Written on My Thirty-Eighth Birthday

My birthday falls on the 18th day of the seventh lunar month. As a child, whenever the Ghost Festival arrived, I knew my birthday was near.

I was born in the countryside, in a poor family. As a child I ate poorly; most of the year the food was thin and watery, and I worked far harder than city children, so I was inevitably greedy for good food. So whenever my birthday approached, I would look forward excitedly to a treat.

Every Ghost Festival, my mother would jokingly say to me: Son, today we make offerings to the ancestors; you've had a good meal—let's count that as your birthday, and you needn't celebrate it separately.

Then I would look disappointed and sad, even throw a tantrum. But when the actual day came, Mother never forgot to make something nice for the three of us siblings—fry a couple of eggs, cook a bowl of egg noodles; the birthday child got two extra eggs. That was enough to make us happy.

Today, after lunch, I went out for a walk and saw by the roadside many traces of paper money people had burned last night to honor their ancestors; only then did I realize yesterday was the Ghost Festival. Away from home and out of old customs, I had forgotten to burn some spirit money for my mother in the netherworld.

Mother has been gone over five years, and I have unwittingly turned thirty-eight. Seeing others still have an aged mother at fifty or sixty, I always feel sincere envy.

Since I reached adulthood, my mother no longer remembered my birthday.

There were a few years when my brother and I were both in Beijing. Whenever my brother's birthday drew near, Mother never forgot to call and remind me to celebrate it; but when my own birthday came, Mother would selectively forget.

At the time I inevitably felt Mother was a bit partial, but now I understand she simply worried more about her elder son. As the naughty younger boy who had found his own life partner, I spared her a great deal of anxiety.

The year Mother died, I was despondent, all will extinguished. Once I chatted with my homeroom teacher from the first year of high school. He urged me to pull myself together, saying that I would not enter my golden years until thirty-five to forty-five, and that I ought not to give up on life too early.

Now I am thirty-eight, and Mother has been gone over five years. I have gradually walked out of the grief of her death, and my heart grows calmer. Though I do not much care about my teacher's so-called golden age, I realize he was right: at thirty-three my mind was not yet mature; I did not know myself, and thought I would sink forever into the pain of losing my mother.

Time has healed the wound in my heart, and step by step time has pushed me forward, unwittingly carrying me ever deeper into the hall of medicine.

Recently I have been reading enormously—widely reading the medical monographs and biographies of Chinese TCM physicians and Japanese kampo physicians, along with works of philosophy and anthropology. My reading efficiency has never been higher; I finish nearly a book a day.

In this quiet process of reading, free of all external distractions, I have gradually come to taste what Confucius meant by "the leather bonds thrice broken" and "for three months he knew not the taste of meat."

I have always talked about being detached from fame and gain, always tried to live an unruffled life, but truthfully, I have not yet fully detached myself from the arena of fame and gain, nor truly lived a completely unruffled life.

Of course, having chosen medicine to save lives, one can probably never live entirely unruffled. In rescuing life after life, frightening events are unavoidable.

For a person who studies medicine, it is probably also impossible to withdraw completely from the arena of fame and gain. After reading so many doctors' biographies and gaining more experience of the world, I realize that unless one completely abandons medicine and lives under an entirely different identity, one cannot avoid being drawn into the arena.

Once a physician achieves a modest reputation, patients come seeking him; every successful treatment brings more patients. So a doctor whose skill is solid treats more and more patients, becomes busier and busier, and cannot lack either fame or fortune.

In the Meiji Restoration era, the great Japanese kampo master Asada Sōhaku was, after his death, praised by critics as: "Before Rikuen there was no Rikuen; after Rikuen there is no Rikuen" (Rikuen was Asada's style name). It is said that when he died, from the emperor down to peddlers, all grieved; in many parts of Japan markets spontaneously closed for his funeral.

When Kong Bohua, one of the four great modern physicians of Beijing, died, mourners likewise came from government leaders down to peddlers. One sees how lofty the reputation of a highly skilled doctor can rise—enough to shake court and country.

Ordinary learners like us cannot reach the influence of Asada Sōhaku or Kong Bohua, but every doctor of above-average skill has some reputation in a particular patient population; that is an undeniable fact.

To deny that fame and fortune are linked is dishonest. As reputation grows, a doctor's income rises. So when I now speak of being detached from fame and fortune, I feel a little ashamed. Though I have never chased them, fame and fortune have come quietly of their own accord.

By my original wishes, I would have been content to have enough to eat and wear, a footing in the medical world, and the freedom to pursue my interests all my life—to study medicine, treat the sick and save lives.

But after being drawn into the arena of fame and gain, unwittingly my heart has been stung by fame and fortune; I have not been above the world, and occasionally I have felt desires for greater fame and gain. Only then did I deeply realize how true the Buddhist saying is: "It is hard to see the good and not seek it."

Fortunately, this desire arose only briefly before I realized that, left unchecked, it would eventually destroy my calm, book-reading life. So, like the "anti-entropy phenomenon" Mr. Wang Xiaobo described, I have step by step let go of fame and gain, returning to the simple life of reading, studying medicine, and treating patients as comes.

There is no single model of a successful life; each person has a way of living that suits his temperament. For me, the way that suits my temperament is this simple life of reading, writing and treating patients.

If the golden age my teacher spoke of refers to this state of body-and-mind ease, living in peace and contentment, then I think he was indeed right.

As for greater glory, that is not what I seek. Given my limits, I have no higher expectations of life; I do not expect luxury cars or furs, nor flowers and applause. To have moments of strolling in a quiet courtyard, calmly watching flowers bloom and fall, is enough.

Life always goes through the great sifting of the tide; what remains, sifted and sifted, whether or not it is gold, is what lies deepest in a person's true character. Even if what remains is a lump of dung, there will be flies who see it as their favorite.

That a person can, around forty, find the work beloved by his deepest temperament and take joy in it—calling such a state a golden age is very apt.

After all, the value of inner joy far exceeds that of gold and silver. As in my childhood, when I knew neither gold nor silver, the bowl of egg noodles my mother cooked me on my birthday was enough to make me happy for a long time.

The story of the man who bought the box and returned the pearl is mocked, but I am the kind of person who would gladly buy the box and return the pearl. If I love the box, then for me the box is worth more than the jewel—and the box is one of a kind, irreplaceable.

After these years of tempering in the medical profession, I handle my work more and more skillfully, in many ways.

On one hand, my clinical skill genuinely improves year by year. Not that I can now cure every patient—a capability I will never possess, because medicine itself is an imperfect science. No medical learner can cure everyone; one might even say every doctor has unavoidable wronged souls under his hands.

But as I read more and see more cases, I do handle many diseases with increasing ease.

On the other hand, I also handle relationships with patients and their families with increasing skill.

Which seekers are fated to work with me, and which are not, I now know within minutes. I do not miss those who are fated, and I do not force those who are not. With such a mindset, I am naturally no longer trapped by doctor-patient disputes.

There is also the matter of handling the negative emotions that have accumulated in my heart, more skillfully than before.

It goes without saying that medicine is one of the professions most prone to accumulating psychological scars.

Medical staff face almost exclusively exhausted, help-seeking people, including the paranoid and the violent; someone is always leaving a shadow on our hearts.

Add the frequent confrontation with death, and the psychological pressure on medical learners is great. I really could not handle these unpleasant things as skillfully in the past, but now I am much better.

It is like a caterpillar becoming a butterfly: after long tempering, one naturally develops from quantitative to qualitative change, from immaturity to maturity.

Overall, this year has been ordinary. I have simply grown a year older, read a few more books, understood a few more truths, shed some arrogance and some anger, gained some calm, learned to let go more, and to let things be more.

That is all. And that is enough.