown even more disorderly. Over the summer I planted some cabbage and radishes, and also sowed some onion seeds; the onion seedlings are growing well now and can be transplanted.

Growing my own vegetables both exercises the body, adds joy to life, and avoids buying formaldehyde-tainted cabbage—three benefits at once, well worth it. This holiday I want to tidy up my small garden and plant some other over-wintering vegetables.

I have been growing vegetables in Beijing for seven years; since I started, our home has never lacked fresh seasonal greens. But the varieties I grow are still not varied enough, and I grow too many of each kind, so that when the vegetables ripen there is always more than we can eat. I need to plan better, expand the range of varieties, and reduce the quantity of each to better meet the family's needs.

Farming and reading take up much of my energy; when one is busy, one has few worries. Without garbage emotions, life easily enters a virtuous cycle, and my life is mostly in that state.

I always tell my family that I have been very happy in this life: I married the wife I wanted, lived the kind of life I wanted, and pursued the goals I wanted to pursue. If I leave them one day before they do, I hope they will not grieve for me, because I have fully enjoyed what I love, have no regrets, and am satisfied with my life.

I have a very clear plan for my coming decades (if I live that long), and am now simply carrying it out in an orderly way. By age 55 at the latest, I will be a grassroots doctor licensed to prescribe both Chinese and Western medicine, as well as a medical researcher and science popularizer. In some beautiful, green spot in the Beijing suburbs, with my family, I will live a life of both farming and study. However the world may change, I will meet change with constancy.

I graduate in less than two years, and in these two years I want to savor this quiet, beautiful life. While at school I enjoy the pleasure of learning; on holidays I enjoy being reunited with family and celebrating together.

The Buddhist phrase "free from worry and free from fear" is the greatest compassion a middle-aged person can show themselves.