中邪 (II) (Mystery)

I wouldn’t have believed this had I not seen it happen. I’ve seen the dramatic changes Mary went through in a few hours. She’s back to work. She went to the doctor again a week later for a “double check.” The doctor announced that she’s recovered. (It actually doesn’t take a doctor to tell this.) It takes some people a couple of months to recover, according to the doctor. (And he charged her NT$ 600, around US$ 20 for doing the job.)

After she first went to the doctor, Mary told me another incident which might account for her中邪. Prior to her “heart attack,” she spent the weekend at the seaside in southern Taiwan. At dusk as she was standing near the water, she suddenly felt a gust of chill hitting upon her. She was so cold that she put on a jacket though the others were wearing short-sleeves. And usually she’s the type that is afraid of heat.

Then someone took a photo of her standing alone by the water. When they saw the picture, they were so scared that they deleted it immediately. There was a mass of blurry stuff that looked like a mixture of various ambiguous dark colors above her head.

The next Wednesday, she started to have a fever, which was taken as a cold. That Friday night, she got the “attack” and was sent to the hospital. She even went to a temple to pick out a space for her bone ash jar after this experience. (And half-jokingly she designated one of her designer handbags to be mine after she’s gone.)

Looking up the word 邪(xie2) in the dictionary, you’ll get several explanations. Basically it’s used to refer to evil. For example, Adolf Hitler is widely regarded as an evil person. We may use 邪惡(xie2 e4) to describe him. A notion of hurting someone in return for what he has done may be called 邪念(xie2 nian4), a evil notion.

But in traditional Chinese medicine, 邪 is also used to refer to the environmental factors that lead to a disease, such as 寒邪(han2 xie2), the chill, or 風邪(feng xie2) the wind, that causes a cold. Therefore, to cure a patient means to get rid of the邪. As I know, in the Japanese language, the term風邪means a cold.

No matter what the邪is that attacked Mary, I’m glad that she’s recovered. She might get a new perspective to see her life after this near-death experience. As for me, though she keeps calling me her貴人(gui4 ren2) , which means someone that has done you a big favor or even save your life, I think it’s only her fate. Countless things that happened long before I met her have led to what’s happening today. I’m just a tiny chess that has done what I think I should do. Nothing is in my hand.

It’s good, though, to be someone else’s 貴人 at a certain moment of his life, for we certainly need a lot of 貴人in our own life.

(THE END)

邪惡=邪恶

風邪=风邪

貴人=贵人