Life Insights ⁽³⁰⁵⁾

Outside the window the autumn rain falls without end. Waking in the small hours, I toss and turn, unable to sleep; the pain in my heart rises wave after wave and will not let go. In the first half of my life I always wanted…

Today is the seventh day of the seventh lunar month. By Chinese folk legend, on the night of Qixi the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl meet again in the sky, so Qixi is China's Valentine's Day. The seventh day of the seventh lunar month is…

On August 11, I saw on the webcam that my father was acting strangely, as though searching for a door but unable to find it. Within five minutes I made up my mind: I would immediately buy a high-speed rail ticket back to my hometown…

Every morning at four o'clock I get up and begin reading and working through practice questions. Around six, as the city's schoolchildren and working people gradually rise and wash, I have already been studying at my desk for two hours. Between six and eight, apart…

My extended family has not fared well lately; one mishap has followed another, each a matter of life and death. An elderly member of the family slipped and fell into water and died; a niece developed a severe adverse reaction after a vaccination and was…

On the fourth day of the first lunar month, I left my hometown for Wuhan, planning to continue from Wuhan to Beijing the next day. My family saw me off to the high-speed rail station. On the way, my father said to me: "Don't throw…

The hardest work in the world is foundational work, because it is voluminous, tedious, and dull. Most people prefer shortcuts, hoping to get there in one step, unwilling to put in the hard work to build a foundation. As a result they easily waste their…

I have lived for more than forty years, and for the great majority of that time my life satisfaction has been very high—one might say, as satisfied as could be. This is not because I possess much, but because I want little; I have never…

I rarely watch films and even more rarely write film reviews, but today I will write a review that is not quite a review. I call it that because less a review than a reflection: after watching the documentary "Free Solo," I combined it with…

New cells arise from old cells, and old cells from even older ones; tracing back in this way, the cells of modern organisms are all descendants of ancient cells. Within the tiny cell lie billions of years of inherited and altered genes. Every cell, every…