A Life Lesson: Doing Nothing Is Better Than Doing the Wrong Thing

In the spring of 1998, after earning my master's degree in mathematics, statistics, and computer science from Marquette University, I worked at two jobs, both of which lasted only a short time. Then, in August, I finally landed a job as an Oracle database administrator (DBA) at a company in Chicago called Interaccess. The news caused a bit of a stir among my Chinese student friends. Oracle DBAs were expected to have experience, so it was quite a surprise that someone like me—a novice with no formal computer science background and no computer-related work experience—could get such a position.

Interaccess had been founded four or five years earlier by a young man named Tom, who had borrowed $60,000 from his father to get the business started. The company had around a hundred employees and primarily provided Internet access to small businesses. Unlike today, when a particular area might have only two or three major Internet service providers, the Internet was still a novelty back then, and many small companies offered Internet services. There were probably more than a dozen such companies in Chicago. Interaccess had about 20,000 customers at the time, making it a fairly successful company, somewhere in the middle-to-upper tier of the industry.

Competition was fierce, so companies had little choice but to attract customers by cutting prices. Even providing Internet service to a business with a few dozen employees cost only a few hundred dollars a month, making it difficult to turn a profit. The company had to save money wherever it could, and one way was to keep wages low.

Interaccess had grown by acquiring smaller companies. When I joined, the company was preparing to move from its haphazard, inconsistent systems, which had developed during its early years, to PeopleSoft. PeopleSoft required an Oracle database to run, so the company purchased Oracle software and hired a consulting group to carry out the system conversion. Once the project was completed and the consultants left, the company would need someone to operate and maintain the Oracle database. That was why it needed to hire an Oracle DBA.

At the time, an Oracle DBA with several years of experience could command a starting salary of at least $100,000 or more. Even someone with just one year of experience would not accept a job paying less than $70,000 or $80,000. On top of that, at a small company like Interaccess, the DBA had to be on call twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. Few people were willing to take such a job.

The company wanted to save money while still hiring someone with the necessary technical skills. After several months of searching without success, it finally changed its strategy and lowered its experience requirements. The company was planning to bring the Oracle system online in December, four months after August, and hoped that a new DBA could quickly acquire the necessary skills within that time.

Under this new approach, they hired me at an annual salary of $40,000 and agreed to sponsor my H-1B visa and green card. That was very important. Many companies would not even interview applicants once they learned that the applicants did not have permanent residency or other suitable work authorization.

Later, I asked Ari, the consultant who had interviewed me, why he had hired someone with absolutely no experience. He replied, “I had the feeling you were the kind of person who could learn things quickly, so I hired you.”

I had no idea how he had figured out that I was a fast learner. But Ari really was impressive. He was Jewish, not yet thirty, and already a senior consultant who worked with several companies at the same time.

Because Interaccess provided Internet services, its databases had to run twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. There was no downtime. Whenever something went wrong, it had to be fixed quickly. Being a DBA was an extremely stressful job.

If I had had any other choice back then, I certainly would not have accepted it. To make matters worse, my family was still living in Milwaukee, ninety miles away from Chicago, so I had to spend about four hours commuting every day. It was exhausting.

There were very few Chinese employees at the company—only three of us.

One was a young man around thirty who maintained PCs and lived in Chinatown. Although he was an American-born Chinese, or ABC, his outlook was remarkably old-fashioned. He found a girl from Chinatown and married her. Their wedding was an extremely traditional Chinese affair, complete with a bridal sedan chair, a convoy of dozens of decorated cars, the formal wedding ceremony, red envelopes, and the traditional post-wedding bedroom festivities. He even showed photographs to his coworkers. The American employees were bewildered: “Does getting married have to be so complicated?”

He replied, “Of course! Otherwise, people will look down on you.”

He had joined the company when it was first established and was considered one of its founding employees. He did not socialize much at work, and he certainly did not make much effort to talk to me. Unless there was a specific reason, he would never strike up a conversation. Even when something needed to be discussed, he would stick strictly to the matter at hand and leave as soon as it was settled.

The second was Li Peizhong, who worked in IT support and had been with the company for about a year. He was from Jiangsu Province and a few years younger than me. Like me, he had come to the United States to study. Because our backgrounds were similar, we got along very well. We were good friends then, and we have remained in touch to this day.

The third was H, who had come from Taiwan. He was about twenty-seven or twenty-eight, fair-skinned, and neatly groomed. He had graduated in computer science and worked for several years as a Unix system administrator. Three months before I joined the company, Interaccess had hired him at an annual salary of well over $100,000, making him one of the highest-paid employees. That alone showed how important his position was and how highly the company regarded him.

He was a little shy but polite and modest. Everyone was busy, so we did not have much time to chat. Still, after talking a few times, I had a good impression of him.

Because he earned so much and was single, he rented a studio apartment near the company. I heard that it cost him $1,500 or $1,600 a month, which shocked me. My entire family, by contrast, rented a two-bedroom apartment for just over $500 a month.

H was technically capable and ambitious. He wanted to make a real contribution to the company.

Interaccess had expanded by acquiring smaller companies. In those days, many small businesses had been launched in a hurry, and their computer systems were rudimentary and inconsistent. Every acquisition required another round of system integration. As more and more small companies joined Interaccess, its overall system became a hodgepodge, and operational problems became increasingly common.

Reorganizing the entire system would require taking it offline for an extended period. That was impossible for a company that had to provide services around the clock. So the company had no choice but to keep the system running despite its problems. Whenever something went wrong, people patched it up as best they could. As long as it kept working, that was good enough.

H was the company's only system administrator. He was eager to resolve the system's underlying problems, and that was one of the reasons the company had hired him.

He spent a long time thinking about how to untangle the complicated, disorganized system. Eventually, he seemed to develop a plan. But apart from occasional maintenance windows on weekends, the system could not be taken offline during the week. So he decided to use a weekend to try to overhaul it according to his plan.

It was a Saturday. He arrived at the office early in the morning and began making the changes he had planned. But instead of improving the system, his changes made it worse. Even more disastrously, he could not restore it to its previous state.

He spent all of Saturday trying to fix the system, then worked through Sunday as well, but still could not get it running properly. By Monday, the entire system was still down. He was frantic, like an ant on a hot griddle. By noon, he still had not managed to restore it.

Meanwhile, the customer service lines were being inundated with calls, and the crisis had reached the company's president, Tom.

The company urgently brought in consultants to help, but the problem appeared to be serious. By the afternoon, the system was still down.

In a fit of rage, Tom fired H on the spot and even called the police to escort him out of the building. Poor H was thrown out without even having a chance to say goodbye to his coworkers. I never saw him again.

I had been at the company for only two months when this happened, and it shook me deeply.

I had worked as an educated youth sent to the countryside during the Cultural Revolution, and I had nearly ten years of work experience in China before coming to the United States. I had enough real-world experience to understand the stakes. After joining Interaccess, I had already worried about the enormous responsibility of being a DBA: one mistake could bring the entire company to a standstill.

What happened to H made me even more frightened. If I made a serious mistake, I could easily end up in the same position he had.

After joining the company, I concentrated on learning. I devoured books about Oracle, hoping to master the necessary skills as quickly as possible.

One book was written by a veteran DBA with more than a decade of experience. The author stated that two-thirds of Oracle problems were caused by improper actions taken by DBAs themselves. He therefore recommended touching the database as little as possible.

When a problem required you to adjust the database, he advised, you needed to have a clear understanding of what you were trying to achieve. An ideal outcome was often impossible. Once you had achieved, or come close to achieving, the desired result, you should stop rather than keep trying to make things perfect. Otherwise, you might push one problem down only to have another pop up, potentially creating new problems—or even bigger ones.

The author wrote a sentence that I have never forgotten:

“Doing nothing is better than doing the wrong thing.”

It was the exact opposite of the saying Americans seemed to love: “Doing something is always better than doing nothing.”

What had happened to H seemed to confirm the veteran DBA's advice. H had good intentions, but he had been careless. Before making changes to the system, he should have sought authorization. If he had not received approval, he absolutely should not have proceeded.

Furthermore, he should have made only small adjustments rather than attempting a major overhaul. If he had left the system alone and simply kept it running, the company would have had little reason to blame him, even if the system continued to have occasional problems.

If a major overhaul was necessary, the company should have hired a professional consulting team to carry it out. H could not reasonably have been expected to shoulder that level of responsibility on his own.

After H's disaster, I came to understand that a DBA's primary responsibility was to keep the database running, not to make it run as perfectly as possible. Anything that threatened the database's stability should be avoided whenever possible.

Databases are extremely complex. A seemingly minor change can affect the entire system. People are much the same: many people have all sorts of shortcomings, yet they can still work and live their lives. If a system is imperfect or has some problems but can still do its job, you should not tamper with it unnecessarily. Often, the best choice is to leave it alone.

This kind of judgment—understanding the situation and knowing when not to act—is something schoolteachers do not teach you. Perhaps many of them do not know it themselves. Yet it is extremely important in a professional career.

Later, when I worked as a DBA, I generally followed this principle, although I did make one mistake.

On one occasion, I was trying to solve a problem. Following a recommendation in a book, I changed a database parameter and made a few other minor adjustments. Initially, everything seemed fine. But three hours later, the database began behaving abnormally. It was still running, but some functions no longer worked properly.

I called Oracle Support. Over the next several hours, several support engineers took turns looking into the problem, but none could identify its root cause.

The vice president in charge of IT kept coming over to ask how things were going. He even stood behind me for long periods, watching me talk on the phone. The pressure was immense.

Fortunately, the problem had not yet interrupted service to our customers. Otherwise, the consequences could have been disastrous.

When the workday ended, the vice president told me I could not go home until the problem was resolved. I stayed in the empty office without even eating dinner. I tried every possible solution, but nothing worked.

Then, sometime after nine that evening, I suddenly remembered the parameter I had changed that morning. Could it have caused the problem? I could not think of any convincing reason why it should have, but I decided to restore its original value anyway.

The moment I changed it back, the database returned to normal.

Computer systems often behave in mysterious ways that are difficult to explain.

I did not get home until midnight that night. The ordeal had frightened me so badly that I barely slept. The next morning, I could not get out of bed, so I called in sick. Even so, I kept my phone close at hand, ready to respond at any moment if another emergency arose.

After that experience, I believed even more strongly in the principle that doing nothing was better than doing the wrong thing. I stopped changing database parameters casually.

Most days, I spent my time reading rather than constantly typing away at the keyboard. And the database stopped giving us trouble.

Unfortunately, the good times did not last.

A new manager joined the company. He was a Yale graduate, about thirty years old, young and pleasant, and I will call him B. He had not studied computer science, although he had taught himself a little and understood some of the basics. Still, he was not quite equipped to manage a group of technical specialists like us.

After he arrived, he worked very hard. He noticed that other employees seemed to spend all day typing away, while my area was quiet, with hardly any keyboard noise. He could not help asking why I was not working and was just reading books.

I explained that I only needed to take action when necessary. When there was nothing that needed doing, I studied technical books. The more I understood, I told him, the fewer mistakes I would make.

He looked puzzled. “Don't you think you're doing far too little work?”

I explained that if the database was running properly, it was best not to touch it. I even showed him the passage in the book stating that two-thirds of Oracle problems were caused by DBAs taking inappropriate actions. Even then, he remained skeptical.

One day, during a meeting, he criticized me indirectly, saying that someone was not working hard and did nothing but read books. I felt I had been treated unfairly, but there was little I could do about it.

Later, when some technical issues involving the database came up, he made several inaccurate remarks that revealed his limited understanding. I had no choice but to point out where he was wrong. He was somewhat displeased and insisted that his interpretation was correct, but I refused to back down.

He obviously knew that I understood the subject better than he did, so he eventually dropped the argument. We did not end up having an outright confrontation, but the atmosphere was unpleasant.

In my first annual performance review, he listed both strengths and weaknesses. There were plenty of areas he said I needed to improve, and he even included my poor English.

Being the company's only DBA was extremely demanding. I had to carry a pager every day, and later a mobile phone, remaining on call at all times. I scarcely had a genuine day off.

But there was one advantage: no one except me was allowed to touch the database. Once I had tuned it into good shape, it stopped having problems.

As I gradually brought the database to a more stable state, it went a long time without any further incidents.

When B first joined the company, whenever a system problem arose, he would call me and ask whether the database was at fault. I would tell him that the database was fine. Each time, after checking, we found that the problem lay elsewhere in the system.

After a few such experiences, the company changed its procedure. When something went wrong, people would first ask the system administrator to investigate rather than coming to me.

Then, sometime in the winter of 2000, I was playing volleyball in Milwaukee on a weekend. I jumped up to block a shot, and another player who did not know how to play jumped sideways into me. As I landed, he stepped heavily on my ankle before I had regained my balance. I immediately found myself unable to stand.

That evening, my leg hurt as though it were cramping, and no matter how I positioned it, the pain was severe. The next day, I noticed that my ankle itself was not particularly swollen, but my entire lower leg was covered in bruises.

I went to the emergency room and had an X-ray, which showed no fracture. The doctor told me to go home and give it time to heal.

But when I got home, the pain was still unbearable, and I could not walk.

I called B and told him that I had injured my leg and could not come to the office. He reluctantly agreed to let me work from home.

A week passed, and I still could not walk. B began to doubt whether my injury was really that serious. Eventually, using an all-company meeting as the reason, he sent a car to pick me up. I had no choice but to go to the office on crutches.

Three months later, my leg was still very painful, and even after a year, I continued to experience a dull ache. During that time, I consulted three orthopedic doctors. They all told me there was nothing else wrong and that I simply needed to wait for it to heal.

But after such a long period of being unable to walk normally, my ankle had become stiff, almost wooden.

It was not until a year and a half after the injury that I saw a Chinese massage therapist in Chicago. After examining me, he confidently declared, “This is definitely a tear in the interosseous muscle. It was mistaken for a sprained ankle.”

I later looked up the condition online and found that my symptoms matched those of an interosseous muscle tear very closely.

Meanwhile, I continued working toward my Oracle certifications, taking an exam every four or five months and passing every one on the first attempt. Each time I passed, I reported the result to B. He always seemed a little surprised, but he duly submitted a request for a salary increase in accordance with company policy.

Whatever B thought, I continued to follow my own version of wu wei—the Taoist principle of non-forcing or non-interference. I rarely touched the database unless necessary. As long as it ran reliably, that was good enough.

One day, B came to me and asked me to retrieve a particular set of data from the database.

I had never done that particular task before, but it did not seem difficult. I invited him to sit beside me and began writing SQL queries.

After writing each line, I explained what it did before executing it. I then examined the results, modified the SQL command accordingly, explained the next change, and ran it again.

After about four or five rounds of adjustments, we obtained exactly the data we wanted. The whole process took less than five minutes.

He seemed satisfied. He took the results and left without saying anything.

I do not know whether he had deliberately come to test my abilities. But from that day onward, he never again asked me why I was not working, and he stopped arguing with me about technical issues.

His annual performance reviews of me became uniformly positive, full of praise and containing no criticisms at all—not even about my English.

I soon passed all the Oracle DBA certification exams, and the company's database continued to run without problems for a long time. My annual salary gradually increased from $40,000 to $70,000.

B even took the initiative to tell me that I no longer needed to come to the office every day. I could come in two or three times a week and work from home the rest of the time. Before long, I only needed to go in once a week, on Fridays, for the weekly meeting.

My job was to check the database's operating status a few times a day. In essence, I was doing almost nothing.

Most of my time was spent reading, browsing the Internet, or taking walks near my home. The company mobile phone barely rang a few times a month, usually about meetings or routine matters. Not once did I receive a call about a database failure.

It seemed almost too good to be true, so perhaps Heaven grew jealous of my good fortune.

In 2001, the company was acquired by another business, and layoffs began. By 2002, many employees had been let go. B was laid off in the summer, and I was laid off in October. Soon afterward, the company filed for bankruptcy protection, and a few months later it shut down for good.

But that is another story.

“Doing nothing is better than doing the wrong thing” is not a principle that applies universally. Nevertheless, there are times when it is exactly right.

Apart from jobs like database administration and system administration, the area where I have applied this principle most often is stock investing. I buy stocks in companies with long-term growth potential and then leave them alone. It makes life easier, and the results have been reasonably good.

The principle reminds me of the Taoist idea of wu wei, though it is not quite the same. Either way, it is a philosophy of life—a lesson you cannot learn in school.

Written in 2018.

Mathematics Class

The students of the Class of 1977 were graduates whose schooling had been delayed for eleven years by the Cultural Revolution. Apart from those who belonged to the so-called “Old Three Classes” (Lao San Jie), most had attended school during the Cultural Revolution and had received virtually no education in academic subjects. Their foundations in mathematics, physics, and chemistry were weak.

Moreover, the 1977 college entrance examination was set independently by each province, and the examination dates and levels of difficulty varied from place to place. Some provinces even held open-book examinations. As a result, the standards for admission differed as well. After we entered college, the school administered placement examinations in mathematics, physics, and chemistry. The results revealed enormous disparities in our academic abilities. In mathematics, for example, some students knew calculus, while others struggled even to solve a pair of simultaneous linear equations.

Like many of my classmates, I had learned very little in secondary school. The only exception was during my junior middle school years, in 1972 and 1973, when Deng Xiaoping returned to prominence and there was a brief revival of regular education lasting about two years. During that period, our teachers taught us some real academic material. But during the two years of high school, we spent most of our time doing industrial and agricultural labor and attending political criticism meetings. We learned almost no academic subjects. We had never studied topics such as permutations and combinations, the binomial theorem, or probability theory. I had absolutely no confidence in my ability to master advanced mathematics.

Our two female mathematics teachers, Yu Xiulin and Shao Shimin, frequently came to our dormitories to talk with us and solicit our opinions on how mathematics should be taught. Quite a few students voiced their concerns that their foundations were too weak and that they were afraid they would not be able to keep up. The teachers understood our predicament. They said that in twenty years of teaching mathematics, they had never encountered a situation like this. They could not decide whether to review secondary-school mathematics with us first or begin teaching advanced mathematics right away; neither approach seemed appropriate. And if they were to review secondary-school mathematics, where should they begin? What about the many students whose foundations were already strong? The teachers were, in fact, even more worried than the students.

At our first mathematics class, the two teachers, Yu Xiulin and Shao Shimin, stood smiling at the front of the classroom. They looked warm, friendly, and approachable. Just as we were preparing to listen to their lecture, however, they told us that they had not yet figured out how to teach a class in which the students' abilities differed so dramatically. They needed more time to think things through, so they asked us to go back and wait for further notice and to return in two weeks.

In the meantime, they recommended that all students who felt their mathematics was weak buy some textbooks and study on their own to make up for what they had missed. A class that was supposed to last an hour was over in just five minutes. They sent us all away.

We understood the teachers' predicament. As soon as we returned, we hurried out to buy books. We went to the university bookstore, the Xinhua Bookstore in Haidian, and even the bookstores on Wangfujing. I bought books on permutations and combinations, the binomial theorem, and probability theory, then took them back to study and work through the exercises. I assumed that the teachers would begin advanced mathematics after two weeks. If I did not quickly fill in these gaps, I would not be able to keep up.

From time to time, the two teachers also came to our dormitories to see how we were getting along, help students with their studies, and listen to our opinions.

Two weeks later, we returned to the classroom. The teachers announced that they had discovered that a considerable number of students still had mathematics foundations that were far too weak. These students needed more time to review secondary-school mathematics before they could begin advanced mathematics. Yet using regular class time to teach secondary-school material was inappropriate and would be unfair to students whose foundations were already strong.

They therefore decided to suspend classes for two months, giving everyone sufficient time to catch up on secondary-school mathematics. They had mimeographed a set of review materials that we could take away and study. The materials ran to hundreds of pages and contained many practice problems. We were encouraged to complete all the exercises or select those appropriate to our individual levels. We were not required to hand in our work; even if we did, the teachers would not mark it. We were simply expected to study conscientiously on our own.

In the end, each of us received a copy of the review materials, several hundred pages thick, and took it back to our dormitory.

For the next two months, we worked on mathematics problems every day. Whenever we encountered something we could not understand, we bought books to consult or asked our classmates for help. The teachers also visited us frequently to answer questions and offer guidance.

By the end of those two months, I had not only completed all the exercises in the teachers' review materials but had also bought and studied many additional books and worked through their problems. I had gained a great deal and had made up for much of the secondary-school mathematics I had never learned.

During my four years of secondary school, I had received a reasonable amount of instruction only during the first two years of junior middle school. I had learned virtually nothing during the two years of high school. In effect, I had used two months to make up for the two years of schooling I had missed. If one counted the full six years of secondary school, I had caught up on four years' worth of missed coursework. My classmates did much the same, using those two months to make up for several years of lost education.

Students who were already strong in mathematics approached the situation differently. One of the senior students in our class, an “Old Three Classes” student, had an excellent foundation. A few others had independently studied high-school mathematics and even first-year university mathematics. They barely needed to look at the review materials. Instead, they devoted that time to other subjects, building an even stronger foundation in those areas.

Two months later—two and a half months after the semester had begun—our advanced mathematics classes finally got underway. We used Advanced Mathematics by Fan Yingchuan. The teachers lectured at a fairly rapid pace because they had to make up for lost time. We students worked equally hard. Nevertheless, everything went smoothly, and by the end of the semester we had essentially completed the prescribed syllabus. In other words, we had covered a semester's worth of material in just over two months. When the final examination results came in, the teachers were very pleased.

In the end, the teachers told us that this had been the greatest challenge of their teaching careers. They had never encountered such a difficult situation before. Faced with this enormous challenge, they had felt uncertain of themselves at the beginning of the semester and had believed that the task might be impossible to accomplish. The solution they had reluctantly devised had ultimately succeeded.

They also expressed their gratitude to the students of the Class of 1977 for our determination to improve ourselves, our eagerness to learn, and our willingness to work ourselves to the limit. They said that without our perseverance and our readiness to confront difficulties head-on, it would have been impossible to complete the teaching plan successfully.

Those were extraordinary times. Teachers Yu and Shao adapted their approach to the circumstances and devised an equally extraordinary solution. At the same time, they encouraged and motivated us, and together we accomplished what had seemed an impossible task.

We were deeply grateful to them. Our ages varied widely, and our academic abilities were far from uniform. We knew how weak our foundations were, and this left us with a constant sense of urgency. We dared not slacken our efforts. We wanted to learn, as quickly as possible, everything we should have learned in the past but had missed, everything we were supposed to learn now, and even the things we might need to know in the future.

The famous Chinese legend of Bole appraises horses

In ancient China, there was a renowned horse evaluator named Bole. He was famous for his extraordinary ability to recognize the potential of horses that others often overlooked. One day, a man brought a horse to Bole, seeking his opinion. Upon examining the horse, Bole declared that it had great potential despite its ordinary and unimpressive appearance.

Unlike others who dismissed the horse as mediocre, Bole saw something special in it. He believed that a truly exceptional horse might not always stand out at first glance. Bole's unique talent lay in his ability to perceive the hidden strengths and capabilities of horses that were not immediately obvious to others.

As time went on, and with proper training and care, the horse began to exhibit outstanding qualities. It became faster, stronger, and more enduring than anyone had anticipated. The horse's remarkable performance validated Bole's initial judgment, proving that he had an unparalleled eye for discerning talent in even the most unassuming horses.

Four years ago, at the Milwaukee Chinese School, I often saw a white man in his sixties, with kind eyes and a tall stature. Every time he came to the Chinese school, he sat quietly in the classroom full of Chinese parents. Once, out of curiosity, I asked him, "What is your name?" He replied in somewhat broken Chinese, "My name is Bole." I didn't catch it clearly, so I asked, "What Bole?" He said, "Bole, the Bole who understands horses."

Through conversation, I learned that his name was Bob and he was retired. Recently, he had married a retired Chinese teacher. He could speak a little Chinese. "Bole" was the Chinese name his Chinese wife gave him. It seemed he knew the story of "Bole appraises horses" and he liked this Chinese name. 

Bole's Chinese wife used to be a primary and middle school teacher in China. The Chinese school was in need of experienced teachers like her, so they hired her to teach there. She also wanted something to do, so she came. Because she didn't know how to drive, Bole would come to drop her off each time. Bole didn't know many Chinese people, but he was very cheerful and talkative. As long as you were willing, he was always happy to chat. At that time, it was during the presidential election, and Bole often discussed it with a Chinese neighbor of his. He supported Bush, while the Chinese parent supported Gore. They always argued, but the atmosphere was very friendly. Of course, he later voted for Bush.

Shortly after Bush was elected, it was reported that Bole had cancer. The heads of the Chinese school even went to the hospital to visit him. But a few months later, he still passed away. It was truly unfortunate. I've seen many Americans who were lively just a few months ago, but they passed away shortly after falling ill. Compared to many Chinese people who lie in bed for years or even decades, it was too quick. But it's better this way, reducing the time of suffering. Also, there's no need to fear the Chinese saying, "There are no filial sons by the bedside of a long-ill parent."

Now, another election is upon us. If Bole were aware from beyond the grave, I wonder if he would recognize that he chose the right person back then. There's a Chinese saying, "There are many fine horses, but few Boles." The fact that the story of "Bole and his horses" has survived to this day shows people's high praise and nostalgia for Bole's insight. I often think, if Bole were to choose a president, he would surely pick a good one. At least let him be a commentator in the election, so the voters have a backbone.

One night, while thinking about the election, I fell asleep unknowingly. In my dream, I walked into a secluded valley and saw an old man with an immortal air, meditating in a pavilion. I approached him and found out he was Bole.

I asked him for advice on the U.S. presidential election. Bole said, "I only know how to choose horses, not presidents." I begged him to talk about it. He said, "Young man, it's not that I'm unwilling, but I can't. Choosing a president is completely different from choosing a horse." I asked, "How are they different? Please enlighten me, sir."

Seeing my sincerity, Bole slowly explained, "Firstly, horses can't speak, but people can. A horse can't boast about how fast it runs, but people can say, 'I've done so well, so well.' Isn't this good? The voters would understand the candidates better, wouldn't they? But their words are often hard to distinguish between true and false, and there are many lies, empty words, and nonsense. Many promises are made but often not fulfilled." "That's true. What's the second reason?" "Horses don't damage other horses. They don't say that this horse is too ugly, that horse is too lazy, or that horse stole something. But presidential candidates advertise every day, saying how bad a certain candidate is, how unreliable they are. 'Charge them with a crime before they've committed one.' Lies are told so frequently that they're not afraid you won't believe them." "Then let's just observe their actions." "That sounds simple, but it's difficult to do. For horses, even if a horse could speak ill of another, you can tell who's better by comparing them. Chinese people often say, 'Don't be afraid of not knowing goods, be afraid of comparing them.' 'Whether it's a mule or a horse, take it out for a stroll.' The horses I chose were not favored by others. But as soon as they were on the track, it was clear. But you can't compare when choosing a president." "Why? Can't presidents be compared?" "A country only has one president. There can't be two presidents at the same time. How can you compare them?" "But there must be a distinction between good and bad presidents, right?" "If a president does well, others won't have a chance. When you buy something and use it well, you won't change it easily." "Are you saying that elections only matter when the president does poorly?" "You could say that. But even if the president does poorly, he would say, 'Thanks to me, the country is what

 it is today. In such difficult times, if someone else took over, it would be even worse.' You can't prove whether his words are right or wrong. So the goodness or badness of a president cannot be objectively examined." "So you mean there are no objective standards for good or bad?" "There are standards. It's just that Zhang San has Zhang San's standards, and Li Si has Li Si's standards. There's no standard that everyone agrees on like with horse racing." "Then what are they comparing?" "Presidential campaigns are about who 'speaks' well, not about who 'acts' well." "Your analysis, sir, is truly profound. Can't you join the election? Everyone would value your opinion." "I can't." "Why not?" "If I recommend an elector, he will surely lose." "How could that be?" "Because he'll only have one vote, and that's mine." "No, doesn't anyone else trust your judgment? Many people would vote for your candidate." "Most people agree with me, then I wouldn't be Bole anymore!"

Before I could come to my senses, the old man had already left in a puff of smoke. As I was about to chase after him, the alarm clock rang. I woke up, and it was already 6:30. Oh no, I had to get up, or my son would miss the school bus.

Written in 2004.

 

Why Do People Revere Tea with a Religious Devotion?

Tea, like coffee, is one of the most popular natural beverages in the world. However, tea enthusiasts harbor a religious-like reverence for tea. This devotion is evident in the ceremonies, tea arts, and tea culture, where people demonstrate a respectful piety unmatched by any other food or drink.

 

 

Japanese Tea Ceremony

 

 

Chinese Tea Art

 

What is the tea ceremony, and what are tea arts? If you ask 100 people, 95 might say they don't know or can't explain it clearly, and the remaining 5 might offer five different answers. Some say the tea ceremony is a lifestyle, and tea arts are a form of performance. This seems reasonable but still feels vague and elusive. There are many lifestyles—drinking coffee, consuming alcohol, or following a vegetarian diet—but there is no "coffee ceremony," "wine ceremony," or "vegetarian ceremony," nor are there performance arts dedicated to these practices.

 

A Google search for "the origin of tea" yields two legends. One claims that tea originated in the Ba region of the Western Zhou Dynasty (present-day northern Sichuan and southern Shaanxi). Another says that tea was produced in Chibi, Hubei, and was promoted by Zhu Yuanzhang, the discovered tea and developed tea processing techniques.

 

The earliest tea was green tea. But how was green tea discovered? There are no records in this regard. I believe that in ancient times, due to low productivity and frequent natural and man-made disasters, people often went hungry. As a result, they would eat any edible plants and animals, trying things they had never eaten before. Tea leaves must have been one of the plants people tried. The Chinese cooking method involves stir-frying; they picked tender tea tips and stir-fried them in a pot, similar to how people stir-fry toona leaves with eggs. They quickly discovered that brewed tea soup was fragrant, especially after stir-frying the leaves and boiling them in water, which was refreshing. Historically, people consumed tea by eating the leaves as well, indicating that tea was considered a vegetable, soup, or medicine. Because it tasted good, people wanted to enjoy it year-round. Thus, like preserving green beans, chili peppers, green vegetables, and eggplants by drying or pickling, tea leaves were also dried for winter consumption, giving rise to the early methods of green tea production. Over time, the process of making green tea was gradually perfected. Today, some ethnic groups still consume tea leaves.

 

 

Pan – Fried Tea, the traditional way of making green tea

 

Interestingly, both the tea ceremony and tea arts thrive in regions where green tea is consumed, not in areas where black tea is popular, such as Europe. Why is this?

 

Green tea is unique and astonishing because when steeped in hot water, the small, dark tea leaves gradually unfurl into bright green buds, floating upright in the water, vividly recreating their original, vibrant form. It is as if they come back to life. Can you imagine any other plant with such magical properties? Coffee, wine, or any vegetable? Absolutely not.

 

 

Green Tea: vivid and lifelike in boiling water

 

Having worked as a tea technician, I have made tea myself. Watching the green tea I made unfold its leaves in a cup, vividly showcasing its beauty, was emotionally moving. Observing the tea in the water is a visual pleasure, making it almost reluctant to drink.

 

I once attended many Chinese church revival meetings and remember a famous pastor repeatedly emphasizing that belief in Jesus' resurrection is crucial to being a Christian. Indeed, if Jesus can rise from the dead, what else can He be but divine? Only a deity has the power to resurrect.

 

Green tea undergoes high-temperature pan-frying, rolling, and drying, and finally "resurrects" in the tea cup. Coupled with tea's medicinal properties and refreshing effects, it seems to possess a divine power unmatched by ordinary plants. Our ancestors, who revered deities, developed a similar reverence for tea. The slow, focused rituals of the tea ceremony reflect a devotion to tea akin to worshiping a deity. These elaborate procedures surpass even ancestral or deity worship rituals in complexity. It's not just drinking tea; it's a ritualistic worship of the tea deity.

 

Why does the tea ceremony flourish in green tea-consuming regions like China, Japan, and Southeast Asia, but not in black tea-consuming regions like Britain and Europe? Some say Britain has an afternoon tea culture, but that is a social custom, entirely different from the tea ceremony.

 

Afternoon tea time

 

Green tea requires fresh spring buds, which are the essence of a tea plant's year's growth. Leaves used for black tea can be from various stages of growth. The high-temperature process of green tea production transforms tender green leaves into tea strips dramatically, while black tea's fermentation is slow and peaceful. The brewed green tea leaves vividly revert to their original state, floating in the water and mesmerizing observers. In contrast, black tea produces a mellow liquor, and the leaves rest quietly at the cup's bottom, lacking the visual impact of green tea.

 

A CCTV series, "Tea: The Story of a Leaf," introduces the Blang tribe of Jingmai Mountain, Yunnan, in the Pu'er tea-producing region. They consider themselves descendants of the tea deity and hold an annual Tea Ancestor Festival in April. Every year there's a small festival, and every four years, a grand one, with everyone participating and sacrificing cattle to honor the tea ancestor. They also worship the tea ancestor at the Pa'ai Leng temple. Legend has it that over 1,800 years ago, Pa'ai Leng discovered that tea could cure diseases, saving his tribe from a plague. Since then, the Blang people have regarded him as the embodiment of the tea deity. Whenever they open a new tea garden, the first tea tree planted is called the "Tea Soul Tree," and during the Tea Ancestor Festival, they call the tea soul back to celebrate together.

 

Although the Blang tribe's Pu'er tea is a dark tea, the initial production process is similar to that of green tea, with only fermentation added later. It is not difficult to deduce that their ancestors first invented green tea, which later evolved into the dark tea production method. During the discovery phase of green tea, they developed a reverence for tea, leading to the emergence of ancestral tea worship activities.

 

 

Blang people celebrate the Tea festival every April

 

People's reverence for tea is most fully expressed in the tea ceremony, which elevates tea to a sacred status. According to CCTV's "Tea: The Story of a Leaf," Chinese tea culture reached a high level during the Song Dynasty. Japanese monks came to China to learn the Jingshan tea banquet ceremony in Zhejiang. After mastering it, they brought it back to Japan. Today's Japanese tea ceremony evolved from the Song Dynasty's Jingshan tea banquet. While the Jingshan tea banquet has been lost in China, the Japanese tea ceremony has preserved it. This is the origin of the tea ceremony. Guangdong's Gongfu tea is also meticulous and somewhat similar to the tea ceremony. Watching friends drink Gongfu tea, every gesture is filled with reverence for tea.

 

For tea culture enthusiasts, while tea may not be a deity, it holds a god-like charm and status.