Remembrance of Things Past: My Soul Was Purged and Laid to Rest in Writing

I was born coarse and arrogant. As a child I was dull-witted and cocky, the kind beyond redemption.

By sheer luck I happened to meet a few teachers who took to me and strained to salvage me, finally cultivating in me one or two redeeming qualities—writing being one of them. It improved this repulsive-looking me by a ten-thousandth or two.

When I first started school I was a real little terror. I skipped class to climb the hill and rob bird nests, catch small birds, dig up earthworms to fish with and to feed the baby birds; I waded into streams to catch fish and stole melons in the fields. There was no mischief I did not commit.

Brand-new textbooks issued by the school were torn up by me within days, folded into the "cannon" cards everyone played then, and slapped on the ground with my classmates.

Whoever slapped the card over won and got the loser's "cannon." My books were always turned into "cannons" and lost within days of term starting, then further transformed into toilet paper, wiped across bottoms and tossed into the privy.

My parents were at their wits' end, and had to brazenly borrow old books from the neighbors for me—a class needs textbooks. So my grades were, of course, a total disgrace, always near the bottom.

To keep me from disrupting the other students, the teacher placed me in the very corner of the last row and left me to sink or swim.

Sometimes I would snatch girls' pencils, or catch a snake to frighten the girls in class. As for fighting, that was daily fare.

Other parents kept coming to my house to complain. My parents, hopping with rage, beat me again and again. When the beatings wore me out, I'd drop a line—"the hell with being your son"—and run off like a shot, gone without a trace.

My first teacher was helpless against me and kept punishing me. But her daughter happened to be my classmate, so when her mother punished me, I punished her, and came out even; I bullied her until she went home sniffling.

When I was small, my parents had no hopes for me. Thick-skinned, bold, unruly beyond words, impervious to kindness and force alike—how could such a son ever be educated into success? It truly was a trial for the old couple.

Then one day, a teacher transferred in from another school. He read an essay I had written and was full of praise, saying this boy had exceptional talent and was a rare, moldable material.

Because of that single word of praise, I suddenly saw the light: it turned out I was not entirely worthless after all.

After that I studied hard, and miraculously staged a turnaround, rising from the bottom to first place, and holding that first place for years.

Thereafter I was held up as a model of both conduct and scholarship, and named a school pacesetter. After entering junior high, I wrote every day on my own initiative, working brutally hard, until my finger bones became deformed.

In high school I was even more obsessed, pen never still, often writing over ten thousand characters a day. In the whole school it was hard to find a student who could "sit still" better than I; high school life was grueling, with nearly sixteen hours a day of study and writing.

So now I can write without thinking, pen moving like the wind, three to five thousand characters an hour easily; all because of the hardship I endured back then.

When I was in junior high, a teacher at the school was extremely popular among the students. Later he was transferred to teach at the high school; when his family moved, his book collection required a large truck.

Watching that moving day, I was awestruck. At the same time I was deeply regretful, grieving my own thin fortune that barred me from entering his gate. In those days I greatly admired learned people.

In junior high I understood nothing of how to conduct myself. At school my grades were at the top, and I was elected class monitor and student union president; my essays were passable, and several girls had a crush on me.

Naturally I foolishly preened myself, and deep inside felt rather that I was the greatest under heaven.

Into the first year of high school I was still this brainless, overweening. But that year I fell out with the principal's son; as for why, it can no longer be traced. We had a deep grudge, and later fought a battle.

He got someone to slap me in the face; I went and borrowed a kitchen knife and came straight at him for revenge. In the end, of course, the bully fears the reckless, and the reckless fears the suicidal; he conceded, and took a good beating from his own father.

After that fight I insisted on transferring schools. The teacher I admired was teaching at another high school, and I wanted to follow him. Though my father refused, he simply could not prevail against me.

With my grades, I could not only choose which high school to attend but even negotiate terms with the school.

The school agreed to both terms I set.

First, that I study under the teacher I admired; second, that I absolutely never again be made a class officer or school student leader.

Having served as class monitor and school student officer for so many years, with no ability to handle my relations with classmates, always resented by others, I was thoroughly sick of it; I wanted two years of quiet reading with my teacher.

Only one of these two terms was fulfilled: I got to study under my idol. But not long after transferring, I was again elected class monitor, and could not decline it no matter what.

The head teacher said it was the wish of the people, not that he was going back on his word. Later, when two grades brawled, the teachers worked on me, flattering me that I was the spiritual leader of the whole school's students and only I could solve it.

In fact it amounted to no more than having me represent our grade and brazenly apologize to the juniors a year below us. In a moment of muddle, moved or hoodwinked by their words, I turned traitor and was despised for it.

Though all this annoyed me, by then tired of making a show at school, those two years were still the happiest of my life.

For me, my beloved teacher's learning and character can only be described as "lofty as a high mountain." His fondness for me arose, likewise, in a flash like lightning.

He did not then know how long I had admired him. As a transfer student not well acquainted with my classmates, when I first arrived I always sat quietly in a corner, studying with great diligence.

My teacher saw this and liked it. He often gave full marks to my essays. He took special care of me, a transfer student, continually bringing out all sorts of books from his home for me to read.

I was in a science track; under the exam-oriented system, the liberal arts were already a formality for us, yet my teacher deliberately made up for my liberal-arts deficiencies.

Precisely because of his efforts, readers now often mistake me for a liberal-arts person.

Not long after term began, my teacher had already seen through my character flaws. He was a man of few words but extremely observant.

He always liked leaving a few words for students when grading essays. The ten-character maxim he first gave me in my essay notebook I still remember vividly: "Do not show all your edge; rather, hide your light and bide your time."

His little marginal notes, in both literary grace and meaning, were of the highest order: concise, to the point, hitting the nail on the head.

Later, when I resolved to study hard and make something of myself, my teacher gave me another eight-character maxim: "Be widely versed in the past and present, and bridge China and the West." These eight characters have kept my butt cold on the bench for decades of reading, and I still have not reached his expectation.

In my youth I was inevitably restless and flighty, feeling it a failure that I had not "astonished the realm with my writings by twenty."

In college I wanted to be a poet, and wrote a pile of mawkish poems and sent them to my teacher for correction.

He said only five words: "The feeling is very sincere." Love poems—of course the feeling is on the surface.

As for the literary level of the poetry, the teacher would say not a word. I understood, of course, that he did not approve of my poems, and felt deeply ashamed.

I was this flighty for years, until my teacher, seizing the moment, gave me another eight-character maxim: "Accumulate deeply, emit sparingly; a great vessel is completed late."

These eight words kindled in me the sense that "shame is akin to courage," and I burned a thick pile of my own manuscripts.

My teacher was not as showy and domineering as I; his brilliance was inward, and he was a man who treasured every word. Every bit of life-guidance he gave me was bound to hit the nail on the head.

He was also expert at choosing the moment, always able to give me a waking blow to the head.

So a person like me, who by nature should be a lawless, reckless upstart, without a sense of heaven's height or earth's depth, loving fierceness and daring, would inevitably have courted trouble. That I survive in the world today, rather than dying a violent death or being disgraced, owes no small debt to my teacher's carving and polishing.

After I entered college, disliking my school and major, I resolutely dropped out and chose the path of self-education at the National Library. Just as when I insisted on transferring in second year of high school, it was a bold "though ten thousand oppose me, I go on."

Plenty of people urged me to just muddle through and get a diploma: teachers, parents, classmates, my girlfriend—all strongly dissuaded me from being impulsive.

My father even threatened to sever father-son relations and cut off all financial support; none of it turned me back.

A few years later, my own older brother envied me greatly. He deeply admired my courage, unmoved by anything but the pursuit of true knowledge. He said Chinese universities were truly hells that wore away one's will.

He had, at a prestigious university, ground through four miserable years to graduate. One day, two or three years after graduation, my brother set fire to his own diploma and his English Test Band 8 certificate.

My brother probably reasoned: my younger brother has the spirit to defy everything; I should follow suit. What use is a Band-8 certificate and a university diploma? Burn them!

So my late mother, while she lived, always blamed me for leading my brother astray.

She had once taken pride that both her sons got into key universities, yet had to feel ashamed and troubled that both her sons were rebellious beyond all reason.

During my self-study years in Beijing, I made a living for a while on this literary talent of mine. I also ghost-wrote monographs for people in academic and official circles who had the need; writing for a month or two a year covered my whole year's expenses, so my father could never financially blockade me.

Having handled such things often enough, I gradually felt that the monographs of some professors and experts were, after all, written by my hand and published under their names; the "scholarship" of this vast land of China has a very low gold content indeed.

The negative effect of this on me is that even now I cannot build up confidence in Chinese academia.

The lowness of my character is evident from my willingness to do such unethical things for a living; the other unjust acts I have done are too many to enumerate, and some are truly hard to mention.

So I can never be a sage or gentleman in this life. Better to be candid: with no glorious image, no undying praise, no reputation to cherish, there is no such thing as being disgraced.

The many things I have encountered in this life taught me that, rather than withdrawing at the peak of the rapids, it is better never to enter the rapids at all.

Laozi said: "I have three treasures, which I hold and keep. The first is called compassion, the second frugality, the third daring not to be first under heaven."

With compassion one has few enemies; with frugality few wants; daring not to be first under heaven, one can avoid the various distractions of this noisy age and settle the mind to do what one likes.

The Qian hexagram of the Zhouyi says: "The overreaching dragon has cause for regret." Overdo anything, and you will surely stumble.

One day, before thirty, I suddenly felt that in this life I should wash my heart and bones clean and be a new person, no longer harming the world. Now I am forty; ashamed as I am, I still have little to show.

As Master Hongyi said: after twenty years as a monk, his whole body of bad habits had been corrected in only a handful. Worthless, good-for-nothing, accomplishing nothing.

In this life I will stop at the influence I have today, not going a step further, not becoming a little overreaching dragon.

In dealings with others, be as honest and kind as possible; no longer take any undeserved benefit, and keep no company with those who forget righteousness for gain. Do the work I am capable of well; when I am not capable, recommend to others someone more able than myself.

I thank heaven for granting me a life that is, on the whole, calm. Even when upheaval comes, it is within my psychological endurance.

I also thank the people of every walk of life, who—not as reckless as I—each stay at their post, striving to give us the basically peaceful and adequate life we live today.

Though this world is not yet perfect, it is striving to improve.

All who suffer hardship and misfortune deserve our sympathy.

All who cannot control their own desires and emotions and finally collapse and perish also deserve our compassion. Precisely because of problems in the education and life-training they received, they lack the stability to tame the desires and impulses in their hearts, and finally bring disaster on themselves.

A large part of the fault is not entirely theirs: people always go astray because of institutions, or life's lot, or the education they received, harming others and destroying themselves.

When I ghost-wrote for others, I once dealt with an official working at the State Council, writing materials for him for about a year. Honored by his misplaced favor, he even brought me into Zhongnanhai.

As a commoner, to have the chance in this life to enter the core of China's power and see with my own eyes where the national leaders work was entirely thanks to him.

Had I been skilled at flattery back then, at climbing the pole, I might today have become a petty pen-pusher in the State Council's secretariat. I might long ago have mastered the official way: wagging and bowing before leaders, strutting before everyone else.

But ghost-writing was already a shameless thing, bringing disgrace on my teachers. To lower my moral bottom line further would truly leave me no face to show myself.

So I finally pulled up at the cliff's edge. A person like me, with petty cleverness but no great wisdom, is all too likely to take the wrong road in life. Since ancient times, those whose petty cleverness brought on great disaster have been common.

I always feel I have fallen short of my teacher's cultivation. This summer, when my teacher's son married, he had students all over the world, yet invited only my family of three to the wedding feast.

At the table, my teacher's wife introduced me to her daughter-in-law like this: "This is your father's most favored disciple."

These words made me blush and burn with shame, almost wanting to crawl into a hole in the ground.

Among my teacher's many talented disciples, how could a scoundrel with a record like mine count as his most favored disciple?

The reason my teacher has gone on teaching me for over twenty years is, I fear, that he worried my life would go astray and bring about my death.

As for any transmission of learning, I think my teacher is like a gambler at the mahjong table who has lost heavily and cannot bear to leave the table without winning back his stake. That is why, all these years, he has gone on carving me. After all, he has invested a lot of himself; it would be a pity to give up.

Only I am no fine piece of jade, but a stubborn stone. However skillful the great craftsman, he cannot carve a fine artwork from such rough material.

So I think he has lost his bet on me in this life. He has gambled his all away, and there will never be a day when I become a great scholar, "versed in past and present, bridging China and the West," of sterling character.

In high school I had an inseparable best friend, a buddy who shared my bunk bed, a fellow sufferer who had both secretly crushed on the same girl and both failed to win her.

Back then, though he liked our classmate as much as I did, seeing that I liked her, he actually stepped aside on his own to let me have her. You can see how deep our brotherhood was.

Yet despite his good intentions, I was after all too thin in virtue to carry the load, and could never win that girl's heart.

Now the so-called fair lady is another man's wife. Remembrance of things past, recalling old feelings, inevitably brings a sigh or two.

But she was actually the one with real judgment, not choosing a flightless person like me.

Back then I had secret crushes on two classmates at once, one of whom is now my wife. When alone, I could not help but let my fancy run wild, hoping for the happiness of having both, marrying them both.

So greedy and wicked was I that only a blind wife would have married me.

Years after graduation, when we met again, my inseparable friend poured out a long litany of woes: nothing but an unhappy marriage and a household of troubles.

After pouring out his woes, he said to me: You are different from us ordinary people; you will accomplish great things. However great your achievements, I would not be surprised; for a weirdo like you, it would be the surprise if you did nothing.

Now he is greatly disappointed: far from achieving anything, my virtue has also suffered.

But even so, I cannot just give up on myself; I feel I can still be salvaged.

One day the year before last, I visited my teacher at his home. He admonished me on the great principles: now is the time for you to come out and write; your experiences and the knowledge you have gained may benefit others.

Such a command from my teacher truly fills me with awe. Once I very much wanted to write to make a splash, but the teacher did not approve. Now I very much fear making a splash, because what I write does not even pass my own eye, yet the teacher encourages me to accomplish something.

Writing has already fused into my blood; my soul is purified through writing, and some people's souls are purified as they read what I write.

Some readers have followed me for nearly twenty years; we have practically grown up together.

So writing essays is still necessary. Only the things I write really cannot grace a hall of honor. My learning and character are also far below my teacher's expectations.

So I have set myself these principles of writing: do not chase hot topics, do not grab eyeballs, do not cater to the vulgar, do not cater to the pretentious, only amuse myself, and occasionally amuse the destined reader.

A shiftless, wandering half-life, I now realize: to me, my teacher is like the Buddha to Sun Wukong. However much this monkey of mine jumps, I can never leap out of his palm.

My teacher's eye is like a torch, long since illumining my whole life and giving me all kinds of vaccinations, so that I am immune to all kinds of afflictions, and helped avoid many risks.

My teacher tempers his apprentice like steel forged into a coiling, flexible blade; he will not rest until I am transformed. To have such a teacher is a great blessing in life.

They say that Tashiro Sōhaku (Asada Sōhaku), the giant of Japanese kampo medicine, was likewise spurred on by his teacher to accomplish great things.

Tashiro Sōhaku's history teacher, Rai Sanyō, once admonished him like this: "If a great man cannot be a person indispensable to the world, then he should write a book indispensable to the world."

Hoodwinked by his teacher, Tashiro Sōhaku, from his teens until his death, however busy his practice—hundreds of patients a day—never ceased writing, and finally became a patriarch of Japanese kampo medicine whose fame shook the ages.

After Tashiro Sōhaku died, Japanese kampo and Confucian circles assessed him thus: "Before Rikuen (Tashiro's hao) there was no Rikuen; after Rikuen there was no Rikuen."

Tashiro Sōhaku mastered both medicine and Confucian learning; in his life he was not only deeply accomplished in medical skill but also made notable contributions in the realm of thought.

Tashiro Sōhaku's medical skill was extraordinary; though his consultation fees were expensive, patients still thronged to him.

His time was the Meiji Restoration period, and there was no lack of voices in Japan calling for the abolition of kampo medicine.

Then the Japanese public fiercely attacked kampo medicine, considering this system derived from Chinese TCM a kind of witchcraft, something beneath the salt—just as the Chinese public attacks TCM today.

Tashiro Sōhaku turned the tide: with his superb skill he saved the life of Crown Prince Yoshihito (later Emperor Taishō), and cured the French minister's deep-seated, stubborn illness.

Tashiro Sōhaku not only became famous throughout Japan but also received a commendation from Napoleon. The voices opposing kampo medicine also quieted down considerably because of him.

At that time, Tashiro Sōhaku was the foremost figure in Japanese kampo; his success or failure determined the survival of kampo medicine in Japan. Tashiro did not fail his mission and saved kampo medicine.

All his life he healed the world with benevolent art; though his fees were high, he waived consultation fees for half his patients, because they were poor.

So he was deeply loved by the people. When his funeral procession passed after his death, the surrounding shops spontaneously closed, and people along the route set up altars and burned incense, seeing him off in tears; nearly ten thousand people from all over Japan attended his funeral.

The perseverance and deeds of this old Eastern physician make me blush to the ground. Though I too often follow his example and waive fees for poor patients, I am not so diligent in writing; sometimes, when busy, I cannot write even one or two articles a month.

Seeing worthiness and striving to equal it, henceforth I will learn from Tashiro Sōhaku, knowing myself better through writing and purifying my soul.

My personal experience is that writing is one of the best means a person has to organize his thoughts and purify his soul.

Hindus use the waters of the Ganges to wash away their sins; Christians have the rite of baptism; Buddhists have the tradition of "revealing confession" (openly disclosing one's wrongs and confessing one's faults to the assembly); Rousseau, with one Confessions, stirred up a great tide of the Renaissance and opened the humanist and humanitarian movements in Europe.

I studied the Buddhist sutras for a time; though shallowly, I was still somewhat influenced by Buddhism, as one can see in my writing style.

The sutras say: "If a person has faults and himself understands they are wrong, changes evil and practices good, the sins of themselves vanish. Like a disease that breaks into a sweat, he gradually recovers." Its meaning is much like Confucius' "to know a fault and be able to correct it is the greatest good." In short, it encourages people to have the courage to face and correct their faults.

So sometimes I choose the Buddhist way of "revealing confession" to redeem myself.

Ten years ago, because of a different perspective, I might have been proud of some of my past actions, thinking myself brilliant and capable and what I did awesome. Today I am deeply ashamed of them.

The pressure to survive once left me no time to care whether a thing was just. Now I care greatly whether my conduct is just; one cannot live by clever grabbing and plunder.

Everyone has a need to purify his soul, and society has a need to purify itself. May everyone have a path of self-redemption.

Reading and writing are my path of self-purification and self-redemption. With the written word, none of us is alone. We can use it to commune with kindred spirits in the vast sea of people.

I dedicate this essay to a life-weary depressive among my readers.

She turned to me reverently, pouring out the deepest privacy of her heart to me, and I had no power to resolve her suffering. I only hope that she too, like me, can find a path to redeem herself, not blame herself too harshly, walk out of the shadow, and be born anew.

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