Great things about celebrities at home and abroad

Shi Tiesheng (January 4, 1951 - December 31, 2010), originally from Zhuo County, Hebei Province, was born in Beijing in 1951, graduated from the High School Affiliated to Tsinghua University in 1967, and went to Yan'an in 1969. He returned to Beijing in 1972 due to paralysis of both legs. Later, he developed kidney disease and uremia, and needed dialysis to sustain his life.

The self-proclaimed "profession is sick, amateur is writing". Shi Tiesheng's essay "Me and the Altar of Earth" has inspired countless people. In 2002, he won the Outstanding Achievement Award of the Year at the Chinese Literary Media Awards.

He was a member of the National Committee of the Chinese Writers Association, the vice chairman of the Beijing Writers Association, and a member of the Evaluation Committee of the China Disabled Persons' Association. He died at 3:46 a.m. on December 31, 2010 due to a sudden cerebral hemorrhage.

Stetson is the kind of writer who can often surprise us. Maybe it's because of his special physical condition that others can't get it.

Shi Tiesheng's perceptual ability. Stetson's striking rhetoric is not as fierce and generous, but always writes plain words that are calm and even very low-key, and then surprise you. It's a bit like someone announcing the news in a voice that is close to whispering about everyone's lives, and it doesn't go unnoticed because of its low volume.

For example, in "Me and the Altar of Earth", he said to us: "Death is something that needs not be done in a hurry, a thing that will not be missed no matter how much it is delayed, and a festival that will inevitably come." Stetson's suffering is obvious, not only because he has a disabled body, but also because he has a brilliant brain.

For so many years, he meditated year after year in his wheelchair, spent his desperate and manic youth, and matured the deep thoughts of his middle age. Thinking is not an easy thing to do, and all thoughts must be melancholy, let alone a person like Shi Tiesheng, who has not been able to pause for a moment to meditate on since the first day when he learned that he would never be able to stand up again. At this time, we forget that in the activities of human life, only the moment of contemplation is the sharpest, richest, and most powerful moment.

This is something that each of us can experience, but because of the integrity of the body, because of the dexterity of action, because of the entanglement of mundane affairs, and because of the temptation of desire, the opportunity for contemplation is becoming more and more rare for us. Stetson was not, he had a chance to make himself strong, even though he was forced to pay a high price for it. Only when it is strong can it be so plain to talk about death, neither exaggerating its yearning nor avoiding its arrival, just as it is as common as a farmer who cares about housework, arranging the plough to be planted and heralding the autumn harvest.