Nostalgia for My Days Spent Immersed in the National Library

On Saturday after dinner, I went to the National Library as I used to. The main hall of the new National Library building was under renovation and had been cordoned off, making the scene look a little unfamiliar. I had not been inside the National Library for a while; this weekend, being home, I could not resist dropping by.

My former "regular seat" — the one I had once occupied almost every day — had a new occupant. Many new faces had appeared in the library, a fresh batch of high school students preparing for the college entrance exam, wearing uniforms of nearby elite high schools such as Renmin University High School, Peking University High School and Beijing Institute of Technology High School. Readers at the National Library span every age group, but they share one trait: most have very strong self-discipline. The vast library was packed, yet it was utterly silent. Whether in the reading rooms, the hall or the restrooms, no one made noise or smoked; this scene is rarely seen on a university campus.

If one did not compare with other places, all this might seem mundane to us readers long accustomed to the National Library. But now that I have gone to college in a small city, after half a month in that environment I deeply feel how precious the National Library's setting is, and I can understand why certain fellow patients have been personally fond of me. Indeed, a minor good habit at the National Library can count as an outstanding quality elsewhere. Around the National Library are clusters of China's most famous universities and research institutes; the regular readers are basically the most studious people from those nearby institutions, so the quality of readers here is unusually high.

My schoolmates are a group of students who do not love learning but are compelled by necessity to study. They are intelligent, some with real talent, but their study habits are poor and they lack motivation and self-awareness. To ensure teaching quality, the school forcibly requires students to stay in the classroom for at least eight periods a day, whether or not they have class; they are not allowed to leave. This means nothing to students who love learning, but for those who do not it is sheer torture. Unfortunately, the vast majority of students admitted to this school do not much love learning; most are "second-generation medical students" pushed into medicine by their families. This discipline at least ensures that they do not waste their time too badly during school.

These students' living habits are also not great; they play games late into the night. During the ten-minute break, the restrooms are wreathed in smoke. In the past two weeks, the secondhand smoke I passively inhaled there exceeded the sum of all the secondhand smoke I had breathed in the greater part of my life before. Fortunately I eventually worked out some patterns and can now avoid that smoke-filled restroom. Every break I sprint to the restroom in the school library and then sprint back to the classroom, thereby dodging these chain smokers.

The National Library has already become an inseparable part of my life. I have lived near the National Library since coming to Beijing; over the past twenty or thirty years I have rarely left this area. Since leaving, I have truly longed day and night to return as soon as possible. If it were not to cross the threshold of Western medicine and lay a foundation for legally conducting comprehensive Chinese-Western clinical practice and research in my later years, I would not have left the National Library. I think it would be hard to find a second place in China with such an ideal learning atmosphere; it is both free and quiet.

But the National Library has no medical laboratories, no training building for medical students, no microscopes, no body donor teachers; medical experiments cannot be done there, and the National Library cannot grant me a medical diploma. So I still have to go to a medical school to complete degree education. Since I have chosen this path in life, I will grit my teeth and overcome these few years of hardship to complete this full-time education, come what may.

There are simply too many filler courses in universities, something I had not expected before entering college. Some filler-course teachers' classes are shallow, yet the people themselves are arrogant and self-important. After rambling in class, they also demand that we take their online courses, which have little to do with our major — pure waste of life. Before I went to college, several friends teaching at universities told me that, given my current knowledge structure, attending many university courses would be a waste of life; at the time I could not agree, but now I deeply agree.

These filler courses actually take up more than half of our timetable, and this situation is common across universities nationwide. Because of this, I am considering changing my study plan: halve my time on campus, get the diploma — that stepping stone to opening the door of Chinese-Western medicine — and then return to the National Library as soon as possible to devote myself full-time to more specialized research; any further degrees I will obtain through self-study exams.

Going to college also has many unexpected gains. This is my second time at university; many memories of my first time are still vivid. These post-2000s classmates are generally neither good at nor fond of group activities; they prefer playing games in the dorm and dislike outdoor sports. Since term began, we have not had a single group outing.

If the psychology teacher did not organize activities in class to get people interacting, these classmates might know only the names of their own roommates — in fact, some cannot even name their own roommates. These children grow up lonely and have generally grown accustomed to loneliness within it; they lack emotional connection with others, and may inevitably have some emotional problems in the future. If I had not gone to college this time, I would be completely unable to understand that my son's generation is in such a state.

I used to be unable to understand my son's hatred for filler courses; his school also has many, and he loathes every one. I truly cannot fathom that China's higher education has now sunk to such a degree. When I went to college last time, at least these filler courses were basically electives, taken only by students who needed credits and had some interest in them. Today they have basically become required courses; our education seems bent on driving students' aversion to learning to the extreme.

I am very popular in my class, because after I arrived I always tried to organize everyone into activities to help them get to know each other. Moreover, unlike them, I make a point of recording every newly-met classmate's name in a phone document and looking at it often, so I can soon call many classmates by name. When a person's name is spoken, he feels at least basic respect, and this helps build friendly relationships.

I think we should value the emotional education of the next generation and cultivate them as well-rounded people, not as exam machines. Even today many parents are still forcing their children into exam machines, leaving the children fed up with both study and life and producing all kinds of psychological and emotional problems.

My psychology teacher told me at the very first class that this course was too elementary for her; she said that if I had other study plans, I could use her class time to do what I wanted. But I declined; I felt her classroom activities were well designed and there was much for me to learn.

She is helping a group of children the same age as my son; I too want to learn from this classroom the skills of dealing with my son's generation. The psychological state of these children is very different from that of our generation at their age; we cannot simply project our own life experience onto them and engage in ineffective and unhelpful communication. I believe that, after graduation, I will be far better than most of my peers at communicating with the next generation.

I believe that every change in life is a necessary arrangement of fate; when it arranges things this way, it is bound to bring us some new enlightenment. Right now I have stepped out of my comfort zone, but this experience may make my future life more meaningful.