The Tree-Lined Path I Never Tire Of

For a normal person, more than ninety percent of our time is spent in a very familiar environment, day after day repeating the same life. Even if we occasionally travel and leave our usual place of residence for a while, such occasions are after all not many. Most of the time we have to live at home or where we work.

My life, compared with most people's, is even simpler; the great majority of each day is spent in my study. Answering all kinds of consultations, reading, and writing—when I grow tired I walk out the door, take a loop along a tree-lined path at the back gate of my residential compound, and then return home to continue my work and study. That tree-lined path is the place I visit most often. It runs alongside a small river, so it is actually the riverbank of this little stream.

The landscaping on both sides of this tree-lined path is very well done; many Chinese scholar trees (Guohuai) have been planted, and several of them are at least several decades old. The Chinese scholar tree is one of the most commonly planted landscape trees in Beijing. Besides the scholar trees, this path also has a few willows, as well as some other tree species I cannot name, and flowers such as roses, Chinese roses, and crape myrtles. The scenery here is lovely in every season.

In spring, when all things revive, the grass on both banks is lush and green, and at night one can hear frogs croaking by the river—to me, who grew up in the countryside, this is simply the sound of heaven. In May and June, the scholar tree blossoms give off a faint, delicate fragrance, making me feel very pleasant as I walk the path. Although the river is small, its landscaping is quite good; though the scenery does bear the marks of human design rather than being entirely natural, it is still very pleasing to look at.

Most of the summer days, there is no shortage of anglers on both banks. Occasionally I will stop and watch these anglers fish for a few minutes, but I do not linger too long over them. As a child I was passionately fond of fishing, but now it is hard for me to go even once, because I no longer have that much time to waste.

In autumn, the scenery on this tree-lined path is also lovely. Beijing's autumn is the best time of the year; the riverbank is a blaze of color, and its beauty is no less than that of the mountains with forests dyed in autumn hues.

In winter, the small river freezes over, and children play on the ice; watching these little rascals, I feel warm at heart. After a heavy snow, the snow-blanketed banks are even more beautiful. Occasionally icicles hang from the branches, giving one the feeling of being in a palace of jade and crystal.

Although this tree-lined path along the riverbank is less than a kilometer long, I am very attached to it. Whenever I am tired, I will walk one or two round trips along it, and when I return I feel greatly refreshed. Sometimes, when I want to write an article, I will also walk one or two round trips along this path. Walking slowly and thinking slowly, by the time I get home an article has taken shape in my mind.

I cannot cope with an overly complicated life, yet living far from nature makes me feel bored. Having such a nature-close tree-lined path near home really makes me happy. I am a person who is easily satisfied; if there are no major upheavals in life, I have no wish to change my living environment or way of life.

Each day, an uncertain number of times, I put on cloth shoes and a plain, ordinary outfit and walk along this path to stretch my limbs, think through some questions, or digest the occasional unpleasant emotion. The path is busy with coming and going; now and then a neighbor passes by, and I greet them with a smile. Aside from that, most of the time I walk and think along this road in silence.

For me, a bustling social life has long been a thing of the past. After the age of thirty, I have basically been living this secluded life. Home, the park near home, the National Library, this tree-lined path, the vegetable garden, and bookstores—these are almost the entire settings of my life. Apart from contact with my closest relatives and with patients and their families, I rarely see anyone else.

Such a life may seem too dull to many people, but to me it is just right. I like, in this state of little disturbance, to keep reading and thinking, to keep venturing into new fields related to my profession and studying them in depth, to think up new lines of thought and put them into practice.

Life has no inherent good or bad; what suits oneself is best. For a self-sufficient person like me, my happiness is up to me and has little to do with other people. So I complain very little about life, and any unpleasant emotions that occasionally arise I can digest in a very short time. If every day we deal in the spiritual world with the wisest group of people on this earth, we have no reason to complain too much about life. Perhaps this is the greatest benefit that reading and thinking bring us.