Written on My Son's Eleventh Birthday
Today is my son's eleventh birthday. On May 13, 2005, my son was born at Peking University Third Hospital. That day was the day my mother smiled most brightly; when she saw her plump, fair grandson in the maternity ward, she beamed from ear to ear.
Figure 1: My newborn son and his grandmother, photographed at Beijing Zoo
Figure 2: My newborn son and his maternal grandmother, photographed at Beijing Zoo
Eleven years ago, I was in a fairly difficult stage of my business. On the day my son was born, I still had to borrow five thousand yuan from my younger cousin to go to Peking University Third Hospital and buy nourishing food for my wife. My son's birth brought us good luck; in the years that followed, my business went smoothly, and I bought a home in Beijing and settled down. This quiet happiness lasted until my mother fell ill.
Figure 3: My two-year-old son and his mother, photographed in front of the panda house at Beijing Zoo
But good times did not last long. My mother, long afflicted by lingering illness, finally collapsed—first a cerebral hemorrhage, then stomach cancer. The last years of my mother's life were lived in hell. As her economic and spiritual support, I propped her up to the very end. At her hardest moment, by the riverside, she wanted to take her own life for relief; in tears I knelt before her, begging her to be a little stronger, promising I would find a way to defeat the disease tormenting her. This scene is deeply etched in my mind. In the end I could not defeat it; my mother, worn down by the double torment of post-hemorrhage sequelae and cancer, passed away. This is the greatest regret of my life.
Figure 4: On May 13, 2011, my mother, already in the autumn of her years, celebrated her grandson's birthday for the last time. In the early hours of May 3 the next year, she left this world, with no chance to celebrate his next birthday.
Today my son invited several friends home for his birthday. In the blink of an eye he is over 1.5 meters tall, a half-grown boy. His childhood friends, here for the birthday, say that when my son stands beside me, we look like brothers.
Figure 5: On May 13, 2016, my son's eleventh birthday, spent with his childhood friends
My son admires his father and often hopes that, when he grows up, he will be as learned and versatile as I, mastering many skills and having superb medical skill; this is a natural spiritual attachment. The ancients said: before teaching son and grandson, first teach yourself. The process of educating a son is also a process of self-education. If I want my son to become an honest, upright, kind person, I must first be honest, upright, and kind myself. Family education differs from school and social education; it lies more in example than in words.
Figure 6: On April 13, 2008, my nearly three-year-old son, photographed on the landscape stone of our neighborhood
Parents all hope their children become good people, with a happy marriage, a joyful and smooth life. Though this hope is often discounted or unfulfilled, from the start no one wishes anything but safety and smoothness for their child. Under my influence, my son wants, when he grows up, to be a good doctor of compassion who saves lives. I hope, before he turns sixteen, to lay a solid foundation in the humanities and medicine for him, giving him a far firmer grounding than my own.
Figure 7: On September 20, 2009, after moving to our current home, my son with his grandparents and mother, photographed at Purple Bamboo Park
My son is very gifted—though not necessarily the most gifted among all people, he still stands out from the crowd. In math and English he most often ranks first; his thinking is quick, and his character honest, simple, and unadorned, even appearing a little dull—very much like his grandmother. He is eager to learn and loves reading, a trait very like my own.
My son makes my heart grow ever more compassionate. Since having a child of my own, I no longer wish to hurt anyone in the world. A parent's love for its young is a loving affection. As a father, however stern one appears on the surface, within the heart one is tender.
Figure 8: On May 1, 2016, father and son at Shidu, Fangshan, Beijing
These years I have seen too many young people whose upbringing went wrong because of an absent father's love—some who, for the rest of their lives, cannot shake off its effects. I need my son, watered by abundant fatherly and motherly love, to grow up healthy.
After so many years in the world, and after seeing so much birth, old age, illness, and death, I have overcome my own restlessness and resolved to build in China a not-for-profit medical institution like the Mayo Clinic in America, one that truly treats medicine as a life-saving enterprise. Such a vision needs several generations of a family to complete; I hope my son will carry on my feeling and my vow. Medicine is not commerce; it needs a full century of perseverance to produce a medical institution that truly helps the world. Once such an institution has formed its own culture and values, it will benefit countless people.
In 2016, my son began spending time at the National Library
During my mother's illness, to my regret, I could not find a single such medical institution in China; that is why I hope to build one myself. For this, I have sacrificed not only my own material joys in the mortal world, but my child's as well. What can help us rise above the material world is only spiritual philosophy and personal faith. So from childhood I have required my son, while learning medicine, to study broadly the humanities and social sciences, to undergo training in philosophy and religion, to overcome the greed, anger, and delusion in his own heart, and to become someone distinctive through his own cultural cultivation and composure.
In 2016, father and son at Purple Bamboo Park; my son, nurtured by poetry and books, already shows his refined, inward side
Myself in 2012, just after my mother died; at thirty-three, I resolutely abandoned business for medicine, turning from amateur study and practice to the professional study and practice of medicine, and hoping that my son will also carry on this life vow of mine, devoting his life to the enterprise of saving lives.