Imagine a painstaking farmer plowing his field for hours under the scorching, pitiless sun, his beads of sweat running down like raindrops, drenching his stained white shirt. Then imagine a neatly dressed, studious Chinese professor sitting in perfect composure, carefully writing his own poetry in calligraphy form, listening to the sound of the west wind lifting the leaves. Now imagine them both in their mid 60s. Do you find the two images rather contradistinctive? To me, they are identical—a man of relatively normal height, with a prominent paunch on his otherwise slender frame. He is my father.
A person with such a broad spectrum of interests is usually rare to find, but from the very first moment I arrived on this earth, he was in my life. My father has very close-cropped, always well-trimmed dark hair, and below it are his bushy, determined-looking eyebrows. You immediately notice his eyes, shimmering like a dark, tranquil lagoon; those are the eyes he studies the world, with deep sympathy, looking into the distress of others. He has puffiness under his eyes, resulting from many years of hard-work. His forehead, wide and high—my forehead, exactly—along with his plump face gives people an impression of trustworthiness. He usually has a solemn and thoughtful mien, but when he smiles, it is vast, using the whole of the face, as if he’d been frozen in the middle of a belly laugh. As Joseph Campbell says in The Hero with A Thousand Faces, exploring the archetypal heroes in mythology, “He must put aside his pride, his virtue, beauty and life and bow or submit to the absolutely intolerable.” My father is a hero as such. Born and raised in a farming family, my father spent the first twenty years of his life working on the farm, and the pursuit of knowledge was unthinkable for the impoverished. Seeing the rich kids in town going to school, he dreamed that he would someday be like them. He wanted to be more than just a farmer, and being educated is the salvation. The dream did realize—only when he was in his thirties. He started from high school, going to school during the day and working part-time at night. When finally he finished his master’s degree in Chinese literature, he was over forty. Then he went on pursuing his teaching career for twenty years, until now.
From a farmer to a professor, my father’s life certainly constructs his strong personality. His utmost passion in life, that is, his profound understanding and insights on the Chinese languages and literature, wins him great renown in his field. Apart from his career, he is also fond of growing organic vegetables; the carrots he grew even won the “Carrot of The Year” competition in the farming area many times. The success story of his life never brings him pride or arrogance; in fact, he is as dedicating as he is generous. After coming home late from teaching, he usually spends hours carefully marking students’ papers. When he gathers fresh vegetables, he never forgets to give most of them away to our neighbors. He hardly ever complains, neither does he shed tears. He is a man of a few words, only speaking when needed, making sure every word coming out from him is thoughtful enough. That may be the reason why Chinese poetry is so appealing to him—he writes short poems on what he observes, ranging from culinary salt to the issue of life and death. His impoverished years of life had taught him frugality; even though he can afford buying luxury goods now, he finds them alien to his nature. His shirts and pants are usually torn and patched. Only when he puts on the role of a professor will he put on his best clothes.
In brief, my father is an upright man who strived toward his lifelong ideal and succeeded, proving that what seems like an impossible climb is just a staircase without the steps drawn in. My father’s life enfolded mine within its triumph and sorrow. His story, told to me by many voices and sometimes himself, year after year, became all the stories, even my own. And his love, along with my mother’s—their willingness to know the truth of my heart and to love me unconditionally—determines the course of my life. Seeing him cultivating crops and writing poetry with full zest, I wonder if they share the same essence—maybe it can be interpreted by a famous Chinese saying: “If you do not brave the snow in the depth of winter, how can you smell the plum blossom?”