Reflections on a Lecture by Professor Shi Yigong

Waking early, I read a lecture by Professor Shi Yigong titled "The Least Important Quality Is Your IQ," and it stirred me deeply. In his lecture, Professor Shi mentioned that in his youth he was lost and adrift; not until his thirties, having reached middle age and suddenly seen the glitz of the world fade, did he want to settle down and pursue scholarship. So he followed the example of several of his teachers, immersing himself in research sixty hours a week, tirelessly, and after twenty or thirty years of effort finally achieved distinction.

During the Republican era, China produced a generation of master scholars. With the nation in peril and lives uprooted, they too lost many years and only began their research in middle age—yet they too produced a host of scholarly masters.

Looking back, the wish to become a person of deep learning has been my tireless pursuit for years. Now I too have reached middle age. After frequently witnessing life and death, I no longer feel worldly life goals have much meaning; but I also do not wish to waste the time of this life, or the modest talent I carry. It is time for me to return to my study, to genuinely pursue scholarship, to write something substantial, and not to live this life in vain.

Though this goal is not much more meaningful than worldly goals, it suits my temperament and has been my life's ideal for years. At my age now, the glitz outside no longer matters. I can wear clothes bought from a street stall, live on plain food, keep old clothes for ten more years without caring, and simply pursue medicine and scholarship quietly in my study to end my days.

I am now willing to bow to everyone around me, admitting I am more incompetent and weaker than they. I will minimize social contact, firmly refuse to take part in any comparison-laden banquet, and devote myself entirely to closed-door reading, living apart from the crowd, doing a modest online business, and pouring all my energy into medical research and scholarship.

As for grievances, love, and hate—I lay them all down. In the days ahead, as Master Hongyi said, I shall exist "though living as though departed," vanishing from the sight of those around me. My joy will be reading and enjoying a peaceful life with my family, raising the next generation, and seeing my elders through to the end of their days; beyond that I ask nothing. And this small income comes without effort. Is what really wears us out merely the need to survive? Most people who run themselves ragged do so, I fear, far more for vanity.

Sixty hours a week of study, work, and research is no hardship for me. One might even say that in these past years I have precisely persisted in this diligence. I rise before five every morning, often at four, and not even the first day of the lunar new year is necessarily an exception; I read by lamplight for two hours, then go out for a walk at dawn, return to do some work and write articles. It is just that in some of those past years, this peaceful life was once disrupted.

At my age now, I neither expect to astonish the world with a single cry nor pursue any great career; I only pursue the satisfaction of my own interests, and being able to research something in medicine that solves practical problems. Though I do not have as brilliant a past as Professor Shi Yigong, I have always been a person of solid conduct and grades. My scholarly attitude is fairly honest and rigorous; I have written unceasingly over the years, and my commercial struggles have not changed my essential scholar's nature. Therefore, devoting twenty, thirty, or even fifty more years of effort to exploring something should, more or less, be of some use to those who come after.

Professor Shi Yigong says that the claim that so-called genius relies on innate talent is problematic. In truth, throughout history, no one in scientific or academic research has achieved results without expending effort beyond what ordinary people can give. Scholarship differs from other fields; it is not a matter of knowing how to hype or market oneself to be a bit better or a bit more than others. Only by burying oneself in the study and the laboratory, dealing with the object of research all day, can one achieve anything.

Wealth and status are certainly nice, but if one sacrifices one's own spirit to obtain them, such a life experience does not count as a happy one. Is life meaningful? In his later years, Mr. Ji Xianlin said that life really has no meaning. As Du Fu's famous line puts it: "You and your kind will perish, body and name alike, yet the great rivers flow on, unceasing." Through the ages, heroes and great men have vanished like smoke, while the rivers still flow as they always have. We humans are tiny, but our life experience is real.

Whether life experience is good or bad is, as an old saying puts it, like "a person drinking water—only they know whether it is cold or warm." This experience has nothing to do with others; it concerns only the feelings deep within one's own heart.

That is all. So be it.