I am Under a 3 Weeks Quarantine

Due to a very important family emergency, I had to put on hold everything at hand and fly back to China from Canada within a week.

Very urgently, I went through a 48-hours-leading-time pre-boarding COVID19 FlyClear RT-PCR swab test and antibody blood test. With both tests’ negative results, I successfully got my Green-QR-Code; and boarded on the international airplane, flying towards Guangzhou.

At the moment we boarded the plane, we were all treated as high-risk virus carriers:

– The crew and all working people on the way were all in full protective clothing
– The airplane landed at a separate terminal building
– We must register all personal ID information together with COVID test results with the Frontier Pandemic Prevention Center
– We went through a fully closed-loop entry channel
– We did the second time swab test before entering the custom
– We claimed our luggage and followed the guidance to take a bus to a quarantine hotel which was uniformly arranged by the government
– We got 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th swab tests on the 2nd, 3rd, 7th and 14th day in the hotel, together with daily temperature tests
– All food, water, laundry, shower supplies are uniformly organized by the government and hotel
– After 2 weeks of quarantine in the hotel, we will register our arrival at our home to the local administrative department and go on a 7-days strict home quarantine, and more swab tests
– …

All the above mandatary steps went through a smooth process with a very well-organized team and under good controls.

What do we feel? Severely restricted freedom? Grumpy?
Oppositions? Objections?

No. We all feel relieved, as, out of the hotel is a free, healthy, and very fast-developing world despite this “scaring” pandemic.

What we are doing now, is for everyone, including our own freedom and health. And we all work together on this.

I love my home country. She makes me feel being taken care of, being protected, and being safe.

#love#unity#COVID19#china#kindness

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6838008545292763136/

志: That Innate Purpose and Determination

What means the determined will and the noble integrity of a person? Does a scholar, or a gentleman or a soldier acting on behalf of their true hearts describe any meaning of a person’s determined will and noble integrity?

I think it does, and so did our ancestors. They created the character 志 to present a person’s innate purpose and determinate will, to describe a person’s noble integrity.

志 with 士- scholar, gentleman, or soldier on top of a 心-heart, it vividly draws a picture of a determined person with strong self-awareness and wills.

There is a tough guy in my life who deserves this tough character 志.

China’s most beautiful landscape avenue, Sichuan-Tibet Line 318 National Road, is the best choice for cyclists to challenge the limit:

1) A total length of 2,142 kilometers, 14 mountains, with an average altitude of more than 4,000 meters and about 100 kilometers distance cycling a day.

2) Snowy mountains, hail, exposure to the burning sun, and high temperatures happen in one day;

3) Altitude sickness because of riding uphill and downhill in a single day’s attitude ranging from 2600 meters to 5130 meters extremely requires and challenges human body physical limit.

Every year, there are countless groups of cyclists cycling there to taste the limits of life.

He was a member of one cyclist team there years ago. When he told me how his days looked like to him, this was his words with tears and laughter: “问坡何时止，坡曰骑到死！” — “When asked the uphill road when it would end, it says: Until you ride to your death!”

When the uphill road never ends, when the body physical limit is constantly being broken, when you seem to be the only one on this world on that never-ending cycling road, when you have very limited water and food in your back bag to save energy, when your whole body is completely exhausted and in massive muscle soreness…, your innate determined will to not give up is the only thing that drives you towards your daily purpose,…, and your life purpose.

This applies to everyone in everyday life, as well as career and business. It is just that we need to get a chance to discover our deep innate purpose and our strong will in reaching it and never giving up.

When the 14-year-old girl Quan Hongchan won the gold medal in the Tokyo Olympic Women’s 10-meter diving platform with a world record high score, her strong will is to earn money for mom’s illness treatments. Nothing could move her from her strongest will to perfectly complete each of her dives.

In the end, strong wills and determinations are coming from human hearts: love. A person with 志- innate purpose, determinate will, and noble integrity is a person of love.

Teeth vs. Tongue — The Hard vs. the Soft

Legend has it that when Lao Tzu (or, Lao Zi) was fifteen, he worshipped a man named Chang Cong as his teacher.

Later, the teacher became seriously ill. Lao Tzu went to visit him, but couldn’t forget to ask for more teaching. And here came a conversation between them like this:

Lao Tzu said respectfully: “Teacher, you are so ill, what else can you tell your disciple?”

Chang said, “Even if you don’t ask, I have something to tell you.”

Then Chang opened his mouth and asked Lao Tzu to look into it and asked, “Is my tongue still there?”

Lao Tzu replied: “Yes.”

Chang asked again, “Are my teeth still there?”

Lao Tzu replied: “They are all gone!”

Chang asked again: “Do you understand what I want to tell you?”

Lao Tzu said: “The tongue exists because it is soft! Isn’t it because teeth are hard that they have all fallen out?”

Chang said with satisfaction, “Hey! The world’s rules are all in it. You’ve got it, and I have nothing to teach you anymore!

“Tao Te Ching/Lao Tzu” – Chapter 43: 天下之至柔，驰骋天下之至坚.

Water is the softest and weakest while benefiting and embracing the whole world, but how can it be defeated? The sharpest knife can take lives, cut steel, but never able to cut water apart.

Stones are strong, but consistent drops of water wear holes in the stone. The tide rises and falls, the stones become the pebbles.

Steel against steel, the result has to be lose-lose. While the fast-moving wheels need to break down, we use very soft brake pads.

In daily life and #business, the #principle is the same: #Perseverance leads to #success, as it enables the practice in achieving a huge return on a very small investment; a big payoff from a small effort.

Human hearts could be our softest gifts from the universe. And those who win the hearts of the people win the world.

#chineseculture #ancientwisdom #unity #authenticity #love #hearts #kindness #businesssuccess #strategy

The Heart is The Only Place in the Body That Barely Grows Cancer

In 2008, Dr. David Vesely, the chief scientist of the Health Science Research Center of the University of South Florida, found that the heart can secrete the last-life hormone, it can not only kill more than 95% of cancer cells within 24 hours, and it also has an excellent therapeutic effect on other terminal diseases.

And, the human heart is the only place in the body that barely grows cancer cells.

Why?

If we look at Chinese characters, for all the human internal organs, besides 心-heart, all the others,肝- Liver, 脾- spleen, 肺-lung, 肾- kidney,胃- stomach, and 肠-intestine have a root character 月 which means the materialized flesh of the body.

Why?

Taoism and TCM say: “心主神明” – The heart governs the deity.

The deity refers to the mental consciousness and thinking activities, and in Taoism and TCM’s viewpoints, it is the key master of the human body and soul. When a person is settled physically and mentally, and the mood is stable, the body will quickly regain strength. So:

“The best doctor is you, naturally the healthiest. The heart is the strongest medicine, and the human body has its own repair and self-heal mechanism.”

Thinking in reverse, the biggest and best way to control a person is to scare him, to fill him with fear. Diseases and misfortune will follow him then.

Take good care of our hearts.

#love#heart#health#mentalheath#cancer#ancientwisdom#authenticity#chineseculture#TCM#Taoism

云: The Cloud or the Data Storage?

In June, SilkRoad Cooperation inspired me to work on the soulful Silk Road story through the character 丝-silk https://lnkd.in/gUJFph3s. Our collaboration in bridging cultural sharing in helping business continues.

Today, we talk about 云-cloud, which connects a natural phenomenon with our digital daily life.

As an old saying goes: “云行雨施，天下平也”. It tells that clouds flow and rainwater falls, all things cycle around and take their own shape, and the world is peaceful.

Such a wonderful and shocking wish was cleverly endowed with a traditional Chinese character雲-cloud: the upper half a 雨-rain, the lower half a simplified 云-cloud.

In the ancient times when agricultural production was the core product of the society, the ancients discovered that the effect of clouds and rain on crops was similar to that of human women gestating children. And they used “cloud and rain” to metaphor the intimate relationship between men and women. This responsive vision has developed into the core of Chinese culture: Heaven and the human being are in a mutually harmonious relationship.

“云，山水气也”. As a form of water, 云-cloud has another meaning – the breathing Qi of mountains and rivers. With about 70% surface covered by water, through the tidal effect, an important way of Mother Earth’s energy cycle in flourishing the whole world, is through her water cycle, that is, the sun’s irradiation, the transpiration of seawater, the transportation of clouds, the falling back of rain and snow, and the convergence of land, returning from the river to the sea.

As the carrier of divine nature energy, 云盘- CloudStorage is a vivid metaphor we use in our modern digital world, which is the computer data storage where the digital data is stored in logical pools. The physical storage spans multiple servers in a physical environment that are owned and managed by a hosting company.

What is the energy this divine carrier carries? Data! As Columbia Journalism Review stated “The increased value of digital data comes almost entirely from its improved shareability”, it so well describes the energy flowing through the e-world is just like what the cloud carries, shared by everyone at every moment and everywhere.

Furthermore,

“The world produces 2.5 quintillion bytes of data daily, but that figure should grow at an accelerating rate as more people and devices are connected to the internet. As data collection continues to surge and new techniques to monetize data arise, it will become an increasingly valuable asset”. https://lnkd.in/gjsaNytb

Compared to its unconditional benefiting spirit in nature, in the human world, “cloud-云” becomes a symbol of a few businesses ’ serving platforms.

“The Universe creates business as a platform for accumulating blessings; careers as a platform for uplifting people; wealth as a tool for benefiting others.”

With our gratitude, all the best wishes to this great cutting-edge technology in nurturing the world for a better future.

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/helenqiuhong_the-cloud-or-the-data-storage-in-june-activity-6829063142375493634-ZdSP

To the Thief

Zheng Banqiao(https://lnkd.in/e6Xfp_r) had a straightforward character and was a county governor who governed incorruptibly and intelligently with integrity.

As a result, there was nothing worthwhile at his home.

One night, a thief entered his home, and he chanted a limerick:

On this drizzle-heavy night, the gentleman hiding on the beams has entered my home.

With thousands of volumes of poems and books in the belly, there is not even half a tael of silver in bed or on the table.

Look out the yellow-tailed dog, look out the green flowerpots over the wall.

When you leave, let me give you a coat in the middle of the night.

Pack your ambitions, and become a man.

《赠小偷》

郑板桥性格直率，吏治清明，以至于家徒四壁，半点值钱的东西也没有。
一天夜里，有小偷摸进家门，便吟了一首打油诗:

细雨蒙蒙夜沉沉，梁上君子进我门。
腹内诗书存千卷，床头金银无半文。
出户休惊黄尾犬，越墙莫碍绿花盆。
夜深费我披衣送，收拾雄心重作人。

#authenticity#integrity # #history#ancientwisdom#chineseculture#love#kindness#unity

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/helenqiuhong_authenticity-integrity-history-activity-6828355593477115904-XNMO

稳: Stand Steady like a Mountain

In different languages over the globe, there are various ways to describe the reactions of human beings in the face of difficulties and extreme trials. In Chinese, we often use 稳如泰山 to describe the cool-headed calmness and steadfastness of a person in the face of troubles and challenges, just like the majestic Mount Tai (Tai Shan), standing high into the sky.

The key character in this idiom is 稳-calm, steady, still, firm, proper. When we close our eyes to draw an image of this character in our head, a big mountain standing out of the ground and oceans would best describe its stillness and calmness. But, if we pay a closer look at this character, we will find, half of this 稳 is a simple character 急, which means fast, urgent, rapid, and also with an extended meaning of worry.

If we say history is a mirror in reflecting the reality, then this character 稳 is a good reflection of the scientific and philosophical nature of Chinese character culture and history.

Last week, the flood in Henan Zhengzhou provided us the best demonstrations of what 稳 could mean in our reality.

There are tons of photos and videos online spreading the horrible flood and how people react to this disaster: The equivalent of a year’s worth of rain fell in just 3 days in Zhengzhou, with 1/3 of them within one hour.

It would be a common-sense that we worry about the damage such kind of natural disasters brings and we worry about people in the center of it. But what brought down my heartbeat rate were stories that described this 稳. Among countless stories and silent heroes, here are two small ones:

The first is shown in the left-up corner photo: a student stood in the flood, like a peg hammered into the ground, holding a bicycle, next to an underground drain to let the water flow away, but not to let passing vehicles fall into the underground drain.

Another one is captured in the right-down corner photo: Young people who got off work were trapped in the subway by the flood, and everyone stood in the carriage in an orderly and calm manner.

Did their hearts beat faster, more rapid, with a sense of urgency? Or, with the worries of their safeties? It was not a rehearsal of a play or a game, but it was their lives that were in danger.

But, although our hearts beat faster and more rapid for them with our worries, we feel so calm when we realize that our new generation and young people can stand steady like a mountain in crisis and disasters.

As, they are the strongest force for our better future.

#emotionalintelligence#ancientwisdom#love#kindness#stillness#steady#chineseculture#unity#climatecrisis#heart

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/helenqiuhong_emotionalintelligence-ancientwisdom-love-activity-6826523229033787392-vYp4

值: Searching for “Value”

I read a small article talking about value and it motivated me to do some research on the Chinese character “值”, which means value, worth and wealth in English.

To find some photos I can use for this post, I entered “value” into some free image download websites. Guess what I get? 80% to 90% images returned are of coins, cash, bitcoins, crowns, climbing high, wallets, money tree…

When people upload images for others to free download, they are suggested to choose some keywords to categorize the image, and then image finders can search through the search engine on keywords to find the images.

What a reality! The massive cultural value orientation is based on money!

But, what is very contrasting is that our ancestors profoundly put human-人 and straight, upright, just-直 together to make the character 值-value, worth. In their eyes, human value had nothing to do with human money, position, and power, instead, being able to stand straight, with upright #humanity and #justice makes up a human’s true value. It is valued more on a human’s basic character and innate drive and capability.

In this huge gap between reality and this “phenomenon”, I could not help to ask: to be a straight, upright, and just person, what on earth did it cost at our ancestors’ time? What on earth does it cost at our time? Why they, who lived over the old time, had this kind of social measurement standard as “value”?

But why do we take for granted money, position, and power as “value” now?

When our children are surfing the internet to learn “value”, what lessons they are given? They learn from what we do.

#ancientwisdom#chineseculture#emotionalintelligence#authenticity#love#peace#unity

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/helenqiuhong_humanity-justice-ancientwisdom-activity-6823984627397468160-4TwA

The Empty Basket

There were a grandpa and his grandson who woke up early to study every morning.

One day, the grandson asked: “Grandpa, I read like you every day, but I don’t understand it, and I forget everything when I close the book. Is it useful to read this way?”

Grandpa didn’t say a word. He turned around and took a bamboo basket that usually holds black coal and handed it to his grandson: “Go and bring me a basket of water.”

The boy tried many times, but every time the water leaked before he ran home.

Seeing the exhausted grandson, grandpa smiled and pointed to the bamboo basket. Only then did the grandson realize that the bamboo basket was different from before, that it has become clean from the inside out.

Reading more, even if you don’t understand or remember, will change you subtly, in your appearance or in your heart.

As the old saying goes, there is no useless work in the world, nor is it empty to draw water from a bamboo basket.

#ancientwisdom#authenticity#chineseculture#stillness#timeholdseverything#love#peace#unity

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/helenqiuhong_ancientwisdom-authenticity-chineseculture-activity-6822564955074781185-8z9c

本: The Hidden Root

As one of the most fundamental characters, 木-wood/tree, used to be questioned by a younger me that why during its simplification, the center of this word is completely moved to the lower part. As we may all know that the underground roots of a tree and its branches/leaves above the ground occupy almost the same size of space.

It was through a lifetime bumpy journey that I realized the reason is brilliant that, for everything, its internal root plays the fundamental role for its development and flourish externally.

This also helped me to vividly understand a very similar character 本. With “一” emphasizing the bottom part of a tree, it represents its underground part, the tree root. On top of this tree root meaning, 本 has a wide range of meanings. Here are the major ones:

1. Root; Source; Origin; Foundation
2. Agriculture: as the very basis of human living, agricultural commodity products plays a fundamental role in human daily life.
3. Book: if agriculture means the materialized fundamental root of human society, then the book alternatively plays the fundamental root role, the carrier, for human civilization and intelligence development.

Profoundly, 木 and 本 inspired me to look at another very similar character 不-no, which is in the top 10 most frequently used character lists in our daily life!

Explained in the same way, it pictographically stands for a tree not able to grow out of the ground, with an origin meaning that birds are flying away, leaving the shape of bird tail in the sky only. Were the birds flying away because trees cannot grow up? People’s wisdom was deeply embedded in the simplification of these characters. Extendedly, 不-no has meanings that include:

1) Things get bad from the root so they cannot grow up;
2) Ideas could not be expressed.

When we have a bad idea, some negative thoughts in our hearts, we are inclined to say NO more frequently, to reject, to decline, to refuse, to stop things from happening. We are filled with more negative Yin energy when we get used to saying NO. Instead of saying NO, if we chose a positive way to express the same ideas, we shape into a positive life.

For trees, their roots are hidden underground. For humans, our roots are hidden in our #hearts.

#positivemindset#emotionalintelligence#unity#wisdom#helenqiu#authenticity#love#peace#climatecrisis

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/helenqiuhong_hearts-positivemindset-emotionalintelligence-activity-6821450140977545216-FvVJ