The Joy of Living

Life is beautiful on its own. I realize this after I translated the short story Good Luck and Best Wishes from Chinese into English.

In the story, people live a primitive life with few modern belongings in a far-off mountainous area; however, they enjoy life enormously. A bowl of fermented spirits, a flowery bun, colorful strings, spices, scented pouches, and longing for love and marriage bring them great joy of living.

Mom teaches her teen daughter how to hold a needle and how to use a thimble to sew flowered cloth into the shape of a heart to make a scented pouch, and how to spread aromatic spices to make the scented pouch bulge. The girl savors the pleasure of using a thimble to push a needle, the pleasure of pulling a needle through a cloth, and the pleasure of joining two pieces of cloth together.

Dad teaches his young boy to pound the spices in a mortar with a stone pestle, but spices jump out mischievously. Through pounding and pounding, the boy finally can make the spices turn compliant and burst into flowers, which satisfies him. As he pounds the pestle up and down, the house becomes filled with the aroma.

The atmosphere is aromatic and mystic and the practice means more than itself. The teenagers feel that it is something beautiful and worth expecting. The implication of sex education is evasive, beautiful and healthy.

On Dragon Boat Festival (the 5th day of the 5th lunar month), the young boys and young girls climb onto mountaintop to collect Chinese spicy mugwort plants, they feel like harvesting good luck and best wishes for the entire year. They enjoy being young, being together, being pure and being in love.

The story doesn't provide a specific time setting nor a particular place. There is nothing to do with politics. It is simply an ode to life. Living is meaningful and beautiful by itself. It doesn't take much to be happy.

Good Luck and Best Wishes is included in the short story collection Street Wizards and Other New Folklore , one volume of 21st Century Chinese Literature, which presents a kaleidoscope of Chinese folk customs and provides a view of the multifaceted and living China.

What does your heart reflect?

Photo courtesy: http://gb.cri.cn/

Look at the wondrous picture: after a spring rainfall, a lot of raindrops left on the leaves and flowers. In each of several crystal raindrops reflected a whole beautiful daisy, magnifying the refreshing beauty of the delicate blossoms.

After a rain, the meadow is greener; the air is fresher; the sky is bluer; and perchance there is a rainbow highlighting the sky. Without a rainstorm, how can we appreciate a magnificent rainbow?

Wind and rain are natural phenomena, just as ups and downs are inevitable in life. After the rain, a raindrop reflected a beautiful daisy; after adversity, what left in our heart?

During the past several years, I read extensively from a lot of writers and bloggers. The writers teaching people how to overcome depression ever endured depression; the writers coaching people how to rise above poverty ever lived through poverty; the writers telling people to be strong and kind ever encountered financial problem and social difficulty. The bad situations make them stronger, kinder and gentler. Disruption can be turned into the light of a new day.

Each of us is a unique expression of life; our individual choice has greater effect than we know; the peace within us creates peace in the world; the beauty within us breeds beauty in the world.

Maintaining inner harmony takes patience, hope and love. Our inside world can have impact on the outside world. Remember to be kind, generous, loving and grateful.

Ask yourselves what your heart reflects? What ripple effect do you generate in the ocean of life?

Beautiful Moments

Life is composed of a sequence of moments, passing by as flowers come out and then wither, as fallen leaves float in the wind, as raindrops knock crisply on the roof.

Time flies, we can’t stop it and we can’t change it. Some moment is beautiful, some is imperfect, and some is unforgettable.

When I was little, I liked to chase dragonflies along a stream in the twilight. Set against the burning sun, the bodies of dragonflies were golden and shiny, the transparent wings silky and delicate. I caught one dragonfly, held in hands, and then set it free, watching it fly against the inflamed sky. It is a beautiful moment.

The second year in graduate school, we had a Spring Festival Evening Party. My lovely neighbor Andrea drove me to the Hall. When we sat down, a student board member came to me, said, “You look so elegant. The president of University came to the party today. I think she needs help to understand the performance. Can you go to her table as a translator?” I didn’t talk too much, but I remember that moment is beautiful.

After nine months’ pregnancy, and twelve hours’ induced labor pain, my little boy William was delivered. He was cute and wet, crouching on my chest. I kissed his little fingers and noticed his fingers were slim and long as mine. He stretched his hands to me, letting me kiss him more, what a beautiful moment!

Life is a process. If we can enjoy and cherish every beautiful moment, life will be a collection of poems. Even in the hard time, we still can find something small and subtle to fill our soul.
Photo Courtesy: fidelis - Istanbul

The Breadth of Mind

“Not refusing any tiny soil and pebble, the Tai Mountain towers into the sky; collecting all the small streams, the rivers and oceans become deep and wide.” – Li Si (280 -208 BC), Qin Dynasty.

Photo courtesy: laserspit on Flickr

All flowers compete in splendor, so we can enjoy a beautiful spring. The sea leniently accepts all rivers flowing into it, so it has its awe-inspiring magnificence. A country can take all kinds of talents into good use, so people can benefit from its prosperity and greatness.

When we are narrow-minded, we are easily fettered by anger, prejudice and hatred. If we see through the world with colored glasses, we can never really know its true nature. A prejudiced person will bind himself up with his prejudice; a biased person will be harmed by his partial view.

If everything follows the same pattern, the world may be dull and boring. Different people can live together in harmony with mutual understanding and mutual respect. Different cultures can take in the good thoughts and philosophy from the other cultures.

When people are harsh or the culture is abusive, we can develop a callous heart and a standoffish attitude. If we stand on the mountaintop, we can see far. If we uplift our soul, we will know we can forgive anybody.

It requires wisdom to open your heart and broaden your mind. The wiser a person is, the broader his mind. We can broad our mind and enrich our soul by doing the following:

Be nice to people. You don’t know that there may be a small war inside everyone. A hateful person can be in his troubled time. Use your smile to warm them up.

Learn different cultures and beliefs. Don’t behave like a frog at the bottom of a well – only able to see the little patch of sky above. We can expand our vision by selectively learning from the other people and cultures.

Be tolerant of opinions different from one’s own. People have different family backgrounds, personal experiences, cultural customs and social economic situations. If you think from their points of view and try to walk in their shoes, they may be right.

Be liberal to an opponent. An opponent, whether his perspective is correct or wrong, will provide you some valuable viewpoints, so that you can improve yourself and do better. Looking back, you will find you benefit more from your opponents than your friends.

Be open to new experiences and ways of thinking. Don’t stereotype yourself. There is always a new way of thinking. Even the greatest inventor Addison can resist the idea of alternative current.

Lifelong learning. During this fast-paced information age, if you don’t improve yourself and learn something new everyday, you fall behind. If we open our heart, we can learn something useful from almost everybody.

The Bilingual Brain

During the last year at graduate school, a delicate young lady lived across the door to my room. At late night and early morning, I heard that she read aloud in a language I didn’t understand at all. One evening, I knocked her door open, asking her why I could not understand her English a little bit.

She said, “I am a Doctorate candidate for Medicine. There are a lot of long difficult Biological and Medical terms and abstract academic content to memorize. I am almost 30, unable to memorize things easily in a foreign language, so I translate them into my native language Romanian first, recite over again to commit to memory, and then I can learn and remember them in English.” I looked at her textbooks, scared by all the hard long words. I guess she spent twice more time than an average student did.

During some sleepless nights, I heard she read loudly and drearily in Romanian, feeling frustrated and bored by school life. I believed I could never get a Ph.D.

Actually, I also had trouble thinking clearly and memorizing text in English during my school years. I felt my native language flew freely from my right brain, but English was stuck in my left brain broken into vague pieces.

The human brain functions complexly. If our mind is in the clouds, we still can muddle along with our study and work in our native language. However, it requires more mental energy, focus and inner peace to think, memorize and analyze in a foreign language. If there is no harmony inside us, it is very hard for us to study and work efficiently with a second language.

According to a research, bilingual people have an advantage: the structure of the human brain is altered by the experience of acquiring a second language - the bilingual brain develops more densely, giving it an advantage in various abilities and skills.

Some US researchers theorize that speaking two languages may increase blood and oxygen flow to the brain and keep nerve connections healthy—factors thought to help ward off dementia. Being bilingual may help to keep the brain sharper for longer.

The brain can be thought of as the command centre of the human nervous system. The more we stimulate our brain with thinking activities and movement the more it will reward us. How well we nourish our brain determine how well our brain functions. We have to eat right and sleep sound to maintain our vigor, vitality and creativity at a high level.

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I don't remember the lady's name, but she ever told me she could speak several European languages a little, such as French, German and Czech. She is more than bilingual. And her parents passed away.