On Qixi Night: Grateful for My Parents' Upbringing

The Qixi Festival, when everyone shows off their love, also happens to be my mother's birthday. The date is so special that I could not forget it even if I tried. Every Qixi, I miss my mother deeply, her image filling my mind. Although she has been gone for nearly ten years, her voice, face, and smile remain as clear as if she were still before me.

I remember how my mother fed the pigs and chickens. She treated our livestock like people; while feeding them, she loved to chat with the pigs and hens as if they understood her.

My mother was a rural woman who loved life and always found joy in it. I have inherited this trait almost completely, and can always find something delightful in daily life.

My mother was skilled at raising pigs and chickens. Her pigs were white and plump, and her hens were fat. Our animals could not understand her words, yet they were very attached to her.

Whenever it was feeding time, the animals would gather around her—the pigs grunting and the hens clucking loudly. She would shout back: "Don't rush, don't rush! There's enough for you all—what's all the fuss?"

We children were just as attached to her. In the evenings, the whole family would gather around the stove, centered on Mother, preparing dinner together. Some tended the fire, some picked vegetables, some chatted; Mother presided over the wok. It was the happiest moment of the day.

Country life had little evening entertainment. Once dusk fell, the light faded and everyone retreated to their own kitchens, waiting for dinner while recounting the day's news, bursting now and then into happy laughter. Perhaps it was similar in every household; the housewife became the pillar of the home at that hour.

If time could turn back, I would wish to return to childhood, living a leisurely village life among crowing cocks and curling smoke, never letting my parents toil and run about for our "grand future."

Hubei was hot. As soon as summer vacation began, everyone in our village would carry bamboo beds out of their homes and sleep in the open wherever there was good ventilation. We slept like that all summer. Many families placed their bamboo beds together; before falling asleep at night, people chatted with one another, and it was lively. I do not know whether this was the custom only in eastern Hubei or across the whole province, but I loved it.

Rural parents never fretted the way urban parents do when their children sleep in. During summer break, every household's children slept late; parents knew that extra sleep was what growing bodies needed. The menfolk went to the fields at dawn, the women went to the river to wash clothes, and most of the children large and small stayed in bed. Except for the older boys who were crazy about fishing and rose early to angle by the river, everyone else slept until they woke naturally. There were no cram schools, and no one checked whether we did our homework.

My parents were among the more education-minded rural folk, yet even they never supervised my studies; other parents cared even less. We were truly a fortunate generation, largely growing up freely, with no one forcing us to study with furrowed brows.

I almost never finished my summer or winter vacation homework on time. My fourth uncle had an enormous collection of novels; once vacation began, I would either curl up with his novels or go fishing, and my uncle never once scolded us nephews. By the time I was in middle school, my Chinese teacher lamented that his own reading volume was less than mine. I owed this to two book-lovers in the family—my fourth uncle and my elder brother—whose books I read.

My mother never worried about my studies; it simply never occurred to her to control us. On summer mornings, she would rise around five, wash and dress, then go to the vegetable garden to pick greens and to the river to wash clothes, returning to cook breakfast. Only after she had made breakfast would we dismantle the bedding on our bamboo beds, carry the beds in, and come eat.

After breakfast, our parents went to work in the fields. During the busy farming seasons we helped them; when there was little work, they let us play on our own or stay home to do homework, refusing to let us labor in the fields for fear of tiring us. (As if any of us actually did homework—we wasted our best hours playing.)

In those days I loved fishing. After breakfast I would dig up earthworms, then dash off to the river to fish for hours on end. I was utterly focused; though my fishing skill was always terrible, I would stay out until I refused to come home for meals. When my mother went out to work, she sometimes brought me food, sometimes came to the riverbank to drag me home to eat before letting me return.

Spending far more time fishing than others, I still only caught a third or a quarter of what others did. Yet my appalling skill never dampened my enthusiasm—proof of how much fishing delighted me. I am grateful my mother did not take that freedom away.

Though I was a poor angler, I was outstanding at catching fish by hand; no adult or child in our village could match me. Every afternoon after four or five, when we bathed in the pond or river, I would feel for fish in the stone crevices along the bank or in the grass. I always caught quite a few, so fish never left our summer dinner table.

I was not afraid of the snakes and soft-shelled turtles in the stone crevices; though they had bitten me, I was reckless and simply did not take them seriously. That is how bold I was as a child.

To city folk, parents like mine would seem utterly irresponsible about their children's education. Yet my brother and I, from primary through high school, were often top of our class. My brother was the city's top scorer on the national college entrance exam. In high school, when hundreds of schools across Hubei held joint exams, I also ranked among the very best; within our own school I long swept every first place, scoring full or near-full marks in every subject, even solving the toughest finale problems.

I do not mean to boast about my brother's and my past. Coming in first was never such a big deal; by worldly standards, we have not done especially well since leaving school, while at school we carried the heavy pressure of always being number one. I only mean to show that my parents understood education. They had just two sons, but I believe had they had more, they would have raised those children well too.

So I have long been skeptical of the educational philosophies of parents in first-tier cities like Beijing and Shanghai. Most urban parents never think of respecting their children's nature; they ruthlessly squeeze every hour of the child's time, as if children need never play.

I have seen too many children develop depression. My work has given me many chances to witness unhappy lives, and I can only sympathize from the heart, because their parents truly do not understand what real education is.

Not one of my childhood friends has depression, though not many of us went to college—in our time getting into university was hard and admission rates were much lower than today. Later, when universities expanded enrollment, it became far easier. I personally think our sound psychological health has a lot to do with the fact that we rural children were not over-controlled and played fully at the age when playing matters.

My parents were truly lax and casual with us. Though my high-school entrance exam result was disappointing, I still entered the city's second-best high school. After much deliberation, my parents sent me instead to the worst high school in town. My father said living costs there were lowest and the financial pressure smallest. I imagine today's parents would be astonished, eyes nearly popping out of their heads, to hear such a thing.

Early in my first year of high school, our class went several days without a teacher. The reason was simple: my teachers had been rounded up by police raiding an illegal gambling game. They had played mahjong all night together and been caught in a joint operation by the education authority and the police. For the few days before they were released, we had to study on our own.

At such a school, with such teachers, I still managed to place first in a joint exam of several city high schools that first year. At the time I had also brawled with the school's toughs and wanted to transfer. When leaders from other high schools heard, they came to my home to persuade my parents, offering to let me transfer to their schools with full tuition waived plus a scholarship to cover living expenses.

I transferred in my second year and spent the last two years of high school on the school's top scholarship. Without those scholarships, my parents would probably have kept me at the school they considered cheapest. Their creed was that a child's studies depend only on himself, not on his surroundings: if he is a scholar, he will get into a good university anywhere; if he is not, no school, however good, will help.

Today I admire my parents' steadiness. Though they hoped I would get into university, escape the countryside, and change my fate, they never acted like Beijing parents who go crazy over school choice. On such matters they never fretted. My mother especially—I remember so many things about her, yet I cannot recall her ever worrying once about my studies.

I must admit I have inherited their educational philosophy. This year my son took his high-school entrance exam. He fervently hoped to enter the High School Affiliated to Peking University, and he had the potential. But before the exam he was obsessed with video games, and because of COVID-19 he could not attend school and had to take online classes at home—during which he kept playing games. I saw this but said nothing, merely watching coldly. Repression does not work; forcing him to stop would only backfire.

With an adolescent, I simply waited for him to take a big fall and complete his own psychological growth. From what I know, once a boy's mind matures and he enters high school, he unleashes an unimaginable burst of energy—I was myself. I did not care at all how my son scored on the entrance exam or whether he got into a famous school like the Affiliated High of Renmin University or Peking University.

My son did poorly and failed to get into the Affiliated High of Peking University, and wilted on the spot. But the result was not actually bad: it was more than ten points above the cutoff for Haidian's quality high schools, and he entered one of the district's top-ten key schools.

When he was low, I talked to him about my own school years. I told him that throughout middle school, while his classmates were being whipped into a frenzy, I not only did not send him to cram school but required him to be in bed by ten; he could finish homework if he managed, and if not, so be it. I also rarely forbade him from playing. I believe that once he has played fully, taken his falls, and woken up, he will begin striving on his own when the age comes, with huge room to grow. There is no need to be discouraged by an imperfect entrance exam.

I believe that after setbacks he will rise up and strive; the power of such self-generated effort is astonishing. If this educational philosophy is a gamble, then I am willing to accept the loss. His grandparents raised us this way, and now I raise him this way.

I am positive and optimistic, and that owes much to the abundant love my mother gave me. That I have been able to live naturally until now also owes much to my parents' laissez-faire attitude. Many people mistakenly think children will automatically learn to live happily once they finish the college entrance exam and enter university. This belief is completely wrong: the ability to live happily must also be trained from childhood.

Moreover, I personally think it is the single most important ability in a person's life—far more important than getting into a good university. This ability can only be cultivated young; if joy is taken away in childhood, many people will never be happy.

Physiologically, the dopamine that governs human pleasure, like the body's circadian rhythm, is hard to change once its pattern is set. The many teenage suicides each year are blamed on the internet's bad influence, which entirely misses the essence of the problem.

I have a patient with ovarian cancer who last year brought her son to my study to talk. The boy, having entered university, discovered he loved a different major and wanted to drop out, retake the college entrance exam, and get into the university and major of his choice. I eagerly supported him and urged this trusted patient (and the boy's maternal grandfather, also my patient) not to fret, but to be happy that the child had found his own interest.

After this year's entrance exam, the woman told me her child had successfully entered his ideal university. This news pleased me more than the good response we achieved in treating her illness. I love seeing young people pursue their studies and live according to their own wishes—that is true happiness.

Humans are worse than flies. A fly is said to chase stench, yet it spends its whole life pursuing what it loves, even if that thing is a pile of dung. Humans may not be so lucky: most people are repressed and squeezed dry while still young, losing their passion for life before they reach adulthood.

Alas! For the sake of a fleeting head start, how many people have lost an inherently interesting soul? Life is long. Why rush for an instant? Is it not better to enjoy the years peacefully and wait for the flowers to bloom?