The Adventure of Life

When he began, he said he was very glad to be there, and that he would give this talk in English. If he were introducing his website, he said, he would use Chinese. But since today’s theme was his “life,” he thought it would be better to speak in English.

He said he started learning Chinese when he was twenty-two, but not very diligently. When he reached forty, he realized he was getting older day by day—he repeated that he was getting older day by day—and then he found that if he traced the origin of every character, each one would have a story. The complex strokes of modern characters, when seen in the light of those stories, suddenly carried meaning.

Around 1990, he decided to try to computerize Chinese. The idea had been forming for several years, and he began studying the evolution of Chinese characters. Then, in 1994, he had a heart attack and almost died. He struggled for a month; his body went from being perfectly healthy to barely alive. He said he used to do yoga every day, yet still the heart attack came. For an entire month, he did not know from one hour to the next whether he would live or die; he could have left the world at any moment.

After his first heart surgery, he learned that he would not die immediately, but he asked himself several questions. When he discovered that he suddenly had another chance to live, he asked himself: if life truly had only twenty-four hours left, what would he do? He said he would call his friends and say goodbye. Then he asked himself: if he had forty more years, what would he do?

He said he had to admit that he might waste another ten years before beginning to do something important. Then he continued to ask himself: what if there were only three hundred sixty-five days left—just one more year of life? His answer was that he would do what he most wanted to do. He would computerize the first Chinese dictionary, Shuowen Jiezi.

During the following three hundred sixty-five days, he worked very hard and finally completed the computerization of Shuowen Jiezi. After those three hundred sixty-five days, it seemed that he was not going to die right away—that was sixteen years ago—and so he kept going. He computerized Liushu Tong, Jinwen Bian, and Jiaguwen Bian. Eventually he was able to digitize all those classics. And all of this, he said, came from “living toward death.” If he could give one blessing, he said, it would be this: that you too could live toward death, and let every day have meaning.

He said there were several things in his life that were different from others. In the world, there are two kinds of people: those who have interests and hobbies, and those who do not. Those who have none, he said, live terribly boring lives. They work only for money; when they were in school, they studied what teachers told them to study; after school, they did what their parents told them to do; when they began working, they did what their bosses told them to do.

He said that when he was a child, his parents encouraged him to have his own interests and hobbies. He collected stamps, went hiking, learned swimming, and read books introducing foreign countries. He said he believed encouraging children to have interests was a good thing. Once you have a hobby, you become different from others; you become special. Without one, you are only one of the ordinary people. And if you feel yourself to be special, that feeling should be wonderful.

He said that when he was young, he had many interests and was curious about many things. His parents always hoped that he would follow their profession, but as he grew older, he became more and more different from them—he had his own interests. His father was strict, like many Chinese fathers. When he was young, he wanted to go out and live his own life, but his father, of course, wanted him to stay at home and obey.

He decided that as soon as he graduated from high school, he would leave and live his own life. Every day he secretly moved some of his belongings out of the house and hid them in a friend’s home. On the day of graduation, he went to his friend’s house, packed his things, and ran away. He said he would not go back home again. His mother told him that if he left, she would kill herself. He said the pressure was enormous, but he had no choice; he had to decide to live his own life.

He said you cannot live your life through your parents. Of course, parents raise you and love you, but they should allow you to live freely. If you are a parent, you should allow your child to live their own life. And if you are a son or daughter—even when you are forty or fifty—you should still try to live your own life.

That means taking risks, he said. His mother might really have killed herself; when he left home, he did not know whether he could find a job; he did not have many friends. But he had a plan. After leaving, he went to university and began to study. The school, he said, was a bit like his parents—just like Chinese schools—telling everyone what to learn, giving no freedom to choose.

At that time, he said, he was sure that his interest lay in Chinese. He thought that only seven percent of the world spoke English as their native language, and he became curious—what would it be like to think in a foreign language? Then he learned that twenty percent of the world spoke Chinese, so he decided to go to China to study Chinese.

His friends and his parents thought he was crazy. In southern Oregon, he said, no one had ever gone to China; people there believed that Chinese could hardly feed themselves. He worked for a year washing dishes, saved enough money, and bought a one-way ticket to Taiwan. At that time, he said, they could not go to the mainland, because the United States and China had not yet officially recognized each other, so he bought a one-way ticket to Taiwan. When he arrived in Taiwan, he had only eighty dollars in his pocket. He did not speak a word of Chinese and had no friends. He said he felt a little embarrassed then.

But he was determined that no matter what happened, he would learn Chinese. It was an adventure, a big risk. He said that if you want to do something interesting, you have to take risks. Later, he found a job teaching English, found a girlfriend, got married, and after a few years learned some Chinese. Then he returned to his country.

After returning home, he went to Chinatown, but at that time no one spoke Mandarin. In Chinatown, people only spoke Cantonese, so he had to learn Cantonese. He said life keeps giving you surprises—you think you have mastered something, and then you discover it is far more complicated than you thought. That is what life is like. He said he did not learn well at first; it took him a long time to be able to speak Chinese. When he was forty, he still could not read much, but he was determined that before he died, he would learn to read and write Chinese.

He said that for adults, Chinese characters are complicated and hard to learn; at first sight, they seem illogical. Then he read an English book that introduced the history of Chinese characters. He found that once you know the history of a character—once you trace its origin—suddenly every character makes sense. But that English book was incomplete; it had been written a hundred years earlier.

He said that if he wanted to truly understand Chinese characters, he had to read Chinese books, and not just one—twenty of them. But if he wanted to understand all that information, he found that much of what he read was wrong. Shuowen Jiezi, he said, was seventy percent mistaken. So he began to look for other scholars who studied Chinese, because since he wanted to computerize Chinese, he decided to come to the mainland.When he came to the mainland, it was already a time when Americans could travel to China. He said he met and talked with several experts in ancient Chinese. Of course, computers were still new back then. The experts in ancient Chinese told him that it was impossible to computerize ancient Chinese. They said it could not be done.

He said he had studied computer science and physics, but when he talked to computer experts, they told him that they were not interested in ancient Chinese. No one wanted to computerize it. But he was still determined to do it.

He said his first reason for doing it was to use it as a way to teach himself to read and write Chinese. Later, he said, he was “lucky” enough to have a near-death heart attack, and also lucky enough to come back from the edge of death, and even luckier to gain access to resources and a good job that could support his hobby. That was how, in the years that followed, he was able to build a website that no one else cared about.

He said that when his website went online, it was there for about eight years, and very few people visited it. The ones who did were people interested in ancient Chinese. About a year and a half ago, something happened—he said that on his website, visitors could make donations, but usually he only received one donation a year. One day, while he was at a friend’s house, he suddenly received a donation. Then came a second, then a third, and a fourth.

After that, he received some emails—ten letters at first. Then, in the next two months, he received five thousand letters. The following year, he received ten thousand letters. His life changed.

He said he had never imagined such a change. At that time, he was already sixty-one years old. It was very hard to find a job, because no one believed that at sixty-one, he could still do computer work. Everyone thought he was too old. But, he said, life is unpredictable. Age does not matter. There are always new chances in life. Interests and hobbies truly matter.

He said that in 2000, he came to the mainland to look for books on the origins of Chinese characters. He came to Beijing, bringing one credit card. He spent one thousand U.S. dollars on books. The credit card company thought something was wrong. They said, “Wow, someone has used this card in China to buy a thousand dollars’ worth of books—call his wife.” They called his wife. They told her that someone had spent a thousand dollars on books. His wife never appreciated the idea of computerizing Chinese. She said, “Someone must have stolen his card. Cancel it.”

So he said that in China, he could not use his credit card and could not pay his hotel bill. He said there were two lessons in that story. The first lesson: never let your wife have your credit card. The second lesson: if you have an interest, it will cost you money and time—that is the risk. He said he spent a lot of money on books and travel.

Many people, he said, work for money and spend their lives saving it. But if you want your life to be interesting, you have to spend your time, money, and energy on the things you love. You cannot just go to work, save money, and do nothing else. That is why life involves risk. He said you must take risks in your life. The results are unpredictable.

He said that he had taken many risks in his life, which he called “small adventures.” Sometimes the results were good, sometimes they were bad—fifty-fifty. People waste time, he said, and only then do they understand what it means to gain something.

When he was young, he said, most of his interests were about knowledge. He studied mathematics and physics, which made him a bit unusual. His friends thought he was very smart. But he asked himself: did he do these things so that others would think he was smart, or because he truly wanted to learn?

He said that when he was ten years old, he asked himself another question. At ten, he wanted to be Einstein, to be famous, to be a clever person. But then he asked himself: suppose I could know all the answers in the universe, but no one knew who I was—would I choose that, or would I choose to know only half the answers but be famous? His choice, he said, was that he wanted to know all the answers, even if it brought him no fame or fortune.

He said that for most of his life, he lived in obscurity—until last year, when everything changed. He began to receive many letters and attention, and that was nice. A year ago, he was still in Tennessee, as poor as ever. At sixty-one, he said, no one would hire him to write code. So he decided that at sixty-one, he would go to China again. He bought another one-way ticket.

He said he always did things like that—a one-way ticket, leaving himself no way back. So he bought a one-way ticket to China, with almost no friends. But now, he said, he had some friends. It was another small adventure, another risk, another journey.

He said that whether you are young or old, you always need to take risks, to try new things, never to look back. Sometimes you take the wrong path, but then you only need to think, “All right, that road was not right—I will not take it again.”

He said that at the end of his story, there were a few things to remember. The first: live toward death. The second: find your own interests and passions. The third: take risks, and try new things. Then he thanked everyone for listening.