The More I Study, the More I Love It

In the blink of an eye, a third of this semester has already passed. Time really flies; in just over two months, summer vacation will begin again. This semester's study and life at school have been a joy, body and mind. From Monday to Friday, I spend most of each day in my own classroom—attending lectures, reading, watching online courses, taking notes, writing—returning to the dorm only at noon break and bedtime. After dinner I walk around campus for about an hour, and while walking I wear earphones and call my family.

Now that the weather has warmed, the leaves on campus have all turned green. The climate here is a little warmer than Beijing's, so the plants turn green earlier. Our school is not large; it has no money to make the campus magnificent. But overall it is still very beautiful, and I am content here. The campus is filled with the fragrance of lilac; the wisteria behind the library blooms like a waterfall; behind the lab building there is a bamboo grove and a nursery. Walking around after meals, besides inner peace and ease, I feel a quiet, gentle joy.

I like every major course this semester, and the teachers' lectures are wonderful. After all, it is a public school, so the faculty is reliable. Perhaps because our school has relatively few research tasks, the front-line teachers put their energy into teaching, and that is why the lectures are so good. Listening to them here is, for me, a pleasure.

After a semester of mutual adjustment, I get along better with the group of students around me, and incidentally I have also learned to communicate better with my own son—after all, I have plenty of his peers to observe around me. In the dorm I have grown used to the sound of them playing games at night; it no longer disturbs my sleep, and I still fall asleep within minutes of my head touching the pillow. They have also adapted to my habit of turning off the lights early and going to bed early; every day after I return to the dorm, they even help me turn off the lights before 10:30 on their own. We get along peacefully; it is very good.

I am the class's "door-managing uncle": the first into the classroom in the morning to open the door, the last to leave at night to lock it. The girls in the back row say I enjoy an "age dividend" in class, and I unashamedly enjoy it. I am glad to help the teachers manage the class, and I do things other students dare not or will not. A while back the boys' dorm was very noisy at night and at noon break; after I criticized and educated the ringleaders a few times, things have improved a lot.

I am on good terms with all my major-course teachers, and they are dedicated when answering my questions; I am grateful. Last week I asked the biochemistry teacher a question about molecular dynamics; she could not answer on the spot and asked me to wait while she looked it up and asked others. This week, in biochemistry class, the moment she entered she walked straight over to me and answered my question in great detail, even photographing the materials she had looked up to show me and deepen my understanding. Such dedication moved me deeply. She is already over fifty, a few years older than I am; every class she speaks in a loud, vigorous voice, lectures in accessible depth, and I benefit greatly from her teaching.

The teacher who teaches us rehabilitation medicine was very absorbed in class last time and nearly fell while demonstrating a movement. My first reaction was to help her up, and after class I urged her to take it easier. She told me she loves teaching and loves lecturing, so when she gets carried away she forgets the danger.

Her words made me feel I had found a kindred spirit: am I not myself returning to campus to study Western medicine at this age out of love? This teacher is also over fifty; outside teaching she is writing textbooks, living with passion. That spirit is admirable. People who love life and work live passionately at any age. I love a passionate life and love being with passionate people. As far as I know, passionate people rarely complain about life.

Several of this year's major-course teachers are a few years older than I; the microbiology teacher is only four or five years younger, and the pathology teacher seems only a few years younger. Similar ages give us more common ground, and communication flows easily. These teachers all have rich teaching experience, and some have very broad knowledge; I admire them as I listen. I wonder how wonderful it would be if I myself could so effortlessly weave knowledge from different disciplines together. Medical knowledge is fragmented, and it is rare that these teachers can remember so many cross-disciplinary points; that is truly admirable.

We now have lab sessions several times a week; Western medical education takes hands-on lab work very seriously. This semester's labs have already had us culturing bacteria and operating on animals; I have been the "lead surgeon" twice. Once I was even scratched by a lab animal and went for rabies vaccination. While doing bacterial culture and drug-susceptibility testing I may have been accidentally infected, and developed some mild symptoms.

But failure teaches more than success; I grew quickly through it. After these two surgical lab sessions I can already perform endotracheal intubation and nerve dissection on lab animals. In the past, reading the works of great integrative-Chinese-Western medicine masters, I envied that they could both treat patients with TCM and personally perform surgery. Now that step is no longer far off for me. For a doctor, mastering more techniques to relieve patients' suffering is never a bad thing.

I have a strong science-engineering foundation. The year before last, my high-school chemistry teacher mentioned in conversation that when I studied with him, there was a period when he could not teach normally and no other teacher could cover for him, so he had me lecture the class on his behalf.

I had forgotten this completely; even after he reminded me, I still could not remember. My wife was in my high-school class, and she does remember. Since they both say so, I must indeed have lectured for my chemistry teacher while still a student. My father still keeps the certificate I won in a high-school chemistry competition. In 2024, at age 46, I took the college entrance exam without review and scored 70 in chemistry—a bare-exam score after nearly thirty years away from the textbook. It shows I really did know chemistry well in high school. A solid chemistry background makes studying Western medicine much easier.

In high school I also gained two lifelong benefits.

First, my Chinese-language teacher brought me a dozen or so extracurricular books every week, spanning literature, philosophy, history, and more; he let me pick whatever I liked and read freely. This not only built my reading comprehension and writing ability but broadened my knowledge and cultivated an excellent reading habit, which I still keep today.

Second, a math teacher surnamed Chen in our school's teaching-research group liked me very much. Every time he set a math exam, he would include one or two finishing problems that, in his view, in the whole school only I might possibly solve. After setting them he would proudly tell me to see whether I could stump him this time. I had a strong competitive drive then and loved accepting his challenges. Deliberately in this way he trained my thinking, teaching me to work through complex problems. Later he died suddenly of a stroke; I grieved for a long time when I heard the news.

To be cultivated by such good teachers when young is truly the greatest fortune. They taught me much knowledge, trained my thinking, and raised my confidence, so I remain deeply grateful to them even now.

I have always felt I am a lucky person. Though my first half of life had a bit of hardship and a few falls, most of the time what I harvested was good fortune—including right now, still. While my peers are bogged down in the messy details of middle age, I can happily study a major I love at school, and the years seem to have forgotten me, leaving few traces on my face. What more could I ask for?

This year I learned an English proverb: "A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."

I think this saying is excellent; I could not formulate a more refined conclusion. May you, reading this, also be more optimistic. Everything has two sides. It is not that luck favors optimists, but that optimists habitually choose luck.

It may sound absurd, but I have drawn up a medical-research plan spanning 40 to 60 years; the accumulation of the past dozen or so years is only a beginning. I am blindly optimistic that I may live past 100, and that in old age I may, like China's renowned scholar Zhou Youguang and Professor Zheng Ji, still have sound thinking and writing ability.

Both of these elders lived past 110 and continued doing research and writing after 100. Is it not a fascinating way to live?

My age is already not young by many people's standards, but I do not feel that way myself. Qian Xuesen did not return from the United States until age 44 and then began building China's "Two Bombs, One Satellite" program; at 45, Mao Zedong stayed up in a Yan'an cave dwelling writing "On Protracted War" and, under extremely harsh conditions, led China's liberation war. For a long-term thinker, age is never the problem.

While continuing his studies, my son has gradually been able to support himself through his own work; he has his own life plans and is steadily, unhurriedly realizing them. This removes one more worry from me. A beloved calling and a peaceful life make one's temperament calmer day by day.