Confessions of a Cat-holic (28)

So this was my college application essay.

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Cutting through the plastic bag, I saw clumps of worms writhing and ants and flies rushing their way to the light. Removing the soil surrounding the "body", I was not surprised to find that part of it had already turned rotten with fluid coming out of it. This "mushroom body" was what I investigated for my Extended Essay. The odor of nature reminded me of the scents of Chinese herbs; suddenly, memories of days I spent with Chan "Shifu" (a Chinese herbal doctor) flashed before my eyes.

It has been four years since Shifu emigrated to Canada. When he lived in Hong Kong, often, rather than going home or watching television series, I insisted my grandmother to take me to his clinic and spent hours peering at the interesting creatures such as bottles of herbs and insects in this little "wonderland". There were hawthorn fruits, beetles, seahorses, lizards and other bizarre life forms, all intriguing and exciting.

Why were all these part of our medication? What purpose would they fulfill? I could not explain it in terms of the theories I learned in school, nor could most of the Chinese herbal doctors and western scientists. Sometimes, I did feel upset for the animals, which were killed because of the high medical values of their internal organs, and remained skeptical about this "natural" therapy. However, I saw a man, who suffered so much from backache that he could merely stumble with a stick, run as fast as an 8-year-old kid after being acupunctured. Every glance at Shifu's clinic was truly a puzzle, which involved a complex Chinese traditional theory of biological system with knowns and unknowns. I hope I could someday shed light on this.

Shifu's clinic was the first arena of my intellectual upbrining. From then on, my curiosity has always found something new, undiscovered and fascinating.

I wondered if I could add Wasabi to my toothpaste to kill bacteria when I was brushing my teeth. I was thinking if there was a washing machine that could wash merely with water when I forgot to bring my powder for laundry. I pondered the structure of my shoe when my feet ached so much from playing basketball. This curiosity leads me through life, from mushrooms to hybrid cards, from E. coli electrical cell to "combustible ice of methan hydrates". Earthworms or decomposers, mushrooms or saprophytes, placenta or reproduction---since then my world was always full of inspiring and enlightening analogies.

When I was inducted as the youngest member of the Hong Kong Inventor Association after being awarded a Gold Medal for my research on "Combustible Ice", I was led to stare, amazed at other inventors' and professors' assiduous efforts in biological advances. Actively engaged in their functions such as the Hong Kong Green Invention Fair, I was invited to be the translator and emcee of the lectures, meeting scientists from all over the world, including Japan, China, and Hungary. But the first time when my curiosity was truly sparkled was among those glistening, exotic creatures in Shifu's wonderland.

Chinese medicine seems bizarre to a great deal of people. But it is the divergence of Chinese and Western philosophies of nature that pulls me towards the field of biological sciences. Brought up in a typical Chiness family, I find it fascinating to sprinkle blended herds on my wounds and drink eclectic soups of insects while I am reading the "Selfish Gene".

I am now carrying on with my research, not at Shifu's clinic, but at the equipped laboratories of my high school, and this summer at a local university biotechnology centre. But, I still like, from time to time, to take a grateful glance into any herbal shop: the evidence and essence of Chinese discovery and ingenuity.

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Not sure if you liked it or not, this essay alone earned me an entry to Brown University with a scholarship that was more than I asked for. I had a handwritten error, left unchecked deliberately just for Brown, if you noticed. But I didn't end up at Brown University. I went to Columbia University instead. College admissions sometimes resembled a shuffle at the wheel of fortune, almost like a spider web to catch and paralyze its preys.