Along the River Read Online Free Page A

and write a verse or story to describe them. Since Gege prefers to draw, while I like to write, his book is full of images, whereas mine is full of words.
    DR. ALLEN : So you like to write… but you also like looking at paintings, don’t you, Mei Lan? Tell me about the painting of Along the River at Qing Ming . Why is that painting so special?
    CC/MEI LAN (becoming agitated): No, no! Don’t ask me about the painting. It’s our secret. Only Ah Zhao knows about the painting… and Gege… Gege, please don’t say anything. You promised not to tell anyone! They’ll stop us. I need to go.… I need to run, but I can’t.… The market is so crowded I can’t get away. Where’s David? I need to get back to Grandma Wu.
    DR. ALLEN : Calm down, CC. We won’t remember anything you don’t want to. Just relax and let your mind go blank again. I want you to stop remembering for a while.…
     
     
    The voices on the recorder stopped, but the machine kept whirring while Richard Allen sat lost in thought. Finally, he fed some paper into the typewriter on his desk and began to type.
     
Case History of CC by Dr. Richard Allen, MD.
CC (Chinese name: Ye Xianis a twelve-year-old Chinese girl who suffered severe head injury after a fall from a height of thirty feet. After regaining consciousness, she developed symptoms of headaches, insomnia and anxiety as well as feelings of déjà vu and amnesia. She had difficulty recalling her name, family history and recent events, but identified strongly with a famous painting of the Northern Song Dynasty titled Along the River at Qing Ming . In an attempt to relieve CC’s neurological symptoms, I began to administer hypnotherapy treatments. During her first hour under hypnosis, CC claimed to be a young girl named Zhang Mei Lan, living during the Song Dynasty.

I recorded and transcribed CC’s words under hypnosis, and will continue to do so. At the conclusion of her treatments, I will allow CC to hear Zhang Mei Lan’s story in the hope that it will give her insight into her condition, rid her of her headaches and enable her to make a total and complete recovery.
     
A Real Awakening
     
    A fter this first hypnotherapy session, CC slept like a baby right through the night. Even better, the next day she was free from headaches for the first time since awakening from her coma.
    Grandma Wu began to hope that all might be well. “Perhaps now she might start to recover and be her old self again,” she said to Dr. Allen.
    “It’s certainly a good beginning,” Dr. Allen said. “But I think you should listen to this, Madame Wu.” And he played her the recording of CC talking as Mei Lan.
    Grandma Wu sat and listened in silence. “I don’t understand. Has the fall damaged her brain in some way? Does she really think she is this girl Mei Lan? How does she know so much about the customs of the time?”
    Dr. Allen shrugged his shoulders. “We understand so little about the workings of the mind. CC may have damaged a part of her brain called the temporal lobe during her fall. She could also be imagining all this, remembering things she has read or heard in the past.”
    Grandma Wu thought for a while. “Of course, it’s also possible that CC is genuinely recalling events from a previous life. The fall might somehow have caused her to experience a real awakening and remember a past life in a way that most people cannot.”
    Dr. Allen smiled. “You know that reincarnation is not believed by most Westerners.”
    Grandma Wu nodded. “Just because people don’t believe in something doesn’t mean it isn’t true.”
    Dr. Allen glanced at his notes. “I think we need to find the cause of CC’s obsession with that Song Dynasty painting and what she—or at least Mei Lan—is running away from. I can’t help feeling that the answers to her illness lie within that particular painting. I would like, with your permission, Madame Wu, to keep CC here and continue treating her with hypnotherapy until she