Legacy of a Doctor, Longing of a Soldier

“Honestly, I should really become a soldier instead of becoming a doctor,” my grandaunt (my maternal grandmother’s younger sister) said with a wry smile.

I could feel the sorrow in her voice, the unspoken weight of her words hanging between us. As a doctor from Changsha, Hunan, her life had always been one of responsibility, but in this moment, I could sense a longing for something different.

She was born in Yueyang, Hunan, in 1963, into a family where her father was a campus doctor at Hunan University in Changsha and her mother was a nurse at a regional hospital in Yueyang. Growing up in Yueyang, she was often surrounded by her mother and exposed to the medical cases her mother encountered while treating patients.

“I often spent my spare time in the hospital with my mom, since there weren’t many restrictions back then. A lot of women in my childhood years suffered from depression due to hardships, so they would drink pesticide to commit suicide. Once their family members found out, they would be immediately sent to the hospital, where my mom would stomach-pump them in front of me. Sometimes, due to them not being able to be sent to the hospital in time, they died in front of me,” she recalled, as if these events had just happened in front of her eyes minutes ago.

Every time my grandaunt saw her mom rescuing patients, bringing those patients back to life from the land of death, she would look up to her mom as a heroine. Her mother would also tell my grandaunt stories of her father, even though he died when she was only four. Her mother would tell her that her father was captured by the Red Army while trying to rescue a student during the Cultural Revolution. Due to him working for the university, he was shot to death immediately after the capture, despite him continuously telling them that he was a doctor.

With this story, she treated her father, whom she barely remembered, as a godly figure. Her glorification of the “doctor” job stemmed from this idealized image, a profession symbolizing selflessness, sacrifice, and the ultimate act of saving lives—a legacy she felt compelled to uphold.

After the end of the Cultural Revolution, when she was 13, she went to Changsha to pursue her high school education at the high school for children of Hunan University employees. Her two older sisters had already been in Changsha for many years, having moved there at a very young age. During that time, the constant promotion of joining the army and becoming a soldier to fight for the country in high school led her to idealize a career as a soldier, while nearly forgetting her dream of becoming a doctor. Along with the other students, she dreamt of becoming a formidable soldier. However, a dream is just a dream. Becoming a soldier in the 70s and early 80s required a detailed family background check of the three generations above her. A family with some affluent background or having family members associated with universities would be considered “capitalist,” which would be heavily discouraged from joining the army. As the granddaughter of a landlord and the daughter of a university faculty, she was unable to join and train.

Therefore, she attended the Gaokao. She didn’t perform well, despite her hard work. An old friend and colleague of her father's took her to apply for the Chinese People's Liberation Army Guangzhou Military Region Medical School (now renamed as Southern Medical University), as the school was holding an admission conference in Shaoshan, a city near Changsha. She went to Guangzhou to study medicine, and upon graduation, even though she was unable to fulfill her dream of joining the army as a soldier to fight on the battlefield, she joined the army along with other graduates as an army doctor.

“My health wasn’t really well at that time, and my mom also preferred that I go back to Changsha. Thus, I was asked to join The 163rd Hospital of the Chinese People's Liberation Army in Changsha.”

My grandaunt with the army uniform when she was an army doctor

Becoming an army doctor meant facing an immense workload. Under constant pressure, she had to find an efficient solution for every patient’s condition. While facing frantic and anxious patients, she learned to force down her own temper and react calmly as if the patients were polite. While facing the commanders, she knew that obedience would get the commanders’ favor.

She slowly transformed her rebellious character into a woman with endurance. She knew how to do her job and please the commanders.

She endured everything that we now find hard to endure. However, there was one thing she found unbearable, which led her to quit her job after years in the army.

“The constant night shift was a nightmare. I could not sleep the entire night; instead, I needed to meet patients in the emergency center. I became so tired after each night shift, and doing these regularly for years? Now thinking back, I don’t know how I managed to endure all those years. This was the exact reason why I quit the army job.”

Following her service in the army, she became a doctor at the small clinic of Changsha Mining Research Institute. She stayed there until she retired. The job in the clinic was much more flexible, and she could get quite a lot of rest with this job. She later even became the director of the clinic. She generally worked as a doctor in the pharmacy of the clinic, where people might seek for assistance and recommendations associated with the medical drugs.

“I do feel like my second job fits me more than my army doctor job,” my grandaunt said. I could feel her being a little bit more excited when talking about this job than before.

When asked about her most memorable moment in her job as a doctor, she paused. “I don’t really remember. To be honest, I don’t enjoy being a doctor; I want to become a soldier.”

        My grandaunt in the clinic of Changsha Mining Research Institute

There were choices that we all made which we regretted, whether they were due to our own personal reasons at the time or out of helplessness in that era.

Sometimes, choosing the alternative option might change our lives positively, but they may also be the opposite. We never know what will happen in the parallel universe. 

Looking back, it seemed her entire life had been a series of reflections cast from opposing mirrors. She began by glorifying the selfless profession of her heroic parents—her mother a nurse and her father a doctor— a path that promised selfless grace and noble sacrifice. But when the reality of being a doctor proved grueling and full of unbearable demands, her mind turned to the other idealized dream of her teenage years: the formidable soldier she was never allowed to be. In the end, she lived a life caught between a romanticized reality and a perpetually imagined parallel universe, forever yearning for a path she could never take.

My grandaunt in 2020, on her 57th Birthday