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The 68-year-old Ye Wenling sits at her desk in her office one sunny day in the autumn 2010. She wears short hair, her face round, her eyes clear and serene behind the reading glasses. She looks elegant and beautiful. Who would believe this lively woman has just recovered from a nearly fatal cerebral hemorrhage? The stroke almost killed her. Even though she has lost most of her reading and writing ability after the operation, the writer relearned how to write and began to edit volumes 9 to 16 of “Complete Works of Ye Wenling” four months after she left hospital.
I am visiting with her that day. She autographs a set of the seven volumes for me and gives them as a gift to me, asking me to keep them forever. Reading the brief autography, I find tears come to my eyes. I have known her for a long time and known many of her life stories. Both of us are natives of southern Zhejiang. She is my mentor. I am the daughter of a bosom friend of hers. Ye and I are like mother and daughter. Under her guidance, I am a fledgling writer.
Touching the books, I recall November 30, 2008, a big day in the life of the celebrated writer. In the afternoon of that day a ceremony was scheduled to be held to launch her trilogy “Endless Life” and mark her 50-year career as a writer. The previous evening, the 66-year-old Ye attended a tea party in honor of a group of friends who had come to Hangzhou to attend the ceremony. She was as excited as a bride. She did not go to bed until 3 o’clock in the morning.
It was sunny that big day. I called her at home around 12 o’clock to see what I could help for the ceremony scheduled to start at 2 o’clock that afternoon. I now forget who answered the phone and what exactly I heard on the phone. The day became dark instantly when I heard the words ambulance and hospital.
When I arrived at the hospital, she had finished a CT examination. The diagnosis was a massive cerebral hemorrhage. She needed surgery immediately. She lay there like a helpless baby, her consciousness half gone. The nurse tried to shave her hair. The writer resisted and tried to sit up. Her husband, her daughter and son, tried to talk to her.
The ceremony started at 2 o’clock as scheduled, but the honored writer was absent. Those present at the ceremony expressed their blessings and respect. At that time, Ye was in the operating room and I was waiting outside the operating room, seized by the terror. I knew death hovered somewhere. Terrified, I called my mother from the hospital and hearing my mother voice, I cried, feeling reality was weirder than fiction. I began to pray and my mother prayed for the whole afternoon.
A week later, Ye came out of woods. And two weeks later, she managed to get out of bed. In a visit to her in another hospital one day after more than a month, I spotted her in the corridor from afar. With the help of a nurse, Ye was walking and speaking in a loud voice. Though she stammered and was not particularly articulate, she was loud and rapid in speaking. I was extremely happy to see she was her old self again.
Back in her ward, we sat down and began to chat. Holding my hand, she suddenly asked me, “Cangsang, why didn’t you tell me? I’ve found I now have a cave in my head.”
She didn’t know the hollow in the back of her head until the day when the bandage was taken off her head. She examined in the mirror her short hair on the head. The hair had grown on the shaved head and had turned totally white. She knew she had just come back from death and could manage to accept all this. But suddenly she noticed the large hollowed place as large as a rice bowl on the back of her head. Examining the hollow, she came face to face with the stark reality and became fully aware what the massive hemorrhage had done so cruelly and horribly to her body. She burst into crying for her self for the time in her life.
At that moment, she realized how sick she was, so sick that she had to bid farewell to literature and writing. She was unable to read and write. “I’ve lost the reason to live,” she said to me. “Without literature, my life is imperfect now.” That was why the perfectionist cried.
During her rehabilitation, I frequently asked her to stop working and enjoy life whenever we met each other or chatted on phone. She said she knew. But she didn’t surrender to fate.
A few days after her return home, Ye cleaned her house and began to put all the cloths in order. Uncle Wang called everyone to stop his wife, but she listened to no one. I said to myself, the perfectionist hasn’t changed a bit and will never change.
I was not surprised to learn, a month later, that she announced that she was going to sort out all her writings written after the publication of the first eight volumes of her complete works in 1988 and get them published in honor of her 50-plus-year writing career. She wanted a perfect finale to her career.
Eight months after her hemorrhage and four months after her return from hospital, Ye and her husband went to Qingdao. She shut herself up in the house and got down to the epic work. With the help of colleagues at China Writers Association and Zhejiang Writers Association and the Writers Publishing House as well as friends, she went through her scriptures one by one.
The other day I asked her if she is happy. She replied: “Sure, I am happy with the family and I am happy at home. My literary dream is accomplished. But I can never be really happy. I live for literature and I am willing to die for writing. But I feel pained because I can write no more. How can I have the real happiness?”
There are people in this world who love what they do and never give up. Ye Wenling is one of them. □
I am visiting with her that day. She autographs a set of the seven volumes for me and gives them as a gift to me, asking me to keep them forever. Reading the brief autography, I find tears come to my eyes. I have known her for a long time and known many of her life stories. Both of us are natives of southern Zhejiang. She is my mentor. I am the daughter of a bosom friend of hers. Ye and I are like mother and daughter. Under her guidance, I am a fledgling writer.
Touching the books, I recall November 30, 2008, a big day in the life of the celebrated writer. In the afternoon of that day a ceremony was scheduled to be held to launch her trilogy “Endless Life” and mark her 50-year career as a writer. The previous evening, the 66-year-old Ye attended a tea party in honor of a group of friends who had come to Hangzhou to attend the ceremony. She was as excited as a bride. She did not go to bed until 3 o’clock in the morning.
It was sunny that big day. I called her at home around 12 o’clock to see what I could help for the ceremony scheduled to start at 2 o’clock that afternoon. I now forget who answered the phone and what exactly I heard on the phone. The day became dark instantly when I heard the words ambulance and hospital.
When I arrived at the hospital, she had finished a CT examination. The diagnosis was a massive cerebral hemorrhage. She needed surgery immediately. She lay there like a helpless baby, her consciousness half gone. The nurse tried to shave her hair. The writer resisted and tried to sit up. Her husband, her daughter and son, tried to talk to her.
The ceremony started at 2 o’clock as scheduled, but the honored writer was absent. Those present at the ceremony expressed their blessings and respect. At that time, Ye was in the operating room and I was waiting outside the operating room, seized by the terror. I knew death hovered somewhere. Terrified, I called my mother from the hospital and hearing my mother voice, I cried, feeling reality was weirder than fiction. I began to pray and my mother prayed for the whole afternoon.
A week later, Ye came out of woods. And two weeks later, she managed to get out of bed. In a visit to her in another hospital one day after more than a month, I spotted her in the corridor from afar. With the help of a nurse, Ye was walking and speaking in a loud voice. Though she stammered and was not particularly articulate, she was loud and rapid in speaking. I was extremely happy to see she was her old self again.
Back in her ward, we sat down and began to chat. Holding my hand, she suddenly asked me, “Cangsang, why didn’t you tell me? I’ve found I now have a cave in my head.”
She didn’t know the hollow in the back of her head until the day when the bandage was taken off her head. She examined in the mirror her short hair on the head. The hair had grown on the shaved head and had turned totally white. She knew she had just come back from death and could manage to accept all this. But suddenly she noticed the large hollowed place as large as a rice bowl on the back of her head. Examining the hollow, she came face to face with the stark reality and became fully aware what the massive hemorrhage had done so cruelly and horribly to her body. She burst into crying for her self for the time in her life.
At that moment, she realized how sick she was, so sick that she had to bid farewell to literature and writing. She was unable to read and write. “I’ve lost the reason to live,” she said to me. “Without literature, my life is imperfect now.” That was why the perfectionist cried.
During her rehabilitation, I frequently asked her to stop working and enjoy life whenever we met each other or chatted on phone. She said she knew. But she didn’t surrender to fate.
A few days after her return home, Ye cleaned her house and began to put all the cloths in order. Uncle Wang called everyone to stop his wife, but she listened to no one. I said to myself, the perfectionist hasn’t changed a bit and will never change.
I was not surprised to learn, a month later, that she announced that she was going to sort out all her writings written after the publication of the first eight volumes of her complete works in 1988 and get them published in honor of her 50-plus-year writing career. She wanted a perfect finale to her career.
Eight months after her hemorrhage and four months after her return from hospital, Ye and her husband went to Qingdao. She shut herself up in the house and got down to the epic work. With the help of colleagues at China Writers Association and Zhejiang Writers Association and the Writers Publishing House as well as friends, she went through her scriptures one by one.
The other day I asked her if she is happy. She replied: “Sure, I am happy with the family and I am happy at home. My literary dream is accomplished. But I can never be really happy. I live for literature and I am willing to die for writing. But I feel pained because I can write no more. How can I have the real happiness?”
There are people in this world who love what they do and never give up. Ye Wenling is one of them. □