Packing My Bags and Setting Out Again, Rebuilding the Terrain of My Second Half of Life

The 2024 gaokao is nearly here. Over the last few days I have been packing my luggage, getting ready to sit the exam. This is my first time in a gaokao examination room in 26 years. In 1998 I was admitted to a national key engineering university, but I dropped out after a few months and chose to study on my own at the National Library.

This time my target is a medical university in Beijing. Of course getting in will not be easy, and I may not make it in a single year. But I have made up my mind: whether or not I need more time, I will prepare seriously, and once admitted, I will study through to completion, taking no shortcuts and giving up halfway. Previously I had only wanted to attend an out-of-province junior college, but over the last year, by adjusting my life and clarifying the direction of my remaining years, I decided to try for a proper medical bachelor's degree.

Perhaps in another twenty-plus years I will take an exam in a science major — mathematics or physics. In high school I did best in math and physics, often scoring full marks; my math and physics teachers even thought I might one day become an outstanding mathematician or physicist. I did not follow that path in the end, but I still hold a strong interest in both subjects. My son has continued my unfinished dream by studying mathematics. Of the four major categories closely tied to the natural sciences — engineering, agriculture, medicine, and science — apart from agriculture, I want to study them all.

Before high school I was very playful. But once in high school, I was among the most diligent of my classmates. I got up at four or five every morning, washed, and went to the classroom to study. During breaks or after school, however noisy the classroom, I could sit quietly in a corner, studying single-mindedly, deaf to every external noise.

In my first year of high school, a teacher told me: "You don't need a teacher at all; you can acquire all knowledge through self-study, and perhaps more efficiently. You should try learning on your own; a student like you is actually held back by us teaching you." By the second year, all my teachers gave me special latitude, allowing me to skip class, arrange my own study, and just show up for exams.

I even took time off while other students were in class to help my parents run a small business, and no teacher stopped me. My family was truly too poor at the time; tuition and living expenses for my two brothers weighed heavily on my parents. So from age seven I helped with farm work and my parents' small business: at first farming and street vending, later helping my father deliver goods to small shops in nearby villages and collect payment.

This experience gave me very strong survival skills after entering society; like an amphibious animal, I adapt easily. My father did not deliberately train me this way; it was simply that our family was too poor and short on labor, so I had to lend a hand. How poor were we? Once when our school issued uniforms, my classmates went happily to pick theirs up, while I stood awkwardly on the playground because I had no money for the uniform fee. My classmates were kind enough to pool their pocket money on the spot and buy me one.

The first money my older brother earned through part-time work in college he used to buy me new clothes. At school I always wore my brother's hand-me-downs, ragged, with cloth shoes year-round; he worried I would feel inferior. My brother loves me deeply; the suffering he endured, he did not want me to endure again. Was I actually inferior at school? Looking back now, I was not.

Perhaps my academic performance and my way of carrying myself (I had a foolhardy sense of responsibility, always volunteering to get the whole class into trouble and take the blame) earned me the favor of teachers and classmates, so I did not feel inferior because of poverty. But I did feel great pressure: back then I was a bit vain, always wanting to keep my leading grades for fear of losing face if I dropped, and my peak exam scores were ones even I myself could barely reproduce. So I put too much pressure on myself.

As a child I always thought I was a dull kid, because from first to third grade I was basically always at the bottom of the class. Back then my older brother was almost always first; the two brothers in different grades at the same school formed a huge contrast. When I was middle-aged, I once joked with my father, asking whether my mother and he had at the time thought I was not cut out for books, had given up on me, and planned to let me grow up to do eel-fishing kind of work.

My father told me seriously that he had never thought that, but had prepared from the start for both me and my brother to attend college. He said that in my very first semester, he had asked my first teacher whether I was dull — this teacher later became my brother-in-law (my wife's own second uncle). My first teacher told my father that my intelligence was no less than my brother's, only perhaps my awakening came later.

The year before last, as this first teacher and brother-in-law lay dying, I went to his bedside to treat him. He told me the same thing: the day you started school, your father came to ask me whether you were book material; I told him you were bright and quick, no less than your brother, even more so, only that because you loved play, your awakening would come late. It seems my father spoke the truth.

I am now deeply grateful for my mother's tolerance. I was so playful as a child, and she bore with it. When my father punished me and my brother disciplined me, she shielded me. As a child I really played my fill, so now I no longer crave play the way I did then. I still have many hobbies, but all in moderation; I can spontaneously direct most of my energy toward the work I love. I think it is because I played so thoroughly as a child that I no longer hanker for it now.

When I was small, whatever I played at, I was utterly absorbed, forgetting food and sleep. I still remember that the thing my mother did most was, after cooking, to shout at the top of her voice through the village for me to come home to eat. She would drawl, "My little one (because I was her youngest son; "xi de" in the Huanggang dialect means youngest son) —, come home for dinner —."

My mother's call often echoes in my ears; that unhurried summons could heal every wound in my heart. How I long to hear my mother call me again, but I never will. My mother made me deeply believe that no matter how much the world did not love me, she loved and accepted me, and that gave me the courage not to care about others' unfriendliness.

My son was the same way as a child. This kid's hobbies were even more numerous than mine, and once engaged he was utterly absorbed; he still is — he plays card games well enough for the national team. Occasionally I urge him not to be so absorbed, but mostly I let him be. Mental maturity comes early or late; play is also an important way to develop the brain, and it may be far more efficient than rote studying at school. If my mother had not supported my play the way she did, I doubt I would have achieved such strong academic results in late adolescence.

Immersion in all kinds of play in childhood is a highly efficient way to train attention. My mother said that when I fished as a child I stood like a zhanzhuang practitioner, eyes fixed on the float, motionless; she laughed at how focused I was. She would joke with others: my little one fishes with such gusto, but the fish he catches all have eyes on their tails (a colloquialism for tiny fish). Others catch many big fish; his catch, paired with a basin of chilies, is just enough for one pan-fry.

By late adolescence, my studying had extremely high focus. Other classmates were easily distracted, but I could be completely immersed in my own world, undisturbed by inner emotion or external noise. This kind of learning is highly efficient, especially for subjects requiring complex thinking. Perhaps that is why my math and physics were so strong.

My mother did not dump wave after wave of emotional outbursts on me for being playful and unserious; she always watched me with love, even some doting, as I was happy, and she herself was happy beside me. This approach left me with little timidity and few bad emotions. I did not know before what such a mother meant, but watching how so many young mothers today discipline and scold their children, I realize that the greatest luck of my life was having such a mother.

My father is prone to anxiety, while my mother is easily happy. When financial pressure was high, my father would sigh and then blame me for being heartless and goofy, which irritated him further. My mother stood with me; she had a knack of "I cannot worry for you, and you cannot be happy for me" — she was immune to others' sighs and uninfluenced by their emotions.

I remember one time, short of money, my parents argued a little. In a huff, my mother simply borrowed some capital from her sisters, shouldered a carrying pole with two baskets, and went from village to house collecting eggs; once she had a load, she carried them to the county market to sell. She earned a fen or two per egg, but back then a fen or two was not trivial: an ice pop was five fen, a pack of cigarettes ten cents.

That is how my mother found a way to put food on the table. She was not afraid of difficulty; when difficulty arose, she found a way rather than sighing and fretting, and she did not hold on to much negative emotion. I have fully inherited this attitude toward life. My older brother once said that though I am impulsive, I have super-strong drive: when I want to do something, I do it, cleanly and without dragging my feet. Actually this drive comes from my mother, and I look very much like her.

My mother and I are similar in other ways too. She was an early-to-bed, early-to-rise person; her head hit the pillow and she was asleep, up by four or five in the morning. I am the same: falling asleep is as simple as a baby's — within a minute of my head touching the pillow — and I get up without dragging my feet. Spring, summer, autumn, or winter, I have always risen between three and four — only delayed for a few months after the car accident. The brain did sustain some damage; rising too early or reading too long gave me headaches and worsened my memory, symptoms that have only recently fully resolved.

Every morning after rising I read and do housework, unshaken for decades. By the time everyone else is getting up one after another, I have already finished my morning reading and chores and am into a new round of busyness. My mother never procrastinated; she was always quick-handed, doing a chore the moment she saw it, and so am I. This habit of "finishing the day's business on the day" leaves me with almost no anxiety. Many people are anxious because they have a pile of unfinished work and no courage to do it.

I now know that the key to doing a thing well lies in this focus and drive; people strong in both work more efficiently. My mother was illiterate, yet she forged in me powerful focus and drive. Had she been a mother full of negative emotion and nagging, I would be a child easily distracted and melancholy; had she not been quick-handed, I might not be so quick-handed myself.

My plan for my remaining years seems to many almost impossible, but only I know that, given my nature, if I do not die young, I will eventually complete every life plan I set. I have kept writing since the first year of middle school, now at age 45, without interruption for no reason. The reason I can persist so steadily is certainly my love of writing, but beyond that, a series of good habits my mother instilled are at work.

I am dissatisfied with most of what I write, but perhaps one in ten or one in twelve pieces is worth something. In my life I will probably produce tens of millions of words; in old age I will select about one in ten for editing and publication. Perhaps after I die, these books will sit on bookstore or library shelves, and some readers will still be interested. A responsible author should not pad his output with literary garbage and publish it as a book, which would exhaust readers. So a responsible author needs a sense of proportion and to automatically clear away the literary garbage he produces.

Even in middle age, do not fear setting out again. When the time is right, pack your bags, keep moving forward, and rebuild your own terrain. Born a human, without this qi that can coalesce one's strength, one cannot muster the spirit to live well.

After writing this article, I will head off to my gaokao examination room. This gaokao may well be just a warm-up, but once this starting pistol fires, I will head resolutely into the next phase of my life plan. From June 5 to June 10 I may pause all work and may not update articles.