This article was first published at JustOneOpinion.com on January 27, 2009. It is presented here in exactly the same text and format for the readers of my own site. – Chi Newman

China is a vast country in Asia, bordering the Pacific Ocean. Many of China’s largest cities are along the east coast, where the land is low and flat, and easy to plant rice in the paddies, rice being the main staple in China. Farther inland, snow capped mountains tower over the landscape. China’s major rivers are the Yangtze and Hwang He, which is also called the Yellow river. They both flow eastward into the sea.

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Chinese people believe that in order to have a balanced life one must have opposites. You need your ups and downs, happiness and sorrow, highs and lows, black and white, male and female, and of course health and sickness, etc.

The symbol for the Yin Yang is a perfect circle, divided by black and white.

In life you have your good and your bad days. If you believe in the Yin Yang, you would know that happiness is the opposite of sadness, and you could not feel one if you did not feel the other. If you really believe in this, then during your down time, you would not drown your sadness by doing things that would harm you, like taking drugs, drinking too much, smoking cigarettes, hurting others. All this is counter productive, it would only make you feel worse. You need to say to yourself, “This is my down and sad period, I must take advantage of this time to read a good book, volunteer, learn something new, help around the house, play a musical instrument, be considerate of others. If you practice this philosophy, you won’t mind your low periods, because you know that only after your low, can you have your high. If you were always high, you would not appreciate it, because you would not know any better. When you are feeling good again you can relish all the things you have accomplished.

The Yin Yang symbol is a perfect circle of black and white. If there were no black there would be no white, if there were no ups, there would be no downs. The circle represents balance; there are no sharp edges for you to fall off. If you follow this philosophy, you will be able to cope even during the worst of times.

Example: I have a friend who phoned to tell me that he had just been told that he had a very serious illness. He was feeling very low and curled up in bed thinking negative thoughts. So I asked him, what was his greatest regret? He answered, “I feel so bad because I have not talked to my father for nearly twelve years.” I told him that I would hang up the phone so that he could call his father immediately. I told him not to be concerned about who was right and who was wrong. Just call up and say, “Let’s get together”.

About an hour later, he called back to tell me that his father would soon be arriving for a visit. My friend’s health is better now and he is grateful that during his low period he had the courage to call his father and make things right.

In Chinese cooking, we also practice the Yin Yang philosophy. In each dish we always think of balance: color, texture, dark and light, soft and crisp, sweet and sour.

Balance in one’s life will help greatly to make a person happy and well adjusted.

After my husband finished his tour in Vietnam, we decided to pass by Kyoto, Japan, to visit EXPO 70. There was a Yin Yang booth, and of course I had to visit it. There were so many interesting things to see and learn, but the one I liked the most was the sculpture of two hands, one black and one white, by a Japanese artist whose name was Yamamoto. They were big enough to sit on. Dick took one of me sitting in one of them. It is my all time favorite photo.

When my husband retired from the Foreign Service and the United Nations, we decided to visit our children, Jeffrey and Leslie, who were attending the University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona. It didn’t take long before we fell in love with the area and its glorious sunsets, majestic mountains, strange looking cacti, but most of all, meeting the friendly people. This is where we wanted to spend our retirement years. An added bonus was having Mexico for our neighbor and a large Hispanic population, allowing us to speak Spanish every day.

After looking at more than thirty houses, we finally settled on a custom built home on Skyline Drive. I loved my new home, especially happy knowing that I could spend as much time as I needed in decorating it exactly the way I wanted – a luxury I had never experienced. For the previous twenty-five years, I knew that no matter how much I loved my house and the country I lived in, that two years later we would be moving to another country, and possibly even to another continent.

When I felt that everything was perfect, I decided to take the car and drive around the neighborhood to get acquainted with the side streets. I was driving down this narrow street, somewhere between Skyline Drive and River Road, listening to Ray Charles singing, “I can’t stop loving you.”

Suddenly, I heard a police siren and when I looked in the rear view mirror I saw a motorcycle policeman motioning for me to pull over.

This very handsome officer, who stood about six feet tall with disarming, pale blue eyes, poked his head in the car window. “Lady, do you know you are driving down a one way street going the wrong way? May I please see your driver’s license?”

I looked up at him with a very surprised look and said, “Wo bu dung Mei Kwo hwa, dwei bu chi” (meaning “I don’t speak American, I am so sorry”). He repeated what he said, and I repeated my answer. He scratched his chin, and with a suspicious look on his face he grinned before saying, “Lady, you can go. Just don’t do it again!”

I waited until he left and then decided to go home before I got into more trouble. That was the only time I’ve ever spoken to a policeman. I did not feel guilty, knowing that I did not commit a serious crime, but if I ever have to talk to a policeman again, I hope he will be as handsome and as kind as the one that first stopped me.