Brain Usage and Dedication to Work

Another prominent feature in the experiences of urban centenarian intellectuals is relentless use of the brain and dedication to work. As they plunge themselves heart and soul into their work and pin their hope on a distant goal, they remain calm, composed and optimistic even in the face of adversity.

Feng Gangbai, a centenarian painter of Guangzhou, has loved oil painting all his life. Art has-produced a favourable influence on his character and has occupied his entire being. Feng said, "Painting makes me forget time and hardship and I attribute everything, including my life, to it." He has worked as an artist for over seven decades and experienced many difficulties and frustrations, but he can always remain calm and peaceful, ignoring honours or indignities. It is oil painting that gives him consolation and encouragement, becomes his spiritual pillar, tides him over many difficulties and enables him to live up to the present, brimming with vigour and confidence.

Su Juxian, 102 years old, is a calligrapher and member of the Shanghai Research Institute of Culture and History. He believes that calligraphy, like qigong, improves one's physical and mental health by bringing peace and harmony to the mind. He says, "Healthy living requires both quiet and active exercises. The meaning of active exercises is evident, but quietness is often mistaken to be passive sitting to rest the limbs and the brain. Actually, when one sits down to relax, he is troubled with various thoughts and cannot achieve quietness. True quietness can be found only in mental concentration, such as when one is absorbed in his work or study and forgets hunger or cold. When called, he forgets to respond; when disturbed, he becomes irritated. This can be considered as the state of quietness."

Sun Mofo, a participant of the 1911 Revolution, is now member of the Central Research Institute of Culture and History and Vice-President of the Chinese Society of Calligraphy and Painting of the Elderly. At the age of 104 he painted "Joy of Spring" on impulse when he attended a painting party to herald the arrival of spring in Beijing in 1985. Commenting on the relationship between calligraphy , and good health, he said, "Calligraphy nourishes one s mind, nature, vital energy and life. When a calligrapher is using his brush, he naturally concentrates his mind wholly on his subject and puts away all other thoughts. He is deaf to wind or rain. Doesn't this have the same effect on one's health as qigong?"

These two calligraphers agree on the point that when one is doing wholeheartedly something he really likes to do, he can dispense with all other thoughts and achieve a mental state similar to that of qigong masters in deep meditation. He is therefore rewarded with good health and longevity.

Scientific studies show that man's cerebra begin to atrophy after the age of 40. But if one uses his brain regularly, it will atrophy more slowly, as shown in comparison between elderly people who study diligently and those who seldom use their brain. Using one's brain frequently can prevent senility.
Some urban centenarians also compose and recite poems and play chess. He Yongge, mother of the popular science writer Gao Shiqi, is a centenarian poet. Born in a family of scholars, she has loved writing poems and antithetical couplets since her youth. Inspired by poetw, she is cheerful and open--minded. When she was 100 years old and asked the secret of her longevity, she replied with a line of poetry, "Bullied by frost and snow, the flowering plum is all the more fragrant."

Her answer tells of a life of many frustrations. When her eldest daughter and favourite child died suddenly at the age of 23 she was so grieved she suffered a mental breakdown. Later, consoled by her family and drawing inspiration from poetry and books, she came to take her loss philosophically.

She encountered other tragedies. Eagerly looking forward to eldest son Gao Shiqi's return to China after completing his studies in the United States, her first sight was of him staggering as he walked, his neck stiff and his hands trembling. It turned out that while Gao studied in the United States, he accidentally contracted a virus in an experiment and suffered severe after-effects, all along concealing the circumstance from his mother. The reunion with her son brought her new sorrows.

But misfortunes sometimes continue and, in the winter of 1944 her husband, Gao Zanting, died of illness in Chongqing. But she was not to be. beaten. Poetry consoled and inspired her to live on.
In the "cultural revolution" she suffered criticism and persecution like many other Chinese intellectuals of her generation, but she bore her misfortune with defiance and composure. That explains her artistic achievement and longevity.

Centenarian Xie Xiaxun, vice-chairman of the National Chess Association, has taken delight in playing chess all his life. From the age of six, he learned to play Chinese chess from his father. He won a Chinese chess championship in Shanghai in 1918 and later was hailed as "commander-in-chief of the national chess arena." In 1934 he was invited to visit Southeast Asia where he defeated the British international chess champion, lie has been active in chess circles for over 90 years and written29 books on chess. His daughter, Xie Bingchuan, explains why he has attained longevity, saying, "He recites poems, plays chess and his heart is serene and untroubled." He has inherited a precise secret of longevity, "quietness and serenety," from ancient Chinese centenarians.