Knowledge Gives You Hope

“Excuse me, is this seat empty?” 

When we were chitchatting on the bench, a white-haired lady politely interjected, pointing at the spot next to me.

“I heard you guys talking here. I like talking, probably because I used to be a teacher,” professor Zhong smiled mildly, radiating a scholarly aura. She was dressed plainly in a cultural T-shirt and a light blue jacket. Yet her choice of footwear stood out from her fellow patients: she was wearing silk white embroidered shoes instead of some random slippers. Just that pair of shoes made her more than a regular teacher.

Born in 1950, professor Zhong had lived through the most turbulent era since the foundation of the People's Republic of China. When the Cultural Revolution swept across China, many educated young people left the urban districts to live and work in rural areas as part of the Down to the Countryside Movement. She became one of them, the zhiqing (知青), at the age of eighteen in 1968. Then, her education journey lapsed into a ten years’ pause. 

“We were among the first students after the gaokao was restored," professor Zhong told me proudly. "In 1978." She and her husband had both been admitted to university. The odds were almost unimaginable today. "Back then, the admission rate was only about three percent. It was literally ‘thousands upon thousands of people competing for one narrow bridge’. Only six people from our farm got the offer, four boys, two girls."

Professor Zhong paused for a moment, "I’m now a retired professor. So is my husband. I teach English Language at Nanchang University. If there had been no gaokao, there would have been no way out for us." It struck me that she still spoke of education with the excitement of an eighteen-year-old.

Only later did we begin talking about cancer. Professor Zhong lives in Honggutan (红谷滩), one of Nanchang's newer districts. She is seventy-six years old now. Her husband, seventy-nine, stayed home looking after their ten-year-old granddaughter while she came to the hospital alone. "There are doctors and nurses here," she smiled. "He'd only tire himself coming every day." Her son and daughter-in-law visited when work allowed. Otherwise she managed on her own.

Meals came from the hospital cafeteria downstairs. Sometimes she walked outside to eat something different. Fruit could always be bought from the shops below. "I've always been independent," she said matter-of-factly. It sounded less like determination than habit.

Her cancer was discovered the same way many cancers are discovered—by accident. A routine physical examination suggested the sign of thoracic cancer. "I had absolutely no symptoms. I didn't even believe the report. I didn't cough at all until now," Her disbelief found her again. 

Her own diagnosis was less fortunate. By the time doctors identified the tumor, it was already Stage IV. "I knew what Stage IVB (the stage at which the cancer has multiple distant metastases) meant," Unlike many patients, she understood the language of medicine. Perhaps that is why she was never overwhelmed by it. Her husband and son refused to panic. "My husband said, 'Don't be afraid. It's just another road.'" Her son reassured her too, "Medicine today has treatments for almost everything." Hope, in their family, did not come from denial. It came from knowledge.

The family searched for answers the way scholars do research. She did genetic testing instead of rushing to treatment. The result revealed a target spot, which could be cured by a targeted drug. The drug could be found at Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center, where one of her students who worked. When the family arrived, they not only got the drug but also a strategy. The drug had three generations. When the family was not sure about which one to use, another physician carefully explained why they should begin with first-generation targeted therapy rather than saving newer drugs for later. "Medicine keeps advancing," she recalled him saying. "If we use every option too quickly, what will we do when resistance develops?"

The advice shaped her treatment. For two years, targeted therapy worked almost perfectly. "One pill every day," she laughed, "I lived exactly like a normal person. I could still exercise. The only side effects were mild skin rashes and occasional diarrhea."

It felt, professor Zhong said, as though cancer had simply become another chronic illness, until one day it wasn't. Two years later, the tumor developed resistance. The pills stopped working. Chemotherapy began.

A device hung conspicuously in front of her chest. It was an infusion pump, used to control the dose of drugs. "I wasn't afraid of the first cycle," she admitted. "Everyone told me the first one usually isn't too bad. The second, the third, those were harder.” Yet she had lost nearly twenty pounds. "I used to weigh one hundred and twenty jin (132 pounds)," She smiled again, "I've even become shorter. I used to be 162 cm (5.3 foot). Now I’m 156 cm (5.1 foot). " She laughed as she said it, blaming old age rather than cancer, "My husband has shrunk too." There was no self-pity in the remark. Only amusement.

I asked whether she ever felt lonely staying in the hospital by herself. She thought for a moment, "Not really." Her answer surprised me. Most people would have spoken about anxiety, boredom, and having trouble adjusting to a new environment…

Instead, she spoke about generations. About how today's children begin learning English in primary school. About grandchildren growing astonishingly tall. About my love for English Literature. About how fortunate today's students are to have opportunities that her generation could scarcely imagine. By then, our conversation had drifted far from hospitals. Cancer entered the conversation only when necessary. Education, family, and curiosity occupied the rest.

Before I left, I realized something I had not noticed when we first met. She never described herself as fighting cancer; she described herself as learning. She was learning which drugs worked, when resistance developed, how new therapies emerged and how to live with uncertainty. Her life had begun with a restored university entrance examination that changed her future.

Half a century later, another examination had arrived. Only this one was not written on paper, but inside her own body. Professor Zhong approached it the only way she knew how—with knowledge, and, because of that knowledge, with hope.