DiǎnShíChéngJīn 點石成金 /Turning Stone into Gold

Previously, from chapter 11

Through my martial arts trainings, I have also come to understand the Daoist life philosophy that external power, money and status do not help you achieve happiness and inner peace. In order to give ourselves the best opportunity for a happy, healthy, and harmonious life, we need to be able to hold our own space while always respecting others.

After that same boring summer, I also began following my favorite math teacher’s guidance. He told me the story DiǎnShíChéngJīn 點石成金 (Turn Stone into Gold), which became the foundational wisdom for my life and all my Daoist cultivation practices.

After the summer break, I was back at school in third grade. The school was located on the south side of QíLín 麒麟 Mountain, the same side as YáoBànTiān 瑤半天 (Jade Half Heaven Temple). As I mentioned in the previous chapter, , where my martial arts teacher lived, was located near the peak of the mountain. My school was at the foot of the mountain, in an ideal Xuè 穴, FēngShuǐ 風水 spot.

According classical FēngShuǐ principles, a good FēngShuǐ site is able to CángFēngJùQì 藏風聚炁, or store the wind and gather the Qi to create an harmonious environment.

Figure 1. An ideal FēngShuǐ site landscape drawing I made for my article, Fengshui 風水 Healing - part 2

Every day on my way to school, I would walk across a small bridge made of green stone, located on the west side of the school. My favorite thing was standing on the bridge for extra minutes to watch the stream and little waterfall running under the bridge. I could see the water running all the way down the mountain and merge with another stream coming from the southeast side of the school.

Figure 2. A stone bridge similar to the one I remember from my childhood.

The school was a newer building built in the typical traditional style common in my hometown - a southern facing stone building surrounded by a stone wall. At that time, we villagers called it JiàoTáng 教堂, or church. In my earlier school years, I assumed that JiàoTáng was our name for school. Actually, they called it this because when it was built in the 1940s, it was originally the local Christian church.

As you may recall, when the Culture Revaluation started in 1966, all religion activities in China became forbidden. Monks, nuns, and priests of all religions all over the country were compelled to either married or go to jail. This was true even in my tiny village, which is why the local government took over the church and renovated it into a two floor building, repurposed for the village elementary school. In early 1980s, the government changed its policy and all religious organizations were allowed to use their buildings again as long as the buildings remained property of the government. At that time, my elementary school building was restored back into a church and my village lost its one an only elementary school, which as of today has never been replaced. Since then, village kids have either gone to the elementary school in town, or if the parents were wealthy, they could send their children to boarding schools in the city.

The new school year always started with the opening ceremony, with everyone standing in a small yard just outside of the school building. I liked listening to the speech our dean LuòYèDá 駱業達 made for us.

Shortly after I started third grade, on September 9, 1976, the “Great Leader Mao” of our nation passed away. Over 800 students of our elementary school joined the rest of the country, 931 million people, to attend the State Mourning Ceremony via live radio broadcast. I stood alongside my classmates in the crowd of students in the school yard in front of our building. As the instructional voice spoke from the speaker, we were required to lower our heads and kept silent for three minutes. We had practiced this strict many times before in the preparation for this National ceremony.

Figure 3. A common radio broadcast speaker in 1970s China

In the China of a half century ago, the only media platforms were government owned radio broadcasting systems and newspapers. Every morning, we were required to attend a 20 minute Newspaper Reading class, in which the teacher would read aloud to us articles from the national newspaper before our regular classes started. On the following day Mao’s State Mourning Ceremony, the article we listened to described Mao’s funeral services. I remember the teacher showing us the picture of Mao’s widow JiāngQīng 江靑 from the newspaper, reading aloud that JiāngQīng was the number one most important person, the top VIP, of the entire service.

Less than one month later, I was shocked by the news I received from the Newspaper Newspaper class: On October 6,1976, four of the most top level government leaders, SìRénBāng 四人幫 (the Gang of Four) were now arrested, and the gang’s leading figure was JiāngQīng. I remember wondering how our Great Leader’s wife could move from being number one VIP to the number one bad guy in such a short period of time? I was so confused. At that time, I thought there were only two kinds of people in the world, good or bad. I didn’t know at that time that each individual person is made of opposing qualities YīnYáng 陰陽 energies, that each of us we have within us a “good and bad” duality, meaning that without acknowledging the whole, each of us can be judged in two completely opposite ways.

The next summer, in 1977, on an evening after the dinner, I was playing in our courtyard with my friends. Suddenly, one neighbor called our attention to a parade passing by our yard. It was unusual for there to be a parade in the evening. Until then, I only ever remembered seeing day time parades. My friends and I ran out of the courtyard to watch. Two people carrying a big poster of a person were leading the parade, followed by a few drummers and a large group of people walking behind in silence.

My friend, ThaiKo 癩疴 / Leprosy and I were standing next to his father, NǎoMóYán 腦膜炎, Meningitis, as the parade passed by (you can read more details of ThaiKo in JingJu 井居 — Life Around the Well, GuZhe 瞽者 Chapter 6). Meningitis, who always seemed to know everything, told us, “This is a picture of DèngXiǎoPíng 鄧小平. He was the former vice primeminister, who was just released from jail. He has returned to his political position and this parade is celebrating his return!” Wait a minute, what I learned in my Newspaper Reading class about DèngXiǎoPíng was that he was the number one capitalist and our number one national enemy. The number one bad guy is now a good guy? I was shocked again. Meningitis continued: “DèngXiǎoPíng once said that a both black cat or a white cat can be a good cat as long as it catches a mouse. If he leads our nation as this time and people have enough food to eat, they will have a much better life. “

Meningitis was right about DèngXiǎoPíng. Shortly after the parade, many policies started to change. My grandmother could again run her small business out in the open, without any trouble. I was allowed to become a seasonal street vendor to sell sugar cane or peaches in my spare time in order to make my own money and to support my family. A year later, in 1978, because I have always loved books, I came up with the idea to start my own comic book rental business. Without any financial aid or advice from others, I expanded my cartoon book rental business for four years, and ended up owning hundreds of comic boards. It was through this business that I could pay my own school tuition throughout middle school until 1982, the year I left my hometown.

The education system also began to improve soon after DèngXiǎoPíng stepped into position. The Newspaper Reading class was totally eliminated. Our county (of over 1 million inhabitants) arranged the first ever math competition in history, for all of its fourth graders. Just two of us (myself and a classmate) were picked among all regional fourth grade students to represent our district in the county wide competition. In order to prepare for the competition, our dean, math teacher and calligraphy teacher, LuòYèDá, gave the two of us some free private math tutoring classes. I will never forget climbing over the mountain for the hour it took in order to catch a bus into the city. This was the first time in my life that I had travelled on anything with wheels, much less a motor!

Figure 4. Teacher LuòYèDá

LuòYèDá was the best elementary school math teacher and well known Chinese calligrapher in the entire region. His teaching was so skillful that almost all of his students became good at math. He was also my very first calligrapher teacher and inspired many of us to start practicing calligraphy at a young age. In our first private math lesson, he told us the story of DiǎnShíChéngJīn 點石成金 , Turning Stone into Gold:

Once upon a time, there was a famous Daoist immortal, his name was LǚDòngBīn 呂洞賓. This immortal had a magical finger that could turn a piece of stone into gold. He often helped poor people by using his magic finger in order to give them a piece of gold. One day, he saw a poor young lady working hard in a rice field under the strong sun. LǚDòngBīn told the lady to choose from any stone on the ground and he would turn it into gold for her. The lady asked him how he was able to do that. He told her about his magic finger and again asked her to pick any stone, as big as she would like, to turn into gold for her. She shook her head slowly and told him that she did want to have a piece gold from him, instead, she would rather have his magic finger. Without having his magic finger, she said, she would inevitably spend all the gold and become poor again.

After he finished the story, teacher LuòYèDá asked us: “What lesson could you learn from this story to apply to your study of math?” Both my classmate and I shook our heads, we had no idea. He continued, “Figuring out the correct answer for a math question is like turning a stone into gold. If you only focus on the correct answer instead of mastering the method, you will never become good at math. Truly understanding the principle behind getting the correct answer is like having the immortal’s magic finger. “ He paused for a few moments, allowing this to sink in. “The purpose of my private classes is to help you both learn to obtain your own magic math finger.” “Wow, that is very interesting!” I thought.

As I continued studying math from teacher LuòYèDá, I gradually realized that every field of my life has had its own “magic finger.” Later on in my cultivation studies of martial arts, Qigong, music, YiJing prediction, calligraphy, astrology, FēngShuǐ healing, and Chinese medicine, I always applied teacher’s wisdom and focused on mastering the magic finger/method of the field as opposed to focusing on countless small techniques. This one piece of advice from teacher LuòYèDá transformed my life.

Stay tuned to read about the next stage of my spiritual journey!