After completing my Chinese language training, I was sent at the age of 20 to the Northwest A&F University in the Yangling District of Xiangyang, a city of some seven million people in Shaanxi province.

I took a deep breath and started the test.

with such weak nerves and spirits, and in the condition I am in at present, ’twould be as much as my life was worth, to deject and contrist myself with so bad and melancholy an account

deeply conversant in the Platonic philosophy