The Milky Way

November 30, 2000

The Milky Way is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. I only saw it once, when I was 11 years old. It was sometime after midnight, and I was on top of Dan Ha Mountain in China, waiting to see the sunrise. Seeing the sunrise and the mountain landscapes were the purposes, but the purposes weren't important any more. When I got to the top of the mountain, I was stunned. Without any manmade light source, it was total darkness. Yet the sky was so bright it was dazzling. I was completely surrounded by stars. Those tiny little shinny dots sparkle every millimeter of the sky. I was in the perfect place at the perfect time. It was a cloudless night, the Moon shrewdly hided itself. I could almost reach the stars from the top of the mountain. Across the middle of the sky, the stars gather and blend together, forming an enormous river flowing and glowing through time and space. It was more than just a scene -- the brilliance shined into the bottom of my heart, and made me feel my own existence in this gigantic universe. This experience fundamentally impacted my view of the world, of myself, and of life itself. The Milky Way that I saw, called "Silver River" in Chinese, was only the belt of our own galaxy. It is hard to imagine the power and vastness of the whole universe.