A Few Tales of Happiness

Xuefeng

January 9, 2020

It was a summer day in 1979 when I took advantage of my summer vacation to return from Zhang Jiakou to my hometown. While on a ferry in the Liujiaxia reservoir area, I recognized a familiar middle-aged villager from Dazhai village. I had been a village official in a group of nearby villages for three years and had earned a good reputation in the hearts of the villagers, so the two of us started talking and I asked him about how his village had come along since I left. A few of his words are still fresh in my mind even now; he said, “things are fine now, we have plenty of food to eat, and if we farmers continue to have enough food for the rest of our lives, then it will be a great blessing!”. Happiness is so simple; as long as you have enough to eat, you can be happy.

It was a winter day in 1981 when Ehuang and I rode a train from Jiuquan back to our hometown to visit relatives in Linxia. There was no bullet train back then, so we rode on a slow, traditional train which stopped at every small station between Jiuquan and Lanzhou; it seemed to have stopped more than fifty times! As the Spring Festival was approaching, the train would be very crowded, and since it had come from Xinjiang, it was already very crowded when we boarded it; even the aisles were full. When we got on the train, it was almost impossible for us to move forward, so we just stood still for twenty long hours! I clearly remember how I just wanted to lie down; even gravel would have felt good. Happiness is quite simple; you will feel happy if you can lie down and sleep on a bed every night, even a hard one.

It was an autumn day in 1997 and I was living at No. 10 Mount Pleasant Forest Road, Harare, Zimbabwe. At that time, I had registered a company called “Golden Crown Marketing, Pte Ltd”. I had opened two stores fifty kilometers from my home, had travelled between the stores and my residence every day, and was constantly busy from dawn to dusk. I remember telling Ehuang that people are very happy when they have something to do with their lives, no matter how tired and exhausted it makes them. Therefore, happiness is actually very simple; you will be happy as long as you have something to keep you busy.

It was a summer day in 2011 when I was standing on the second floor of the first branch of Lifechanyuan in Yunnan province, talking and laughing with my celestial brothers and sisters in the courtyard; a sense of happiness arose spontaneously as I understood that people are happy when there are many others accompanying them through their life’s journeys. Happiness is so simple; you feel happy when others are with you.

It was the winter of 2017 when Ehuang, Foyi, and I were living in the Pacific Island country of Vanuatu. Our hut was only ten meters from the sea and even though it was ventilated on all sides, it was very hot and many mosquitoes lingered on all sides; so hot that I could not bear to cover myself with even a sheet and I was being bitten constantly and mosquitoes would wake me up all night long. Small mice sometimes fell from the roof of the straw shed, but I thought at that time that if one could live in a house that would protect them from wind and rain and could sleep with a quilt at night without being bitten by mosquitoes, that would be a happy life. So, it is not difficult to be happy; as long as you have a room and can sleep under a quilt at night for protection, then you will be happy.

An old legend tells of a group of unusual people who all once shared a miraculous power from birth. To contend for survival resources, these unusual people plunged common people into abysses of misery. Eventually, Empress Nuwa drove them into the Nether world; the worst thing about that place was its lack of water: no rivers, no springs, no lakes, and very little rainfall. Those unusual people had to endure thirst for thousands of years. At that time, the greatest hope of the king and his subjects in the Nether world was to get water and to be able to drink big mouthfuls of it. It is wonderful to have plenty of drinking water; therefore, happiness is to have enough water to drink.

To sum it up, happiness means having water to drink, food to eat, a room in which to live, a bed on which to sleep, being under a quilt at night, having something to do, and being accompanied by a group of wonderful people.

Today is the first day of winter, and as I look up from my top floor, I see ice and snow everywhere. The sky and the earth have become completely white and (Lake) Lac la Hache is already frozen. Except for some slight noise from vehicles passing occasionally on the Cariboo Highway, Rt. 97, no sound can be heard. This is the third winter I have spent in Canada with last year’s lowest temperature dipping to -29°c (-20°f) and the year before reaching -30°c (-22°f). The British Columbia weather forecast shows that this Sunday (January 12, 2020), our highest temperature will be -26°c (-15°f) and our lowest temperature will be -35°c (-31°f), but I am very happy because I always have water to drink, food to eat, a room to live in with a bed to sleep on, a quilt to sleep under every night, something to stay busy with every day, and although I cannot be with my brothers and sisters physically, we accompany each other mentally and spiritually in the virtual world of cyberspace.

I am the happiest person in the world. Have you found your happiness?