Life Is a Thousand Reasons Worth Living

The Story of Cai Gao

I met Cai Gao on a quiet afternoon in Changsha. The light from her rooftop garden spilled into the room, brushing the edges of her watercolor sketches with gold. She laughed softly as she poured me tea. “My theme,” she said, “is that a life that has been thought through is worth living. And I’ve thought through mine.”

She spoke without hurry, her tone both calm and luminous—like someone who had already walked through all the storms and returned with sunlight in her pockets.

“I believe life can be designed,” she said. “And the earlier you start designing it, the better. Because if you don’t have that awareness, then someone else will design it for you—society, nature, circumstances. Between the two, you have to choose: will you participate in designing your life, or let others do it for you?”

She smiled, eyes still bright behind her glasses. “Of course I chose to take part in my own design. And fortunately, I chose right. I wanted a life that felt intimate to my heart, a life where my inner voice could speak.”

Her hands, soft but sure, traced invisible lines on the table as she spoke. “I’ve never been a utilitarian person,” she admitted, almost shyly. “If I had been more calculating, more worldly, maybe I wouldn’t have suffered so many losses, walked so many winding roads, or been sent down to the countryside. But I’m grateful for it now. Following my heart once punished me—but that punishment became my greatest reward. Those six years of rural life gave birth to my Peach Blossom Spring.”

She laughed quietly. “You see, everything in my life came very naturally—like a spring bursting out of the ground. There are many springheads in life, and I like to find them. I keep searching, just like the fisherman in The Peach Blossom Spring, rowing against the current to find the source. I’ve spent so much thought on that fisherman,” she said, pausing for a moment, “because I was really painting myself.”

Cai Gao leaned back slightly and looked out the window as if she could still see that fisherman gliding through the mist. “ ‘He followed the stream, forgetting how far he had gone,’ ” she quoted softly. “The scenery along the way—it reminds me of Lu Xun’s A Good Story. ‘The lamp’s light was dim, the firecrackers distant, and in the haze I saw a beautiful story…’ ” Her voice grew tender, almost whispering, as though the words themselves were floating on water. “The river in A Good Story, the water in Peach Blossom Spring, and the streams of my own life—all these waters merged into one. It has become the river that flows through my whole existence.”

When she painted The Peach Blossom Spring, she told me, she was really painting her six years of teaching in the countryside. “That little thatched pavilion you see in the picture—that was a real one I passed every day on my way to school. I’d stop there to drink a bowl of tea, listening to the stream. The water beneath my feet was never quite as beautiful as in the painting—but in my heart, it always was.”

Her smile turned nostalgic. “What I painted were the un-faded scenes of an agricultural civilization: the seed grass in bloom, the ox plowing the field, the farmer scattering fertilizer, the wooden bridges, the river channels, the mulberry and cypress trees, the old and the young living in quiet contentment. Labor, to them, was not burden but beauty. It was a need—a joy. Isn’t that what the ideal world is? Even communism, at its heart, is nothing more than this: to labor because your heart desires it, not because you must survive.”

She fell silent for a moment, the air warm with afternoon light. “So yes,” she continued, “I put my ideals into the painting. I put my life into it. Life and ideals should never be separate—they’re woven together like threads of the same cloth.”

She laughed suddenly. “I’ve completely broken my script, haven’t I? I’m sorry—I promised to speak in reverse order, but now it’s pure stream of consciousness.” Her laughter rang like wind chimes. “Thank you for letting me speak this way. It’s more natural.”

Then she showed me a photograph of her rooftop garden—lush, wild, and alive. “This,” she said, “is my roof. It’s public, you know. I plant with my neighbors so we can be close to nature. People say it looks like a green island floating above the city.”

Her eyes sparkled mischievously. “There are so many stories up there. Let me tell you just one, a small one. You should have a rooftop too—or at least a balcony, even just one pot of flowers. Don’t be the child holding an empty flowerpot. Because every day, there’s a small surprise waiting for you.”

She told me how she discovered life thriving in that small space—frogs courting, insects dancing, birds nesting under the eaves. “Once,” she said, “I saw a toad couple right in front of me, and I said, ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to intrude—you just blocked my way!’” She chuckled, covering her mouth. “Even the flies fall in love up there. They may be ugly, but they’re natural too. I try not to hate them.”

Her voice softened. “One day, a pair of little birds built a nest right on my roof—they trusted me that much. But I got curious and moved their nest just a little. They never came back.” She sighed. “Sometimes curiosity disturbs others. I learned not to do that again.”

“Later,” she went on, “a yellow wasp built its nest there. People told me to get rid of it—they were afraid of being stung. But I let it stay. My rooftop residents are all precious to me. There are so many of them now—too many to count.”

She leaned forward, her tone almost conspiratorial. “I can even hear them gossiping sometimes. The bird fathers always arrive first—so proud, standing tall on the roof beam, chirping like they own the place. Then the mothers come, gentle and bright, and soon after, the babies. Families of three, sometimes four. They’ve all been my neighbors.”

She smiled again, that same soft, amused smile. “You know, my friends come too—adults, children, grandparents. But the ones who visit most are the little kids. My grandson especially.” Her eyes lit up. “When he comes, we ‘catch the sun’ together.”

She laughed at the memory. “He once asked me, ‘Grandma, why are you going upstairs?’ and I told him, ‘To catch the sun.’ He said, ‘Oh, I see—then you’ll put it in a bowl to dry, right?’ I said yes.” She laughed again. “When I came back down, he asked, ‘Did you catch it?’ I told him, ‘No, today it was too late—I couldn’t reach it.’ He said, ‘Then why don’t you use a ladder?’ I said, ‘Alright, next time you come with me.’ He agreed. And of course, he forgot.”She smiled as she remembered another small ritual from her rooftop days.“Sometimes,” she said, “I sweep up the fallen leaves and burn them in a flowerpot, turning them into fertilizer for the next season. Before lighting the fire, I always bow to them and say, ‘Thank you for your hard work. Now I’ll turn you into soil again. I’m sorry.’”

She chuckled. “And my little grandson, he bows too. But he says something even better. Just as the flames start to rise, he says—‘Welcome!’”

Her laughter filled the room, the kind that comes from deep inside the heart. “Isn’t that beautiful? I told him, ‘You said it better than Grandma ever could.’”

Then she looked at me and said softly,“There are so, so many stories from that rooftop.I could talk all day. But I really just want to say one thing: life is beautiful.”

She paused for a long moment. Her voice, when it came again, was as gentle as wind moving through rice fields.“What kind of beauty is it? It’s a quiet kind. The kind you see when you slow down enough to really observe. And when you do, you start to notice that everything—every living thing—is content in its own being. Everything rests in peace with itself.”

She folded her hands lightly on her knees.“Life,” she said, “is like holding up an umbrella on a rainy day.Ordinary, but tender.And truly, life is a thousand reasons worth living.”

She looked up and smiled. “Thank you for listening to my home stories. They’re nothing grand, just little truths from my days. But they are all mine. Thank you.”

Later, she took me to a corner of her studio. There, leaning against the wall, were some of her paintings—Meng Jiangnu, Hua Mulan, Fire City. Most of them, she told me, were painted after her retirement.

She touched the edges of one frame and said,“I think I’m a late-blooming kind. Like a short, sturdy stalk of rice that ripens slowly—but fully. I didn’t rush my growth. I had no additives, no forcing. Everything came naturally, water finding its own way. That’s how I like to live.”

Her favorite work, she told me, was still The Peach Blossom Spring.“I’ve always admired Tao Yuanming,” she said. “A person so simple, so natural, so genuine.”

Then she sighed softly, as if remembering the harder years.“Life can really be a mess sometimes. It’s full of scattered feathers and broken glass—like a floor covered in chicken feathers. Sometimes it’s as hard as stone, as cold as concrete walls. And yes, I’ve had my moments of feeling trapped.”She smiled again. “But there is a way to transform it. I found my way—through art. Through gratitude for my daily life. I turned all those chicken feathers into tapestries, into silk. That transformation was slow, step by step. But it happened.”

She paused, her gaze drifting toward a memory.“I was lucky to have a happy childhood,” she said. “My sense of beauty, my way of feeling the world—it all began then. My first sip of milk, my first book, my first nursery rhyme, my first lullaby—I remember them all so vividly. I could recite my entire childhood for you,” she laughed, “but that would take too long.”

She pulled out an old black-and-white photograph. “This one,” she said, pointing, “that’s my grandmother in the middle. That’s my father beside her, and that’s my mother. The little girl there—that’s me.”

Her eyes softened. “My mother had six children, all girls. She wanted a boy so badly that she gave me a boy’s name. I didn’t understand it back then, but later I realized—she wanted me to have strength, to be someone who could shoulder things. A girl who could be as dependable as any son.”

She smiled as she quoted her mother and grandmother’s old saying in Changsha dialect:‘The front turtle leads, the back turtles follow.’“It means,” she explained, “that I had to set the example. I was the first turtle. I had to crawl forward and show the path. I knew then how important that was.”

She looked up at me. “That’s why I keep talking about childhood. Because it sets the first page of your life. Whatever color you paint that first page with—it becomes your base color. For me, there are no bad colors in the world. Every color completes another.”

She paused, her voice quiet but firm.“Pu Songling understood that. His Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio—its base color is black. Darkness surrounded him, but he made friends with that darkness—with ghosts and fox spirits, with the hidden corners of the world. From that shadow came all the light in his stories. The crystal beauty of his heroines, the delicate shimmer of his tales—it’s because the black was so deep.”

She smiled. “I, too, was born from a dark color. My background wasn’t good. But I’m grateful for it. If they called it black, I’d say fine—then it’s black. But if I decide it’s bright, it’s bright. I honestly love the family I was born into.”

She laughed again, almost shyly. “My father used to say, ‘If there’s a next life, I’ll still be myself, and I’ll still find your mother.’”She leaned back, looking thoughtful.“My father,” she said softly, “was the most beautiful part of my everyday life. It took me years to see that.”

“When I was younger, I used to look down on him,” she confessed. “His desk was always bare—no poems, no novels—just a few books on political economy. I used to ask him questions like: ‘Dad, you studied at the National Southwestern Associated University, right? When Wen Yiduo slammed his hand on the table in protest, where were you?’”

She smiled at her own boldness. “I was so sharp-tongued. My father didn’t answer directly. He just said, ‘I didn’t take his class. I studied economics.’

“I was disappointed. I loved literature so much—I couldn’t understand him. ‘Why didn’t you study literature?’ I asked. He looked at me and said, ‘I studied economics so I could find a job.’

“It was such a simple, honest answer,” she said, her eyes glinting with affection. “No embellishment, no pretense. Just truth. That’s who he was.”

She grew quiet. “Later, after he passed eighty, I learned more about him from my mother and my uncle. My uncle told me, ‘Your father was something special. When he was at the university, during those eight months of national cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communists, he worked as a translator, training paratroopers for the Flying Tigers. He even received a silver medal from them.’”

She smiled faintly. “I never knew that. My father never told me. He wasn’t the kind to boast. He’d done extraordinary things, but he kept them tucked away.”

“After the war, the U.S. Embassy invited him twice to immigrate to America. They told him to report in Shanghai. But he refused both times.”She paused. “Was he foolish? Or wise? I don’t know. He just couldn’t bear to leave home. My grandfather, who adored him, had chosen him as a son-in-law—what they called a ‘door-in’ husband, moving into the wife’s family. That bond held him close. He was loyal to love, to family, to this land.”

Then she smiled again. “My mother didn’t like him much at first. She thought he wasn’t handsome, not dashing enough, and not romantic like the literary heroes she loved. She wrote the most beautiful letters—people used to say her family correspondence read like short stories. But my father… he was an accountant.”She laughed softly. “Our whole family, it seems, was destined for economics. Not a single bookshelf of poetry.”

She looked down at her hands. “But he was kind. So kind. That’s a beauty you can’t describe.”

“One day,” she continued, “I asked him, ‘Dad, you’ve lived over eighty years. Tell me, what is happiness?’”She chuckled. “I always asked him strange questions—like Jenny asking Marx, ‘What is happiness?’”

Her father didn’t quote philosophy.“He just thought for a while and said, ‘There was this one soccer match back at Yali High School…’ He described how, at the final moment, he suddenly leapt into the air, his leg swinging almost by instinct, and the ball curved perfectly into the goal. The crowd went wild. His teammates lifted him up, tossed him into the sky.”

She smiled as she spoke, almost seeing it. “He wasn’t proud of being thrown up. He wasn’t vain. He just said, ‘I don’t know how it happened. That jump, that feeling of flying—that was happiness.’”

Her eyes shimmered. “That was it. That single moment of freedom, of lightness. That was what he remembered for life.”

Then she fell silent for a while. “I think that’s beautiful,” she said. “To live eighty years and still remember the feeling of soaring for one second. That’s what I want—to remember the lightest moments of being alive.”

She smiled again and continued,“When I think about it, he taught me that kind of quiet faith. He never said, ‘Be strong.’ He just was strong. When he refused to leave for America, when he kept helping my grandfather, when he chose kindness over ambition—he was teaching me something far deeper than words.”

She turned toward me. “You see, I talk about thinking through life, about designing your own life, but really—it’s about that same spirit. About choosing what feels true to you, even when the world tells you it’s foolish.”

Then she laughed, soft and warm.“My father taught me how to be grounded. My teachers taught me how to fly.”

She leaned forward, eyes bright again.“I must tell you about my teachers—they were the light of literature itself.”he leaned forward, eyes glowing with something like reverence.“My teachers,” she said, “were my light. They didn’t just teach literature — they were literature.”

“My first teacher, in middle school, was Mr. Wang. Later, in First Normal School, there was Mr. Zeng. Those two men opened the door for me.”She smiled. “They didn’t need textbooks. They were the lesson itself. Every sentence, every pause, had rhythm. They would lift us out of our chairs into the world of words.”

“When Mr. Zeng recited ‘The Hard Road to Shu,’” she said, looking somewhere far away, “his gaze would drift above the classroom, to a horizon only he could see. He’d say, ‘Ah! How dangerous! How high!’ and the whole room would hold its breath. We believed he was Li Bai himself, lamenting the impossible peaks.”

“I used to watch his eyes,” she whispered. “I didn’t understand then, but now I think — maybe he was seeing his own mountains. His life was difficult; he came from a family branded as ‘bad.’ In the Cultural Revolution, such people were humiliated. Maybe, when he stared into that imaginary distance, he was thinking of the home he could never return to.”She paused. “That’s why ‘The Hard Road to Shu’ will forever remind me of him — a man walking a steep, endless path, still speaking poetry.”

“Another time,” she said, “he read ‘In Memory of Miss Liu Hezhen’ by Lu Xun. He didn’t just read it; he lived it. I can still hear his voice: ‘On March 25, the National Women’s Normal School held a memorial service... I wandered outside the hall and met Mr. Cheng...’”Her voice trembled slightly. “That was how he taught us — not through analysis, but through feeling. He gave us literature like bread, to live on. And it worked. I’ve carried his voice all my life.”

She laughed, remembering. “My middle school teacher was the same. He made us read Shakespeare, Pushkin, Selections of Ancient Chinese Prose, Tang poetry, Song lyrics… all of it. We were just teenagers in a creaky private school with bamboo floors that groaned underfoot, but those lessons—ah—they glowed.”

“The building was tiny, the classrooms dim,” she said. “When we held assemblies, we gathered under a straw shed, like a farmers’ hall. But inside that darkness, my teachers shone brighter than any spotlight.”

She smiled mischievously. “I was a terrible student on paper. I used to hide novels under my desk during class. My grades were a mess. But I was reading what I loved. When my teachers were boring, I created my own lessons.”

“I used to think,” she said, “how could a test score of 80 or 90 compare to the books living inside my head? I didn’t care about the numbers. And once, my English teacher overheard me and laughed. He said, ‘You’re right, Cai Gao. What’s an 85 compared to that?’”She chuckled. “He was kind. But I never did learn English well. I told him honestly—my time wasn’t enough. I only had room for what I loved most: art.”

Then her eyes softened. “I was lucky. When a principal loved me, I worked hard. When they didn’t, I drifted. I was never disciplined, only passionate. I still have my first award.”

She opened her palms as if holding a memory. “It said: ‘Student Cai Xiaomi — Excellent Performance, Upright Conduct. Principal Wei Xunzhi.’ It had a big red stamp. I kept it not for the award, but because the principal himself gave it to me.”

She laughed again. “After that, I won dozens of prizes in my career — as an editor, as an artist — but none ever felt as precious as that one. Because back then, love made me want to learn.”

She looked at me, her tone turning quiet again.“You see,” she said, “that’s what I mean by a thought-out life is worth living. Every step, every teacher, every color on that first page of childhood — it all designs the road ahead. Whether you realize it or not.”

She smiled wistfully. “I’ve thought about life a lot. I believe it can be designed. And if you don’t design it yourself, someone else — society, fate, habit — will design it for you.”

She looked straight at me, her voice firm but tender.“So you have to choose: do you want to shape your life, or let it shape you?”

She paused. “I chose to shape mine. And thank goodness, I did. Because even when that choice sent me into the countryside, even when I was punished for being too honest, too unworldly — those years became my greatest gift. My six years in the village gave me Peach Blossom Spring.”

She smiled again, her eyes turning to light.“The punishment turned into reward. That’s the strange beauty of life.”She took a breath, as though turning a page in her memory.“Everything came so naturally,” she said softly. “Like a spring bubbling from the earth — clear, steady, unstoppable. You don’t force it; it just flows. Life, when it’s right, should feel like that — water finding its way.”

Her hands gestured gently, as if tracing a river in the air.“I’ve always loved springs,” she said. “I go searching for them — the hidden sources, the quiet beginnings. That’s what The Peach Blossom Spring is really about: that search. Like the fisherman in Tao Yuanming’s story, I’m always rowing upstream, looking for where the water begins.”

She smiled. “When I painted the fisherman, I was painting myself.”

She quoted softly, as though from memory:“‘Following the stream, he forgot how far he had gone.’”“That,” she said, “is how I live — walking so deep into life that I forget to measure the distance.”

Then she looked up with a twinkle in her eye.“The scene in Tao Yuanming’s story — the mist, the sound of oars, the drifting light — always reminded me of another text I love: Lu Xun’s A Good Story.”

She recited almost in one breath:“The lamps were dim, the night heavy; I leaned back in my chair, half asleep, half awake, and saw a beautiful story… As the oars struck the water, the ripples shimmered with sunlight and swimming fish.”

She closed her eyes. “Those waters — Tao Yuanming’s river, Lu Xun’s lake, the streams of my hometown by Taihu — they’ve merged into one. They’re the river of my life. My fisherman rows through all of them.”

Her voice deepened, touched by memory.“The huts in my painting, the thatched pavilion — they’re not imaginary. They’re from the village where I taught for six years. I used to stop at that pavilion on my way to school, drink a bowl of tea, listen to the creek. The real water there wasn’t as beautiful as what I painted,” she smiled, “but it was mine. The Peach Blossom Spring I painted — that was my countryside life, transformed.”

Her hand moved gently, as if smoothing paint.“I painted the fields, the bridges, the cattle, the people — not idealized, but as they were: calm, self-sufficient, radiant in their ordinariness. Those scenes — people spreading fertilizer, plowing the earth, the children running barefoot — they were complete. That was happiness.”

She leaned forward. “You see, in that world, labor wasn’t a burden. It was a rhythm. A beauty. Work itself was joy. Maybe that’s what communism once meant in its purest form — not political, but human: people working because they want to, because it gives them peace.”

She looked down at her hands. “So when I painted Peach Blossom Spring, I was painting a vision of wholeness — where life and art, ideal and real, flow together, inseparable.”

She smiled, shaking her head. “I didn’t follow my notes today,” she said. “This isn’t the order I meant to speak in. But that’s fine. My thoughts come like a stream — wandering, aware, alive.”

Then she brightened, her voice lifting.“Let me tell you about my rooftop,” she said, eyes sparkling again. “My rooftop is a garden, but also a little island in the sky. It’s public — shared with my neighbors. We plant together, laugh together. People say it looks like a green island floating above the city.”

She chuckled. “You should all have a roof like that. Or at least a balcony. Even a single flowerpot! Don’t be the child holding an empty pot — because every day, life prepares a surprise for you, waiting to be found.”

Her face softened. “I’ve written many of those surprises into my notebooks — over thirty years of them. Some became essays in A Handful of Rain, A Handful of Rice, but most are still shy, hiding inside my journals.”

She laughed, remembering. “They’re shy — like my little grandson. When he visits, he hides behind his parents, face red as a peach. That’s how my stories feel, too — blushing, waiting.”

She gestured upward. “But on my rooftop, they appear. I’ve met frogs courting in flowerpots, and tiny insects dancing in the air. Once, I interrupted a pair of toads — I told them, ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to watch you!’” She laughed, shaking her head. “Even flies — annoying as they are — have their own truth. They’re not ugly, just honest.”

Her tone softened again. “Birds nest up there, too. Once, a little yellow bird built its home right above my door. I was too curious — I peeked, and they left. I learned then that curiosity can be a kind of disturbance. So now, I just let them be.”

She smiled at the memory. “Another time, hornets built a hive. Everyone told me to tear it down. I said no. Let it stay. They’re part of the roof, too.”

Her gaze drifted upward, as though she could still see them. “Up there, I can hear life talking — birds calling, insects whispering. The father bird arrives first, proud and loud. Then the mother comes, then the little ones. They chatter, they sing. It’s the simplest joy.”

She looked at me again. “People come too — friends, children, old folks. My grandson once asked me, ‘Grandma, why are you going upstairs?’ I said, ‘To catch the sun.’ He nodded solemnly: ‘Then you dry it in a bowl of water, right?’” She laughed. “Yes, that’s right.”

“Once he asked, ‘Did you catch it today?’ I said, ‘No, it was too late — I couldn’t reach it.’ He said, ‘Then use a ladder!’ I said, ‘Next time, you’ll help me.’”

Her laughter softened into tenderness. “When I sweep the roof, I sometimes burn the fallen leaves to make compost. Before lighting them, I bow and say, ‘Thank you — you’ve worked all year. Now rest, become earth again.’”

Her eyes glistened. “My grandson bows too. Only he says something even better — as the flames rise, he says, ‘Welcome!’”She smiled. “Isn’t that wonderful? To welcome even the ending — that’s life’s truest grace.”

Then she looked at the audience — eyes full of warmth, voice steady as a heartbeat.“There are so many stories from my roof,” she said. “Too many to tell. But if I can leave you with one thought — it’s this: life is beautiful. Not grand, not glamorous — quietly beautiful. The kind of beauty that lets you sit still and simply see.”

“When you’re still enough,” she said, “you’ll notice: every living thing is at peace with itself. That peace — that’s beauty.”

“Life,” she concluded, “is like holding an umbrella on a rainy day — simple, necessary, tender.”

Then she smiled, her last words soft and bright as sunlight breaking through clouds.“Life,” she said, “is worth living a thousand times over. It’s a million things — but every one of them is worth it.”

She bowed slightly, hands folded before her heart.“Thank you,” she said. “Thank you for listening to my everyday stories.”