Over the years, many people I first met in the American academic world assumed I was from California, since Asian Americans seemed to predominate from that part of the country. So they are surprised when I say "I’m from Cincinnati.” 多年来，我在美国学术界第一次遇到的人，有许多都认为我是来自加利福尼亚，因为亚裔美国人似乎主要是来自该国的那个地区。所以当我说 “我来自辛辛那提"，他们就很惊讶。 After my arrival in the US, I worked as a pediatric resident in Chicago at the Michael Reese…

When I arrived in the morning at the hotel in Buenos Aires, Argentina, I did a very ’Asian” thing. I took my fine camera and went out to take pictures in the middle of the day. The weather was drizzly, so I decided to cross the street by going into the subway under the road. Evidently, I had been spotted…

One day, a few days after I started my internship at the Queen Mary Hospital in Hong Kong, I was doing morning rounds on my ward. In those days, it was common to have 20 beds or so per ward, and overflow patients had to sleep on cots. Some cots were even in open air balconies adjoining the ward rooms.…

I’m a neonatologist, a doctor who specializes in newborn infants. When I see a newborn baby, my instinctive reflex is always “this is a miracle”，even though I’ve seen thousands of newborn babies. This response is common for many delivery room workers. Everyone is so excited to see a new baby, to hear the first cry, and exclaim “is it a…

I went to school in Hong Kong. In order to get into the only medical school in Hong Kong, we had to pass a tough series of exams which included a hands-on biology “Practical Exam . In this test I had to dissect the salivary glands of a cockroach, and put it on a glass slide for evaluation. Fortunately, cockroaches…

Fried bees is a particular food specialty of many mountain towns in Yunnan. To be precise, actually, it is deep fried, baby bee or embryonic larva. To make it more vivid, one can see the originals squirming in their flat pancake-like beehives on the streets, during fall harvest season. These wild bees are collected by farmers from the mountains, and…

From the very beginning of our work in the small town of LQ, we met Diana, who at that time we called Lucy. Lucy Diana was a daughter of a nurse in the hospital that we had befriended. The nurse brought Lucy Diana to lunch one day, and I had a chance to chat with her. I found her to…

Kyphosis is a condition where the spine is deformed, commonly called “hunchback”. In story books we often hear how some people are quite mean to “hunchbacks . But Tian (Providence) has a way of changing one’s life from deformity to significance. 脊柱后凸症是ー种脊柱变形而产生的情况，俗称驼背。在故事书里，我们常看到驼背的人受到十分刻薄的对待。但是，老天总是有方法把ー个人残缺的人生改变成为精彩的人生。 I met Sherrie many years ago as part of our mission to small towns in China. Her family…

One of my most impressive mentors has been “Richard.” I like to call him my guru, which is just another word for a master/ mentor/teacher. I could literally sit for hours listening to him talk. He had a rather rambling style of talk, so if I was not paying attention, I might miss some of his pearls of wisdom. Often…

It is amazing how many times in life we have a narrow escape from tragedy, but we often easily forget. 让人惊奇的是，我们总是轻易忘记在我们身上有多少次险 些发生悲剧。 As a teenager, I had a fascination with fire. I had a trick where I soaked cotton balls in alcohol, lit them, and then threw them up in the air as fireballs without burning myself. (Reader, beware. Don’t…