"Already too much!"
Turning back to more mundane matters, many people wonder how someone who has suffered and been alone as much as Uncle Chou has managed to live such a long and vital life.
Chou, now in his 90s, doesn't have a particular method for maintaining his health. If you push, he'll say it's nothing more than "knowing one's limits and being content." But, if you listen carefully and observe his lifestyle, there actually is a "Chou approach to health maintenance" that is both environmentally friendly and practical.
Meeting Chou for breakfast one chilly morning, I noted he was only lightly dressed. He explained that he likes not wearing quite enough and feeling a little of the chill because he doesn't like indulging himself too much and instead prefers to feel a little "poor." Just as he finished speaking, our congee and side dishes arrived, and Chou immediately slurped down a bowl all in one gulp. "Watch out! You'll burn yourself!" I cried. Ignoring both me and the side dishes, he started right in on another bowl. About halfway through that one, he stopped and mumbled sheepishly to himself: "I wonder if I was a monk in a previous life. Otherwise, why would I love congee so much?" Then, covering his mouth and smiling, he added that his mother used to tell him, "When your teeth are ugly, you'd best not smile too often."
"Sometimes when I make congee at home," Chou admitted, "I finish it without eating even one peanut along with it." I asked him if he wanted another bowl. "Two's enough," he said. "I've already had too much today." He quipped, "To live a long life, stay 30% ill; to keep yourself young, eat seven parts of your fill." He then added, "To grow old at your leisure, don't partake of too much pleasure." Chou has thought long and deeply on maintaining his health, and doesn't indulge himself at all.
A mind at peace
Chou has long adhered to a very simple diet. If he's feeling weak, he'll ride out to Danshui for a bowl of beef noodles with the meat cooked very soft, a dish that always serves to restore him.
He's weighed around 40 kilograms for decades, and offers up a funny story about his weight. One day Chou and a friend were leaving a restaurant after a meal and saw a coin-operated scale outside. When Chou stepped on it, the scale's computer told him: "Child, you are 163.4 centimeters tall and weigh 39 kilos. Best wishes." Chou laughs happily-he weighs so little that he's become a child again!
Speaking more seriously about his insights into staying healthy, Chou says that diet and lifestyle only touch the surface, and account for only a small portion of health maintenance. In his view, what's inside you counts for at least 70%. When all is said and done, "illnesses don't go looking for people who are at peace."
Chou cites himself as an example, and argues that inner health comes of cultivating the emotions. Having grown up on the Four Books and Five Classics, which trained him to be empathetic, and on Confucianism's admonition to be at peace in difficult circumstances by delighting in doing right, Chou used to think of himself as a latter-day Yan Hui, Confucius' favorite disciple. When he got a little older, he became a devoted student of Buddhism, but was drawn to the work of Zhuangzi and Tao Yuanming as well. His heart was filled with a naive romanticism while his behavior continued to be informed by a Confucian sense of moderation and adherence to rules.
Inner tranquility is also crucial to his health maintenance regimen. "I've found Buddhism to be invaluable since I turned to it in my 50s." Buddhism doesn't avoid talk of consequences. Instead, it views the outside and inside as one, and sees an individual's wealth or poverty, health or illness, and happiness or suffering as a sequence of cause, karma, and consequence. If you know the cause of something, you no longer need to complain about fate or people. This kind of knowledge leads to peace of mind, and greatness of spirit.
"Give me time..."
Whether it is his fundamentally good constitution or his thinness, Chou enjoys robust good health. He says that he had just his third tooth pulled for cavities at around the age of 60, still has no false teeth, and eats everything. Chou also has exceptionally good eyesight that allows him to read small print without squinting or putting on glasses. He is accustomed to doing his writing in the "slender gold" calligraphic style, grinding out a few dozen characters an hour in a refined, powerful hand instantly recognizable to members of the literary community.
Chou's zest for activity has also helped keep him in good health. A very disciplined man, he always sets out early for appointments. "I love using the extra time to enjoy a quiet breakfast," he says. Chou has a few favorite coffeeshops for sitting quietly. He doesn't go to them for the atmosphere, but to "give a mind that's worked too hard a breather." He spends most of a typical day reading and thinking, and spends the hour it takes him to get to a coffeeshop emptying his head. Once he hops on a bus, his mind begins to revive. Chou is known to haunt the Chongqing South Road area, where you can often see him even after dark, hurrying down the sidewalk to catch the last bus back to Xindian.
Though he has the romantic nature of a poet, Chou laments the passage of time and has long pleaded: "Give me time to realize past aspirations and fulfill desires." Now that he's entered his 90s and feels his health is declining, he regretfully admits to having been a habitual procrastinator and says he was deeply moved by a passage from the eulogy that Pan Renmu wrote for Lin Hai-yin: "I thought there was still so much more [time], when in fact there was none."
Marching onward
In spite of having developed into a poet like no other, Chou nonetheless laments that he has so many things he must do, should do, and likes to do, but so little time, energy, and strength to do them. "I often develop grand ambitions that I never act on," he says with annoyance. His high standards leave him dissatisfied with himself, and spur him to do better.
While Chou may often refer to himself as a "nitpicker" and "unbalanced," his friends say he's very forgiving. Pure of heart and relatively passive by nature, Chou still manages to surprise people sometimes. For example, if he thinks a name particularly pretty, or a speech particularly well delivered, he may well strike up a conversation. Though he is a rare bird even among other rare birds, the warmth he feels for others is readily apparent.
I still well remember the end of one of my earlier interviews with Chou. "There are only five months left in the year," he said emphatically. "I can't waste any more time." Clearly, Chou cuts himself no slack. Though getting well on in years, he continues to prefer writing to speaking, and to keep striding along the poet's path. The man in the long robes is still hurrying down the sidewalk, hard at work with no time to rest.