Plant Flowers and You Get Flowers, Plant Vegetables and You Get Vegetables
The rainy season has come and the vegetables are growing fast. The tomatoes and eggplants on my balcony have set quite a lot of fruit; although they are not yet edible, just looking at them is already satisfying.
My favorite gardenias have also bloomed. When gardenias bloom, a clear fragrance fills the whole room and refreshes the heart. I never mind living in a cramped, humble dwelling—right now I live in Beijing in a flat of less than 60 square meters—but if my home lacks plants, I feel it lacks a soul. I have always treated these plants as friends with whom I can exchange thoughts.
Animals and plants can communicate. Inspired by the botanist Schleiden's cell theory of plants, the zoologist Theodor Schwann studied animal cells and published the famous Microscopical Researches into the Accordance in the Structure and Growth of Animals and Plants, proposing that animals are also composed of cells and tearing down the great barrier separating the animal and plant kingdoms. His research led us to realize that the origins of animal and plant life are the same.
We humans, as members of the animal kingdom, may feel we are vastly different from plants, but at the cellular level we are in fact very similar to them. Therefore there is a spiritual level on which people and plants can communicate; if we feel carefully, we can perceive the joy of plants.
When the physicist Richard Feynman rebutted an artist friend who said scientists did not know how to appreciate the beauty of flowers, he once said something very interesting. He said that scientists can appreciate not only the external beauty of a flower, but also know that the complex reactions inside the flower's cells are beautiful. Beauty, Feynman said, is not confined to this tiny space; beauty also exists in the even smaller microscopic world. Flowers, in the course of evolution, acquired bright colors and fragrant scents, using them to attract insects to pollinate them; the natural laws behind this are equally beautiful.
Moreover, through reading and research we can discover more of plants' secrets. Some plants are edible, some are medicinal, and some are poisonous. After animals eat plants, they cannot digest the seeds and must excrete them in their feces; many plants reproduce precisely in this way, and our world is thereby rich and colorful. Some plants can be used as medicine because, in adapting to the natural environment, they developed certain specific genes; under the action of these genes they produce all kinds of compounds that happen to solve certain disease-causing problems. As for those poisonous plants, perhaps they evolved toxins simply to protect themselves—plants are not emotionless things; like us humans, they too have their own feelings.
At the cellular and genetic level, the evolution of plants is just as splendid as that of animals. Through the evolutionary history of plants we can discover many of nature's secrets. For example, by studying the tree rings in Younger Dryas fossils, we can infer that roughly 12,900 to 11,600 years ago the Earth experienced a rapid climate-cooling event; this ecological event greatly influenced the evolution of life across the whole planet. And many human diseases, such as frequent urination and diabetes, are not unrelated to it.
Thinking in this way, we will find that the joy of growing plants goes far beyond admiring their beautiful appearance. The father of modern biology, Gregor Mendel, was precisely absorbed in growing and observing peas when he discovered the famous Mendelian laws of inheritance, opening a new milestone in the history of human science. Strictly speaking, Mendel's pea experiments are the starting point of modern biology and medicine; it was because Mendel discovered those genetic codes later called genes that we were able to open up new frontiers in biology and medicine.
I like to delve into the microscopic world to observe and reflect on the phenomena of life; this makes my life look dull, but in fact it is full of interest. When we are drawn to the microscopic world of living things, those things not essentially related to the nature of life—what the common saying calls "external possessions"—no longer attract us; inner abundance and happiness come easily, and a simple life arrives without being sought.
People often tell me that one must accomplish something in order to live. I am utterly unmoved by this. As a member of the living world, I only know that life itself is the greatest meaning of our coming into this world, and that no other meaning is attached to it. In my view, all the values and meanings attached to life are merely artificial, inexplicable things; when developed to the extreme, they become a person's greatest spiritual burden. Some people carry these burdens their whole lives—truly pitiable and pitiful.
Only when we treat flowers, vegetables and all other plants as equals, and share the joy of life with them, can we be said to live as our true selves. This should have been an innate instinct of the human species; unfortunately it has now become an extremely rare quality and ability, because we humans have walked far, far down the road of alienating ourselves, so far that it is hard to turn back.