Insights and Updates

On April 4, 2021, during the Qingming Festival, Dr. Wang Zhuorong, a 27-year-old physician at Tsinghua University Affiliated Changgung Hospital, died of a sudden cerebral accident. Wang was an eight-year-program MD graduate of Peking University Health Science Center who had just started work and was…

Serotonin (5-hydroxytryptamine) is an indole derivative, abbreviated 5-HT, with the chemical formula C10H12N2O, and is converted from tryptophan. It was first discovered in blood serum, hence the name serum tonin. Serotonin is widely present in mammalian tissues and is highly concentrated in the cerebral cortex…

A monk asked the Buddha: What is greatest in strength? What is clearest in wisdom? The Buddha said: Forbearance and patience bring great strength, because one harbors no ill will and is additionally peaceful and healthy. Those who forbear have no evil and will surely…

Baihua Shebicao is the whole herb of Hedyotis diffusa (family Rubiaceae, genus Hedyotis). It is named for its white flowers and leaves shaped like a snake's tongue. It is mainly distributed in southeast and southwest China, and is also known by such names as Sheshecao,…

Confucius had three thousand disciples and seventy-two worthies; among the seventy-two, Confucius admired Yan Hui most. Unfortunately Yan Hui was unlucky: he died young at forty. Confucius praised Yan Hui for being eager to learn, saying he "did not transfer his anger, and did not…

When Mr. Zhou Youguang spoke about education, he emphasized three points: first, education hinges on self-education; second, one must pursue lifelong learning; third, one must reflect often. When Zhou Youguang was in middle school, classes were held in the morning, while afternoons and evenings were…

Genes are the smallest known units of living things. Modern biology has confirmed that fatalism is, to some extent, reasonable: our life begins as a fertilized egg, and our genome is already fixed when we are but a single cell. Genes influence our intelligence, health,…

In my spare time over the past few days, I finally finished reading Years Gone Like Water, the oral autobiography of the centenarian Zhou Youguang. A hundred-year-old man calmly recounts events he lived through: the series of historical upheavals from the late Qing Dynasty through…

The hibernating days of winter are hard to bear. The north is bare, gray, and rarely green, and winter is long, from late November through late March—unlike my hometown, which is green year-round. So when spring comes, I go wild. Last Saturday and this Saturday…

Below, a man is dying; next door that family plays the gramophone; opposite, someone dandles a child; upstairs two people laugh uproariously, and there is the sound of cards; on a boat in the river a woman weeps for her dead mother. The joys and…