ESSAY · 2026-05-07 · 10 min read

You Cannot Be Born Here, You Can Only Die Here — Reading a Small Story in The Times

Rendered into English from a Chinese lecture transcript; this old man did not lecture in English.

Friends. Someone showed me a small piece in The New York Times today. The piece said that in rural America, the maternity wards are closing one by one. If a country woman wants to have her baby, she has to drive two or three hours into the city. But when she dies — she still dies in the country.

This old man read the headline and was stopped for a moment. "You can't be born here. You can only die."

Strange, isn't it? Human beings have been at this for several thousand years. Medicine has reached the level it has reached today. And out of all that progress comes this peculiar thing — a place where you may only die, not be born.

Friends, sit with that for a moment. There is something underneath it.

The Chinese have an old phrase: luòyè guī gēn — "the falling leaf returns to its root." All of you know how to say it. But the character 根 (root) — do you know what it actually says?

It is 木 (tree) plus 艮 (gèn). And 艮 in the Yijing means "to stop" — gèn, zhǐ yě (《說卦》). A tree has roots, and so it can stand, and so it can come to rest. A person without roots is like duckweed — one breath of wind and they are gone.

Laozi puts this most clearly in chapter 16 of the Daodejing: "All the ten thousand things, in their teeming, each return to their root. Returning to the root is called stillness; this is called returning to the mandate of life." (夫物芸芸，各復歸其根。歸根曰靜，是謂復命。)

Do not read these lines as philosophy, friends. Read them as an actual matter. A person spends a life rushing — schooling, working, marrying, raising children, making money, making a name — and at the end of all of it, there is this guī gēn, this returning to the root. Returning to where? Laozi does not name a geographic place. He says stillness — the place where this life of yours can finally come to rest.

But this old man has to tell you another thing. The geographic root is real too. Do not use the language of the heart-mind to hide from the matter of the body.

I was born in 1918 in Yueqing, Zhejiang. In the thirty-first year of my life — 1949 — I took a boat to Taiwan, and for several decades I did not go back. The graves of my ancestors, the streets of my childhood, the kitchen stove of my mother and father — all severed. Later I went to America, to Hong Kong, and only in 2004 — when I was already eighty-six — did my feet touch the soil of the mainland again.

Look, friends — I am one of those who could not return to the root. I know this matter better than most. The pain of a body that cannot get back to a particular place is real pain. You do not paper it over with "the four seas are home" or "wherever the heart is at peace, that is the place of return."

There is a Tang poem by He Zhizhang you all know: "Young, I left home; old, I return. My accent unchanged, my temple-hair white. The children meet me and do not know me — they laugh and ask, 'Sir, from where do you come?'" (《回鄉偶書》) It is a marvelous poem. But notice this — at least he got back. The American country children in this article — they were born in the city two hours away. From their first breath, they are severed from that countryside. There is not even an "accent unchanged" left to them.

So what do we do? Is the world finished, then?

Don't rush, friends. Look at one more passage. Zhuangzi, in the Knowledge Wandered North chapter: "Life is the kin of death; death is the beginning of life — who can know their thread!" (生也死之徒，死也生之始，孰知其紀)

Zhuangzi is saying: life and death are two ends of one thing, not two separate things. Modern people hand "birth" over to a big hospital in the city, and leave "death" in a country bedroom. On the surface this looks like a problem of medical geography. Underneath, it is the treating of birth and death as two unrelated matters.

The Chinese have never seen it that way. Zengzi in Analects 1.9 says: "When the end is treated with care and the distant ancestors are kept in mind, the virtue of the people returns to its thickness." (慎終追遠，民德歸厚矣) Why? Because a person who knows where he came from and how he is going — that person's living, in between, becomes solid.

This thing now — children born in city delivery rooms two hours away; old people dying in country beds with no midwife, no shared soil between the coming and the going — from where is the de, the virtue, of such a people supposed to gather its thickness?

But this old man is not pessimistic.

The Buddhists speak of zhōngyīn, the intermediate state. At the moment of dying, where that last single thought rests is more important than where the body lies. A person can die in the most modern ICU, in the loudest hospital — if that one thought is clear and at rest, he has returned to the root. A person can die in the very bed of his childhood — if that one thought is panicked or full of resentment, he has not returned.

So friends — the character 根, in the end, sits on the ground of one's own heart-mind, not on the ground of geography.

But — notice this but — the root of the heart-mind has to be nourished by the root of the ground. A child who has never seen the house he was born in, never tasted the food of his home village, never heard the local speech — from where is the root of his heart-mind supposed to grow?

This is the deepest knot of modern people. The ancients said luòyè guī gēn — but the premise was that this leaf grew from that tree. Today's leaf is shipped in from a nursery. To which root is it supposed to return?

Don't wait, friends, for this old man to give you an answer. I have no answer.

I can only say: underneath this small piece of news is a question deeper than medical policy, deeper than rural economics, deeper than population drift. It is the character 根 — the character the Chinese have been saying for two thousand years — and today, all over the world, not only in country America, this character has come loose.

And you? Where is your root? Is the house where you were born still standing? Does the stove of your father and mother still burn? Does your child know what his grandfather's name was?

This matter — I can take it no further. I leave it for you to cān, to sit on yourselves.

不能生於斯，只能死於斯——讀紐時這則小文章

諸位先生。今天有人拿了一則紐約時報的小文章來給我看——說美國鄉下的醫院，產房一間一間關掉了。鄉下的婦人要生孩子，得開兩三個鐘頭的車到城裡去生。可是要死呢——還是死在鄉下。

我這個老頭子看了這個標題，先愣了一下——「You can't be born here. You can only die.」——你不能生在這裡，你只能死在這裡。

奇怪不奇怪？人類搞了幾千年，醫學進步到今天這個地步，反而出了這麼一件怪事——有一個地方只能死人，不能生人。

諸位想想看。這個事情底下，藏著東西。

中國人有一句老話，叫做「落葉歸根」。這四個字諸位都會講；可是這個「根」字，你曉不曉得它在說什麼？

「根」這個字，木字邊加一個「艮」。「艮」在《易經》裡是「止」的意思——「艮，止也」（《說卦傳》）。樹有根，所以能立得住、能止得下來。人沒有根，就像浮萍——一陣風吹來就走。

老子《道德經》第十六章講得最清楚：「夫物芸芸，各復歸其根。歸根曰靜，是謂復命。」——天地萬物熱熱鬧鬧的，最後一個一個都要回到那個根上去。回到根，叫做「靜」；這個「靜」，就是「復命」——回到生命本來的樣子。

老子這幾句，諸位不要當哲學讀，要當實實在在的事讀。一個人這一輩子忙來忙去——讀書、做事、結婚、生子、賺錢、出名——最後是要「歸根」的。歸根到哪裡？老子沒有講地理上的哪裡，他講的是「靜」——是那個生命本來的安頓處。

可是我這個老頭子要告訴諸位——地理上的「根」也是真實的，不要拿心地的話去躲開身體的事。

我民國七年（1918）生在浙江樂清。三十一歲那一年——民國 38 年——一艘船到台灣，從此幾十年沒有再回去過。家裡的祖墳、童年走過的路、父母親的灶頭——全部斷掉。後來去了美國、去了香港，最後 2004 年才又踏上大陸的土地——那一年我已經 86 歲了。

諸位看，我自己就是「不能歸根」的人。這個事情我比誰都明白——身體上回不去那一塊地的痛，是真痛，不是用一句「四海為家」「心安即是歸處」就能蓋過去的。

唐朝有一位賀知章，諸位曉得——「少小離家老大回，鄉音無改鬢毛衰。兒童相見不相識，笑問客從何處來。」（《回鄉偶書》）——這個詩寫得多好。可是諸位想想看：他至少還回得去。今天美國鄉下這些孩子，是在兩個鐘頭車程外的城市產房裡生出來的——這個孩子跟那塊鄉下的土地，從一出生就斷掉。連「鄉音無改」都沒有了。

那麼怎麼辦呢？是不是這個世界就完了？

諸位不要急。我們再看一段——莊子《知北遊》裡頭講：「生也死之徒，死也生之始，孰知其紀！」——生是死的同一類，死是生的開始——誰能搞得清這個頭緒？

莊子的意思是：生跟死本來就是一件事的兩端，不是兩件事。現代人把「生」交給城裡的大醫院，把「死」留在鄉下的床上——表面上看是醫療地理的問題，骨子裡是把「生」跟「死」當作兩件不相干的事在處理。

中國人從來不這樣看。《論語·學而》第九章曾子說：「慎終追遠，民德歸厚矣。」——把「終」（死）這件事辦得謹慎、把「遠」（祖先）這件事記在心上——一個民族的德行就會厚起來。為什麼？因為一個人如果曉得自己是怎麼來的、要怎麼去的——他活著的這一段，就會踏實。

現在這個事情——孩子在兩個鐘頭外的城裡產房生出來，老人在鄉下的床上死去，沒有產婆、沒有同一塊土地上的「來」跟「去」——這個民族的「德」要從哪裡厚起來？

可是我這個老頭子也不是悲觀。

佛家講「中陰」——人臨命終的時候，最後那一念在哪裡，比死在哪一個地方更要緊。一個人就算死在最現代的 ICU、最熱鬧的醫院裡，如果那一念是清明的、是安頓的——他就「歸根」了。一個人就算死在自己童年的炕上，如果那一念是慌亂的、是怨恨的——他並沒有歸根。

所以諸位——「根」這個字，到最後，是落在自己心地上的，不是落在地理上的。

可是——注意這個「可是」——心地上的根，要靠地理上的根來養。一個從小沒有看過自己出生的房子、沒有吃過家鄉的菜、沒有聽過鄉音的孩子，他要從哪裡長出心地上的根？

這就是現代人最深的一個結。古人講「葉落歸根」——前提是這片葉子是從那棵樹上長出來的。今天的葉子是從育苗場運來的——它要歸到哪一個根？

諸位不要等我給答案。我這個老頭子沒有答案。

我只能講：這則小新聞底下，是一個比醫療政策、比鄉村經濟、比人口外流——都要深的問題。是中國人講了兩千多年的「根」字，今天在全世界——不只是美國鄉下——都鬆動了。

你呢？你的「根」在哪裡？你出生的那間房子還在不在？你父母親的灶頭還燒不燒火？你的孩子曉不曉得他的祖父叫什麼名字？

這個事情，我講不下去了。留給諸位自己參。

Tagged: Philosophy, Nan Huaijin, Memory

By Shiva Dragon · https://amshiva.com/writing/nan_huaijin-you-cannot-be-born-here-you-can-only-die-here-reading-a-small-story-in-the-times-20260507