When I was young, I was very fond of Chinese martial arts, even extremely fond of them. I imagined that one day I would become a knight, protecting good people, getting rid of all crimes, and always helping the weak. I would stand firm and clear-cut, safeguarding compassion and upholding justice for the benefit of the people. With this dream I gathered childhood partners to an open field to practice martial arts on the hillside, stretching and teaching exercises to juniors to support a generation of such heroes.

  At that time each family had five to six children, some even up to nine children. Life was very difficult. Parents couldn’t afford to fulfill children’s dreams to learn martial arts. Everyone was obliged to give gifts to a teacher when training Qigong. My family was poor. In order to achieve my dream I had to secretly watch people practicing martial arts. I followed them and tried to remain unseen. If they would have noticed me, they wouldn’t have allowed me to see them practicing. Afterwards I went home and tried to figure out the practice on my own.

  I have four sisters and brothers. We didn’t have money to spend. We helped our helped parents to buy vegetables, we saved every letfover penny to buy a martial arts book. One book cost 0.15-0.25 ¥ (yuan) at that time. I read and exercised by myself. I enjoyed the the challenge and hardship of the practice.

  In my youth I had a difficulty to learn new information, my brain worked slowly. While studying or doing martial arts, my classmates learned quickly but it took me much longer to understand the basic ideas and concepts. Still my self-esteem was so strong. I didn’t want people to say I am stupid, so I put much effort to practicing silently on my own. No matter what the situation was I didn’t eat or sleep before I was able understand. That’s how I developed the habit of self-study from an early age.

  I still remember these experiences as if they had happened yesterday. I remember how the teacher told me, “the early birds cathces the worm”. So I always studied and prepared in advance, formed my own questions of the topic and took studying very seriously. During class I would listen to the teacher. I tried to see if I had understood correctly by comparing my thoughts to what teacher was teaching. That is how I started to understand the ideas. After the classes I always reviewed what I had learned. Through the hardships myself discipline got stronger. I can still recall those teachings even after many many years.

  My hometown is in a northern city in China. The Northeast has three provinces: the Heilongjiang, Jilin and Liaoning. My hometown Benxi is in Liaoning Province. In the winter temperatures can be -30 – -35 C° degrees below zero or even -40 C°. We lived in a small fire heated house, six people crammed into a small 14 square house, lying next to each other.

  It was a makeshift house after the flood of 1960. No roof tiles, only felt paper, interior ceiling was made from corn poles and old newspapers. Outside the temperature was below -30 C°. The indoor ceiling was frosted because the room was so cold. We went to sleep with our coats on, covered our heads with the blanket and then waited for the body become warm. After the bed had become warm we slowly took off our trousers and coats.

  Once I wore a thick coat and got into bed with my head covered. After a while I had the feeling that there was a small bright light close to my eyes. Gradually it became larger and then disappeared. Then it repeated again and finally took the shape of a half moon. Slowly it grew into full moon. Then I saw a naked person, two naked people and then it became three and four people. Then it gradually became a thousand of naked people. But I couldn’t tell if they were men or women.

  “Tao is one. Then one becomes two, two becomes three and three becomes all things. ”

  Then slowly I saw the roof of house above my head transforming into a large hole. Through the hole I saw stars shining and clouds floating. I felt strange, but good. How was it possible? I was lying in bed, covered with a thick blanket and I could still see things outside of the roof. And I was fully awake! When our eyes are open, we can see physical objects, but when they are closed they disappear from our sight. How I was able to see all these things? I didn’t know and it made me very confused. I told my experience to my family. They thought I had neuropathy or that I was just dreaming while sleeping. But I kept my mind: I had only been in bed for a few minutes. How could it be a dream while I was fully awake! Clearly I really saw numerous naked people, bright lights, shining stars and clouds floating in the sky. . . why didn’t anyone trust me? Why no one understood me? Chinese Taoist scripts explain this phenomenon: Tao is one, then one becomes two, two becomes three, three becomes all things.

  My childhood dream was to become a martial arts teacher and to be able to see a large aircraft flying from near. I also dreamed of standing beside an airplane and even going inside it. If just one day I could be able to sit inside an airplane, that would make me really happy!

  I have heard the elders say: heaven‘s year is one day on earth. There are celestial beings above, beings underground and we live in the middle. The stars and the sun are bigger than the Earth. I always thought I was able to see fantasy earth from moon. I had another dream when I was young. I dreamed that when singing about mountains, mountains would appear in front of your eyes. When I would sing about the sea, the sea would appear and when singing about flowers and birds, they would appear in front of your eyes as well. That was a good dream as a child. Now it is true as well. Now my dream exists in physical form on a TV screen in a karaoke box.

  Now I am also a teacher of martial arts. My teenage dreams have come true.

  One scientist once said: How could we make new inventions and creations without dreams? Inventions and creations all come from dreams.