Process Paper

Some people you meet every day, but you might not feel familiar with them. Some people are separated from you by a century, but you feel that they are familiar stranger. When I was a little boy, I always tried to imitate how Dr. Main and a little patient bowed to each other in front of the statue which standing in the Second Affiliated Hospital Zhejiang University(SAHZU). I would do this a lot when I passed by. When I was in sixth grade, I climbed the Gemstone Mountain, one of the most beautiful mountains in Hangzhou, I found relics of leprosy hospital, which used to be the earliest leprosy hospital in East China. I become more curious about Dr. Main and started to search for some information about him. Since I came to America last year, I seem to understand better how he felt when he left his hometown and pursued his dream. So when I know the information about this competition, I decided to do my research on this familiar stranger, Dr. Main. When I started working on it, I found that there wasn’t much information about him. At first, I searched for information on the internet. Then I found the Hospital history records: from Guangji hospital to the SAHZU, a report from Xunlei Xu, an article from Jin Chai. At the end, fortunately, I found three English original books describing him. These materials give me more details. The more I read about these the more my heart was being touched. I made a lot of mistakes when I was doing this research, after all, it was my first time doing this kind of work. For example, I don’t know that when looking up information, I should immediately extract valuable information and organize it into a table. So when I was writing the essay, it took me a long time to find all the things that I already found yet, wasting a lot of time and energy. Maybe next time I will do it in a more efficient way. In 1881, as a frontier of medical concepts and technologies, David Duncan Main came to China, which was transitioning from closed to open. He would inevitably face various conflicts in politics, culture, science, and religion. The Boxer Rebellion, the Revolution of 1911 and the civil war of 1924, the anti-British boycott of 1925 broke out one after another. Under such pressure, Dr. Main still stuck to his motto “keep smiling” and devoted all his enthusiasm to his career until his retirement at the age of 70 in 1926. If it is not for great love, it is impossible to persist in China for more than 40 years and made great achievements. Today his spirit, what he wants to pass on is still influencing future generations. And now that he is gone, he has left the story of his life and work to perpetuate his appeal.