Asian Longevity Secrets

My best friend, Justin, called. He was in town and wanted to have dinner with me. It would be good to see my old college friend, who came from one of the most re-mote and poorest villages in China, probably the first to enter college in the long history of the village. He is smart, intuitive, naïve, truthful, real. There is no pre-tending in his manner. The first time he showed up in the dorm, after a 50-mile walk carrying his luggage to save bus fare, he was barefoot, shirtless, sweaty, with dirt covering his boyish face. He graduated first in our class, receiving a Ph.D. in physics from Stanford, yet never dis-played any arrogance, jealousy, anger, aggressiveness, or greediness, qualities typically associated with modern men. It still impresses me today. For a big city girl like me and most of our classmates, he was different, natural and unspoiled.

“What are you doing these days, Justin?” I asked af-ter picking our menu items in the Chinese restaurant.

“After graduation I read about An Wang, you know, the founder of Wang Laboratories. He inspired me to get into big business. So I joined General Electric. Now I am a vice president, running this $900 million electronics business. I have about 3500 people working in my divi-sion.” Justin still talked in his villager’s manner.

“I am impressed,” I said, “but cannot imagine how you managed to climb a corporate ladder. I have heard that there is a lot of politics to deal with, just like in the Con-gress in Washington, D.C.”

“Well, yes. When you get to this level, people natu-rally are very competitive. They fight for power, compete to get credit for success, socialize to build alliances, and cling together in little cliques to get ahead. You don’t have to be wrong to be wrong. Remember the stories about the kingdoms in the Warring Period of China. That was when the greatest strategists such as Sun Tzu were created.”

“But I cannot put a village boy and a large corporate executive together,” I said. “How did you learn all of this? You must have given up all your original nature in order to be successful in such a modern corporation.”

“Yes, I had to learn all of this, which at times, is very stressful. I must fit into the corporate image—a different person from myself—strong, elegant, eloquent, knowl-edgeable all the time regardless of the truth. My mind has to think a million things all at once every minute, every day, even in my sleep. I so much long for life in my home village, where I could catch fishes, collect bamboo shoots, hunt wild chickens, climb on the trees to get ber-ries. In those days, I spent a lot of time staring at the sky and dreaming, as though my whole body and mind dis-solved into the stars. I craved nothing because I had eve-rything in the village.”

“How do you handle this?”

“I figured out a way. I decided to live two lives simul-taneously. Each day at work, I am the corporate execu-tive, most competitive in everything I do. Off work, I am the poor village boy again. My mind is calm and empty. My body is relaxed. I don’t watch movies and TV because it raises my emotions. All that divorce, violence, sex, sus-pense, power, fame, and wealth taints my mind. Being able to switch back and forth at ease makes me very happy. My life is great. I have the benefit of both worlds. I sometimes feel that I am the magic monkey in the old Chinese novels who could change at will to any form, any face, any mind. It makes me very spiritual.”

“Amazing,” I exclaimed. “I am sure many people want to do this.”

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