Reflections on Ten Years of Writing

Before I knew it, I have been writing on my personal blog and official account for ten years. From August 2015 to now, it has been exactly ten years. Over these ten years I have written around 3,000 articles totaling perhaps ten million words; because I constantly review my past articles and views, I have deleted about half of them.

This summer I took the national college entrance examination again, preparing to enter university once more. After the exam I spent some time reviewing my past writings and plan to organize them properly. Over the next ten years I intend to settle down and write more valuable articles, and to publish some of them at an appropriate time. Looking back, ten years feel like the snap of a finger. But as an old Chinese saying goes, even a light burden feels heavy if carried for a long road; carrying it for ten years is no light matter, and it takes perseverance.

I first took up daily writing under the influence of the Japanese kampo physician Asada Sohaku. To push himself to study medicine better, Asada wrote every single day for decades. By the time he died he had left more than 80 works. After reading his biography I was deeply impressed and resolved to emulate him. Later I learned that another Japanese physician, Shigeaki Hinohara, did the same; Hinohara published more than 200 works in his lifetime and was still publishing new ones at 105.

China has also produced many such outstanding medical figures. My hometown, Huanggang, is the home of the great physician Li Shizhen. I have visited Li Shizhen's mausoleum many times; his birthplace is only about 30 or 40 li from our village, and I sometimes cycle there. Many of my middle-school classmates told me that when they were in primary school their school organized a long hike to Li Shizhen's tomb.

Li Shizhen's mausoleum sits beside a large lake called Yu Lake, built right at the water's edge. Li Shizhen is best known for the Bencao Gangmu (Compendium of Materia Medica), but another of his works, Binhu Maixue (The Pulse Studies of the Lakeside), also holds an important place in the history of Chinese medicine. Only after visiting Yu Lake, walking along its shores, seeing its misty waters, watching its waves, and hearing the soft lap of water against the bank, can one understand why Li Shizhen named his book Binhu Maixue (Lakeside Pulse Studies).

I imagine Li Shizhen must have deeply loved this lakeside life, feeling affection for every plant and tree. Yu Lake is ringed with woods, scattered small villages dot its banks, and beyond rise rolling hills and the ancient city of Qizhou. On the road from Qizhou to Yu Lake stood a Daoist temple where Li Shizhen and his father Li Yanwen often treated people. The family also farmed some land, and Li Shizhen lived a life of farming, reading, and practicing medicine. After the age of 40 he settled down to write quietly in his hometown, spending nearly thirty years to complete the world-famous Bencao Gangmu.

In his youth Li Shizhen had also hoped to win scholarly rank and once left home to seek his fortune elsewhere. Only after passing forty did he truly settle down to scholarship, making him a classic example of a late bloomer. To be honest, few people can fully settle down when young. The Bencao Gangmu transcended its era; the British science historian Joseph Needham wrote that Li Shizhen "reached the highest level attainable by any scientist, cut off as he was from the scientific movements of Galileo and Vesalius."

The writing of the past ten years has proven that I too can be a person who settles down. Moreover, over these ten years, while writing, I have also observed the world; my mind has grown calmer and my temperament more steady. Gradually I have moved from the restlessness of youth to the composure of middle age; having seen all the varieties of human life, my heart is now like water in an ancient well—untroubled by waves.

After turning forty I have also gradually freed myself from the clutter of trivial daily affairs. In the years that remain, I want to emulate Li Shizhen and complete some worthwhile writing.

Beijing's Haidian district and Yu Lake in Huanggang share many similarities. With the passage of time, my hometown is no longer a quiet village. The tides of industrialization and urbanization have swept most of rural China into a thoroughly material age. The countryside too is full of temptations, and people are restless; towns and even villages reek of drinking, gambling, debauchery, and drugs.

Haidian, by contrast, is perhaps the most culturally rich place in China. It is densely packed with universities, research institutes, libraries, and parks; the fleshpots so visible in my hometown's county seats and towns are nowhere to be found here. Haidian is thus my Yu Lake; here too I live a life of farming (gardening), reading, and medicine. I love this way of life and the atmosphere here.

I have been an apprentice in a public hospital and worked in a private one; I have done both clinical work and management, handled complex hospital personnel relations and the even more complex doctor-patient relationship, and know medicine from every side. In applying all this knowledge to dealing with the world, I have tasted every flavor of human life. I have blown in the wind and been rained upon; I am no longer an inexperienced young fool.

Cao Xueqin wrote that a thorough grasp of worldly affairs is itself learning, and practiced human relations are themselves writing. I would not claim that I have already achieved such mastery, but I believe I am not far off. I have had a strong will since childhood; after the hammering of life that will has become as unbreakable as steel. The goals I have set for the rest of my life will not be shaken by any setback or by the external environment.

A middle-aged person who wishes to achieve something must have the decisiveness to cut through knots with a sharp blade; otherwise he is doomed to be destroyed by the trivia of life. Most of us are torn apart by those petty trifles—scattered goals, an inability to concentrate, a life full of quarrels—and end up accomplishing nothing; at the end, looking back on the brilliant dreams of youth, we are left with nothing but a sigh.

I am grateful for everyone I have met and everything I have experienced over these years, whether those experiences brought joy or suffering, for it is all of the past that has shaped who I am today. Good experiences make me love life more; painful experiences teach me how to avoid risk in future and to spend my time on more meaningful things. Were it not for all this, how could my heart be so unmoved by favor or disgrace?

On the whole I am someone who loves life and has a strong curiosity. In high school my beloved teacher encouraged me to be broadly learned, not to be confined by any sectarian view and become a frog at the bottom of a well. He also urged me not to seek quick success, but to build a deep foundation and bloom late. Such teaching has benefited me all my life. My teacher is still alive, and I remain his student; he is like a high mountain, worthy of my lifelong gazing.

My teacher's profession was teaching; he was not only a teacher but one of the most learned people I have ever known. Amusingly, however, he never once lorded his learning over others. He always treated students as equals, never posturing as a master or an elder; studying and learning how to conduct life under him felt like bathing in a warm breeze.

He showed me that only the shallow, in their ignorance, are fearless and self-righteous. Still waters run deep; truly deep people are always cautious in word and deed. I have not yet fully mastered that cultivation, but I keep striving toward it, for I do not want to disgrace my teacher's school.

The broader one's range of knowledge, the more comprehensive one's perspective and the more understanding and tolerance one has for this diverse world; this in turn fosters an even calmer, more tranquil inner life. Broad learning is therefore the best way to nourish body and mind. Each of us must weather storms and setbacks in this world; the knowledge we accumulate, though it seems useless in ordinary times, comes into its own when we meet adversity. Perhaps only those who have lived such experiences can fully feel this.

This year I have turned my life in a new direction; come September I will be a non-traditional university student, embarking on another three-to-seven years of study. Doing so will not only let me learn new knowledge in greater depth—medical knowledge undergoes a revolution every decade—but will also spur my brain to develop again, slowing the functional decline that comes with age.

By the evolutionary principle of "use it or lose it," the brain grows stronger the more it is used; left idle, a person becomes an obstinate old fossil and a muddled old fool. I do not want to be muddled in my old age; I prefer an old age with sharp ears and eyes and a sound mind. It would of course be even better to remain creative in old age—like Zhou Youguang and Professor Zheng Ji, whose late years are enviable: still cheerfully creating past the age of 100. Who would not envy that?

I am not good at setting short-term goals, so my goals always run in decades. What will I have achieved in the next ten years? I'll look back in another ten years and see.