The Road Ahead Is Long; I Will Walk It Step by Step

When my gaokao results came out in 1998, I went to the school and happened to see Mr. Song, my physics teacher, saying excitedly to other teachers in front of the administrative building: "How can an examination system like this select genuine talent? How should a student like Zhou Zhiyuan have missed out on his first choice? I have taught all my life and rarely met such a student; this is wasting talent!"

When someone reminded him that Zhou Zhiyuan was right behind him, the white-haired Mr. Song turned and saw me; his eyes were a little moist. He was saddened by my poor showing. I have remembered that scene all my life. In that way my teacher expressed his recognition and his regret for me, and also urged me not to sink but to make something of myself.

In fact, that year I did not do badly—I scored well above the key-university cutoff and was admitted to a key university; only my first choice did not work out. Moreover, given my family's economic circumstances at the time, it would have been hard for me to finish at whichever university I attended.

In 2012, just before my mother died, she said to me: "Son, as your parents we feel very guilty; what you have given us in return far exceeds what we ever gave you. I have become a burden to you. You have unfinished dreams; now that I am gone and you have one less burden, go and live according to your own wishes." How I wish my mother were still alive. The love she gave me was incomparable; though our family was a bit poor, I feel no lack at all in how I grew up.

I left university to ease my parents' financial burden, and, moved by my mother's dying wish, I chose to return to campus after my own son entered college. Seeing how passionately I loved medicine, my mother encouraged me on her deathbed to study medicine well and make up for the disappointment of that first gaokao. Over the next 5–8 years I will complete higher education in both Chinese medicine and clinical medicine.

After I finish this junior college this year, beginning in the third year I will follow an elderly physician I have long admired, copying his prescriptions, helping organize his scholarly thought, completing his medical writings, and preserving a lifetime of his clinical experience—this may take about three years. Then I will take the junior-college entrance exam once more and finish that too. The two junior colleges will be clinical medicine and TCM respectively. Before I am fifty-five, I want to truly master both Chinese and Western medicine and be competent to practice as a comprehensive physician in both. After fifty-five, I can work for at least another twenty years.

Along the way I will continue writing and practicing clinically. Barring serious illness or upheaval, I will, as in these past years, not interrupt clinical work or writing for a single day. My talent does not match the brightest people's, but my perseverance can compensate. I have long hoped to master both Chinese and Western medicine, develop precision medicine, and improve clinical outcomes; this can only come from continual accumulation and settling, step by step, and cannot be achieved overnight.

Now I have fulfilled my duty of raising my child to adulthood, and the rest of my life can be planned for myself. My unfinished dreams I will continue to pursue. I do not feel old; my remaining years are still long, and I have plenty of time for my research.

Precision medicine has long been one of humanity's most cherished goals, because every one of us may fall ill, and our loved ones may fall ill. When we ourselves or our loved ones are sick, what we hope for most is the science of precision medicine to help us recover; no one likes gambling with their life.

Medicine has too much uncertainty, but the root of that uncertainty is really that it is not yet precise enough—that human research into disease is not yet deep enough. I like neither TCM-bashers nor Western-medicine-bashers: even pooling the forces of both, we cannot yet solve half of humanity's diseases; every year so many still die of illness—so what is there to attack each other about?

If a person loves medicine, they ought to learn both Chinese and Western medicine well, so they can see problems more comprehensively, have more means to help patients, and draw on the strengths of each to advance medicine.

My mother already died too young of illness, and many of my patients have died too young of illness, and many more will die too young of illness in the future. Each death casts a family into grief. I have long felt deep regret that human medicine remains stalled in the study of so many diseases. With no great burdens left for the second half of my life, I can devote my time and energy to medical research. I do not expect quick results; I can patiently draw up one ten-year plan after another and move at a steady pace. Ten years on the cold bench may not buy even a drop of medical progress, but the attempt must be made.

I hope more people will strive toward the goal of precision medicine. We must study diseases thoroughly and find ways to cure them definitively, so that our descendants suffer far less. Many times patients have asked me what the root cause of some disease actually is, and I have had no answer, because human scientists have not yet found what they seek. But I believe in the future: our medicine will advance to the point where it can give us answers and solve many problems that are now unsolved.

Hold fast to hope and press forward without turning back. Refine oneself endlessly, for there is no end. Is not the whole evolutionary history of humankind on this planet precisely a journey along such a path?