Waving Goodbye to the Sunrise and Sunset at the Village Gate

This time I stayed in my hometown for a full nine days and eight nights. While home, I turned down every social engagement I possibly could. I did not even spend a single night at my wife's parents' home. Of course, I was at my mother-in-law's door frequently and ate quite a few meals she cooked.

While home I rarely went out, devoting myself entirely to keeping my nearly eighty-year-old father company. Fortunately, most of my relatives and friends know my temper and understand my current situation, so they were not offended.

This time our whole family of three came home; my wife and I each returned to our own side—she kept her mother company, I kept my father company, and our son shuttled back and forth between his grandfather's and his grandmother's homes.

It was not that we absolutely refused to visit relatives and friends; we did attend a few engagements we could not turn down. But when I went out, I took my father along. My father, however, has been used to plain fare all his life and cannot banqueting; after two restaurant meals with me, he had diarrhea at home. Fortunately, a sachet of montmorillonite powder solved the problem. After that I declined all invitations. Every day I ate home-cooked food either at our own home or at my mother-in-law's, returning to my own village each evening to go to bed early.

At this time of year there are few young people in the village, and it is not lively at all. That suits me; I do not like bustle. My father's and my routines are basically in sync: around five in the morning we both rise and start the day's busyness; after dinner we walk together around the village and are in bed by nine. There are a few more mosquitoes in the countryside, but with a mosquito coil lit, one can still sleep soundly.

The childhood friend next door made some money on a construction project a few years ago and has decorated his front of the house beautifully. He has planted all kinds of flowers and built exquisitely made railings and a swing frame; his doorway has the widest view. Every morning, the first thing I do after waking is stand at his doorway and watch the sunrise over the horizon; in the evening I watch the sunset at the village gate. We work at sunrise and rest at sunset, letting everything follow nature, without needing any timekeeping device.

We have two electric bicycles at home, one of them fast, with a top speed of 40–50 km/h; I ride it out for a joyride almost every day. Sometimes I ride to my mother-in-law's for a meal and pick up my wife, taking her for a spin around our county or the next; sometimes I take the whole family out for an outing; sometimes I speed off on my own. On the sparsely populated rural roads, the speed can be pinned to the max. I have to admit that speeding is not very safe, but it is a thrill.

When I have had my fill, I go home, take a shower, and chat about everyday things with my father. Or I retreat to the air-conditioned room to read, browse the news, write something, or memorize vocabulary. When tired, I fall asleep at once. After such a luxurious week-plus of vacation, half a year's fatigue was swept away. I also got to keep my father company; while at school, what makes me feel most guilty is being unable to keep company with and care for my aging father.

Even when calling me, he has to pick a time when I have neither classes nor labs, and my free time is truly scarce. All this I owe him, and I have long wanted to repay it by coming home on holiday. In this world, only my parents fulfilled endless responsibilities toward me; now that my mother is gone, I hope not to leave any further regret when it comes to keeping my father company. So I devoted almost all the time I had reserved for him to his company, declining all invitations and engagements.

Three years ago my father showed early signs of dementia; over these three years I have used medication and external therapies to help control his condition. Whether it is real efficacy or my own psychology, I feel his overall state has improved considerably. During the nine days at home I carefully observed his sleep, spirits, strength, and cognition and found him doing quite well in all these areas, which puts my mind much more at ease. Only when my father is in good shape can I complete my studies without a care.

Almost every day my father and I rode together to one or two places; most of the time he led the way and I followed behind. The mountain roads have many forks, but he rarely made a wrong turn. I also climbed mountains with him; when crossing ridges, my father is still vigorous and agile, not panting like some young people.

In another year he will turn eighty. He has no hypertension, hyperlipidemia, or hyperglycemia, no malignant tumor, and no COPD, having perfectly dodged the top fatal common diseases. Most elders on my father's side are long-lived, so I think my father can live past 85.

Since last year I have been studying clinical medicine full-time at school, and almost every professional course emphasizes "prevention first, combining prevention with treatment"—these eight characters are also the core of China's healthcare work. But in reality, not many people put these eight characters into practice well. Most people lack self-discipline: they cannot control their mouths, do not like labor or exercise, and have many desires, so disease prevention becomes empty talk and a fond dream.

Having worked in the clinic for so many years, to be honest, I feel that most of the patients I see are not wronged by their illnesses. It is precisely the bad habits they themselves persist in that make them ill. The best doctor in the world is each person himself; the best medical teacher is those who live long and healthily—they are the true practitioners and masters of preventive medicine.

Having studied medicine for so many years, I feel the causal relationships between human health and disease summarized in medical textbooks are all too simple. In my view, for a person to be healthy and long-lived, the most important thing is the perseverance to stick to a healthy lifestyle and resist all sorts of temptations. Perseverance is truly the rarest quality on earth.

I am grateful to have been born into such a persevering family. My father has many shortcomings, but he is indeed one of the most persevering people I have ever met. Having inherited part of his genes, I myself am also very persevering. I hope that in the second half of my life I can follow my parents' example and stick to a healthy lifestyle, avoiding the troubles of various geriatric diseases.

Meeting is hard and parting harder; the nine-day home leave ended quickly. My wife and I took the green-skinned slow train, bouncing for sixteen hours, from our hometown back to Beijing. We waved goodbye to the sunrise and sunset at the village gate, and goodbye to our elderly fathers. As we left, there was so much reluctance—especially on my part.

I am about to enter another brand-new academic year, busy shuttling between classrooms, the library, and the lab, and I have to leave my aging parents in the hometown a thousand miles away, unable to care for them at any time as I did before returning to school. I feel guilty about this. When young, we are grateful to our parents for raising us and creating the conditions for our education; now I am grateful that they are healthy and do not hold me back, sparing me additional worries.

In Guan Zhui Bian (Limited Views), Qian Zhongshu quoted the German writer Goethe as saying that scholarship reaches four realms: being able to enter, being able to range broadly, being able to penetrate deeply, and being able to exit. I think studying medicine should be the same: if you cannot enter, range, penetrate, or exit, you can only see the leopard through a tube or grope the elephant blind. After studying medicine, after learning it fully and penetrating it deeply, one must also be able to transcend it, not be bound by it, so as to view medicine more comprehensively and truly grasp this discipline closely tied to health—guarding health for oneself and for others.

The mastery lies beyond the books, and medicine is no exception.