Steamed Egg
My fellow townsman Liu Lin worked at an internet company in Shanghai, rising early and sleeping late, laboring with great hardship. He came home for the May Day holiday to rest, but had no appetite at all, could not eat, and had even developed insomnia. The hospital was of no help. One day I went to his house to borrow a book, and he asked me about it. I went home, steamed an egg, and brought it over. When he saw it, he said, “I’ve already eaten. I have no appetite.” I told him, “Your problem comes from spending too long in front of computer screens. The radiation has thrown your spleen and stomach into disorder. So I set this egg behind the monitor until it was thoroughly warmed through, then steamed it in the pot. To use its force against itself: that is the principle behind curing this illness.” After Liu Lin ate it, his appetite indeed improved greatly, and his condition was more than half cured.
The Compendium of Materia Medica records that Emperor Huizong of Song once ate too much ice and damaged his digestion. The imperial physicians were helpless, but the minister Yang Jie brewed his medicine using the same ice Huizong had been eating, and the emperor recovered at once. The principle is the same. Much illness comes from excess, yet after falling ill it is also wrong to give something up entirely out of fear. The very cause of an illness is often what serves as the guiding ingredient in its cure.
Kombu
The university where I studied lay beside the Yellow Sea to the east, with more than ten li of coastline stretching along it. Every so often there were deaths there, whether from people greedily venturing into the water and drowning, or from those throwing themselves in to die. I remember that in the autumn of last year both the campus newspaper and television station reported a story about a security guard at the East Gate bravely rescuing a female student who had supposedly tried to throw herself into the sea. What surprised me was not that the report gave the girl’s real name, but that she was my fellow townswoman, Xiaoyue.
Xiaoyue was an excellent swimmer and had once competed in the eight-hundred-meter freestyle at the university games. Leave aside my not believing she would try to kill herself: even if she had wanted to, she would never have chosen the sea. I immediately called her to ask what had happened. Full of grievance, she told me that she had not been trying to commit suicide at all. The weather that day was overcast and drizzling. Xiaoyue had been taking a walk by the shore when she saw what looked like a pair of hands struggling in the waves some distance away. Without a second thought she jumped in to save the person, but when she swam closer there was no one there. Instead she became entangled in purple-red seaweed, thin as reeds, and swallowed several mouthfuls of water. Luckily the security guard was a kindhearted man and spotted her in time to pull her out.
Xiaoyue was an honest girl, and she repeatedly insisted that she truly had seen a pair of hands in the water. I guessed that what she had seen was kombu, a plant that grows in the sea, with leaves shaped like hands. Legend says that it is algae formed from the wronged souls of those who fell into the sea and drowned without receiving rescue. Kombu is certainly a killer in the sea, yet that does not mean it truly intends harm: its leaves float on the surface only so they can better draw in nourishment. Few people know that kombu is also a medicinal ingredient in Chinese medicine, used to treat goiter, ulcerated lymph nodes, and other inflammations. Things that harm people are not always truly harmful; they may even save lives. And yet people go on inventing countless reasons for fear. When will that failing ever be put to an end?