Eric Tian

Rain has always held a special place in my writing. Partly because Melbourne, the city I have spent the last few years living, constantly rains. But beyond this, I have a deep respect for this elemental force.

Growing up, one of my favourite things to do was to run outside in the rain. I would imagine that each rain drop was a drop of gold and my goal was to catch as many as possible. Each time a drop hit my face, I would laugh and delight at this gift from the heavens. It made me feel at one with nature, the wetness seeping into my soul.

Rain symbolises a number of things. In media, rain often represents unhappiness or melancholy; when someone is ‘awash’ with sadness. But it can also represent rebirth and renewal, the washing away of the past, shown in the ending of The Lion King. In a different context, rain can be symbolic of struggle or disorientation; there are few things more challenging than running through a storm. It is also commonly used to illustrate romance, such as Darcy’s confession in Pride and Prejudice.

At its core, the power of rain lies in the vulnerability it evokes. When caught under the rain, there is no avoiding its touch. Even if you have an umbrella, your feet will get wet. This elemental graffiti exposes one’s self to some degree, amplifying gloominess into despair, or playfulness into ecstasy. There is a stripping away, leaving one more vulnerable than before.

And in vulnerability, stories of human connection and perseverance emerge.

I was at a cafe yesterday when it began to rain. A young boy was jogging past. The shop owner yelled at the boy to come in for shelter; it seemed like they knew each other. The boy spread out his arms and had the biggest grin on his face, running faster and faster past the cafe, across the road into the downpour. I pictured myself at his age, doing the exact same thing.

I almost joined him.

Glennon Doyle writes in her memoir:

“Your job, throughout your entire life, is to disappoint as many people as it takes to avoid disappointing yourself.”

Anyone who has had to choose between the genuine choice and the expected choice can relate to this.

Medicine is sexy. CAR-T cells, stem cell transplants, monoclonal antibodies, CRISPR gene therapy, you name it – there always seems to be a cutting-edge therapy being developed and thousands of patients ready to sign up for clinical trials.

Preventative public health is less sexy. Educating children about nutrition, advocating for transparent food labeling, and implementing alcohol regulations might seem mundane. Yet, these interventions yield results that far surpass even the most advanced medical treatments.

Consider some examples and their ripple effects:

1. Early detection through cancer screening tools dramatically increases survival rates.

2. Limiting fast food accessibility tackles obesity—a major risk factor for numerous non-communicable diseases.

3. Creating public spaces for exercise enhances both physical and mental well-being, reducing overall patient influx.

One of the stories we are taught in medical school is the Upstream Parable. It illustrates the futility of treating a disease when it appears rather than addressing the root cause. This concept is captured in Sir Michael Marmot’s book The Health Gap:

“Why treat people and send them back to the conditions that made them sick?

Indeed, this question strikes at the heart of modern healthcare. While we marvel at medical breakthroughs, perhaps our greatest advancements lie in preventing illness altogether: in looking upstream at the cliffs, rather than the raging waters below.

I was at a London souvenir store last week when I saw an umbrella being sold for £20.

“20 pounds?!” I thought to myself. The most I would ever pay for an umbrella would be £10. Maybe £15, max.

A few days later, I was walking to the hospital when it began to rain. Except this was no ordinary rain: it came violently, all at once, like floodgates opening above your head. Within seconds, the whole street was drenched. I was still 12 minutes from the hospital and dove under the nearest building I could find.

I found myself inside a little electronics store.

“Do you sell umbrellas?” I asked.

“£20,” the shopkeeper replied. I handed over the money without even thinking. It was a cheap, plain umbrella, far worse quality than the one from the souvenir store.

Only later did I realise how fast my value judgment had shifted with context. On a sunny day, buying a £20 umbrella was wasteful. On a rainy day, it was a necessity.

I think the broader lesson is the value of anything—be it an object, a person, an experience, or even knowledge—is deeply tied to circumstance. What seems trivial in one moment might prove invaluable in another. The real tragedy would be to disregard something permanently based on a single, contextual judgment.

In a small riverside town, a bystander noticed a disturbing sight: a person drowning in a fast-moving current. Without hesitation, a group of townspeople plunged into the waters and rescued the drowning swimmer.

As days passed, more people were spotted struggling in the water. The town, unnerved by the findings, organised a team of strong swimmers to act as lifeguards. They constantly patrolled the river and rescued those in danger. They became skilled at saving lives, and the town took pride in their heroic efforts.

However, the flood of people needing rescue kept increasing. The lifeguards were working around the clock, and the town was spending significant resources on rescue equipment and training.

One day, a visitor to the town observed the situation and asked, “Why are so many people falling into the river in the first place?” Curious about the answer, she decided to travel upstream.

There, she discovered a cliff with a beautiful view overlooking the river. Many people would come to admire the scenery, but the path was treacherous, and some would slip and fall into the rapid waters below.

The visitor returned to the town and suggested building a fence along the cliff’s edge. Despite initial skepticism, the town agreed to this experiment.

The result was transformative. With the fence in place, the number of people falling into the river plummeted. The town soon realised that preventing people from falling was far more effective and less resource-intensive than constantly rescuing them from the water. They began to look for other ‘upstream’ solutions to problems they faced.

In the prologue to his short story collection, Mo Yan writes how his childhood governed by famine shaped the stories he wrote (emphasis mine):

“As kids, we had little meat on our bones; we were sticklike figures with big rounded bellies, the skin stretched so taut it was nearly transparent – you could just about see our intestines twist and coil on the other side. Our necks were so long and thin it was a miracle they could support our heavy heads. And what ran through those heads was simplicity itself: all we ever thought about was food and how to get it. We were like a pack of starving dogs, haunting the streets and lanes sniffing the air for something to put inside our bellies…

“Up to this point, three of my novels have been published in America: Red Sorghum, The Garlic Ballads, and The Republic of Wine. In The Garlic Ballads I reveal a critical view of politics and my sympathy for China’s peasants. The Republic of Wine expresses my sorrow over the decline of humanity and my loathing of a corrupt bureaucracy. On the surface, each of these novels appears to be radically different from the others, but but at their core they are very much alike; they all express a yearning for the good life by a lonely child afraid of going hungry.”

As for me, I have published three short stories to date. The Golden Apple is about a midnight duel that is taken over by one person’s obsession. The Magic Cow is about a merchant who sells a cow that promises magic, only for the town to be wholly ruined by it. Finally, Nurture is about a young girl who mistakenly arrives at a wrong boarding house and story of the couple that take her in.

These three stories, amongst my other drafts, all have one thread in common: they are stories of when our emotions get the better of us and result in uncharacteristic decisions.

Upon reflection, this interest arose due to a series of events that occurred in my early teen years. Our neighbour at the time was a strange, unpredictable person who would frequently play loud music and make racist remarks towards my family. At night, when we attended to our garden, he would stand at the fence separating us and stare. If we looked at him, he would make these strange facial expressions to scare us. I later found out he had schizophrenia – my first experience with mental illness.

Next was a series of bad decisions I made after my father passed away. The grief I faced nearly resulted in me being suspended from school. My teacher remarked in front of the class, “This is so uncharacteristic of him.” This was utterly humiliating – my first personal experience of emotions taking over someone.

Finally, related to the passing, was my subsequent experience with video game addiction. It became my coping strategy and was an effective one, but led me down a deep hole that has proven difficult to climb out of. Its hold still echoes in me sometimes. This was my first personal experience of addiction.

These three events are reflected in my first three stories with its themes of addiction, mental illness, and grief. I hadn’t realised it at the time, but the stories that I felt compelled to write were direct reflections of experiences that had shaped me growing up. And I think these experiences also shaped my transition into medicine, as I felt compelled to study diseases and help people suffering, and my more recent interest in Psychiatry.

The threads from our childhood tug at us, conscious or not.

As part of my recent goal to memorise more lyrics and poems, I was listening to Bob Dylan this morning when a stanza from Tangled Up In Blue struck me:

She was married when they first met
Soon to be divorced
He helped her out of a jam,
I guess
But he used a little too much force

They drove that car as far as they could
Abandoned it out West
Split up on a dark sad night
Both agreeing it was best

She turned around to look at him
As he was walkin’ away
She said this can’t be the end
“We’ll meet again someday on the avenue”

Tangled Up In Blue

Look at the action and vivid imagery in these verbs. Each one carries its own unique spin which drives the narrative of the song along. Had they been replaced with something more bland or simple, the essence of the piece would have been lost.

One lesson in writing I have been taught is to use simple language wherever possible. This improves comprehension, is respectful to the reader, and allows the idea to shine through more. But when I read Bob Dylan’s lyrics, I realise that simple language pays a price in elegance and beauty. By choosing “abandoned” instead of “left” or “divorced” instead of “alone”, the reader is able to access a more nuanced view on the piece.

The trick seems to be to find the most precise, vivid, and beautiful word to describe something without confusing the reader.

It is December 1937, and the second Sino-Japanese war is approaching its climax.

Japan, having successfully invaded Shanghai, now looks towards the ancient capital city Nanking (now Nanjing) in hopes that this final conquest will end the war. China are forced to retreat their main forces from the capital, still wounded from their earlier conflict. They leave de facto control of the city to German citizen John Rabe, a businessman for Siemens AG and staunch Nazi, serving as a Deputy Group Leader in the Nazi Party. In December 13 1937, Japanese troops enter Nanjing.

If Nanjing sounds familiar, it is probably from the following horrific events now known as the Nanjing Massacre, or the Rape of Nanjing. In her book The Rape of Nanking, one of the most detailed recounts of this event, author Iris Chang estimates 40,000 to 300,000 citizens were murdered over the next few weeks, with at least 20,000 cases of rape, ranging from children to elderly women, alongside countless examples of forced incest.

As most of the westerners flee from the incoming massacre, 22 foreigners choose to remain: one of them being John Rabe. Throughout all this, John Rabe is granted a small area in Nanjing that is exempt from this brutality – as a German Nazi, the Japanese has agreed to not attack areas without Chinese civilians. Rabe subsequently sets up the Nanking Safety Zone to provide Chinese refugees with food and shelter from the massacre. In a letter to Hitler, Rabe explains that “There is a question of mortality here… I cannot bring myself for now to betray the trust these people have put in me, and it is touching to see how they believe in me.”

Through his efforts in the Safety Zone, historians have estimated Rabe saved approximately 250,000 Chinese civilians from the Nanjing massacre. One notable way Rabe succeeded in these efforts is through using the Nazi flag to construct shelters for the refugees camped outside his house. When the Japanese see the Nazi Swastika, they recognise it as a symbol of foreign security and leave the residence alone.

Florian Gallenberger, director of the documentary John Rabe, notes this paradox and what it can teach us about our potential for good:

“That is such a crazy thing that icon – rightfully the icon – of the murdering of millions of people in a different place, in a different moment, became a symbol of security… That it’s not just black and white but many shades in between, and that these stories with those many shades really help you to understand history…

“The outstanding thing about [Rabe] is that he was actually a quite normal person. He was not this kind of superhero type. In the situation that he got into, suddenly, he became more and more brave, then more and more daring, and more and more ready to risk his life for his values. And I think that’s what really interested me, to tell the journey of a normal, average person who discovers his own greatness. Because that’s a potential that’s probably within all of us.”

One of my favourite things about Melbourne is its unpredictable, wildly fluctuating weather. You might begin crossing a street with clear, sunny skies only to find yourself running for cover from run and hail halfway through. It can be annoying at times, but more often than not it results in a good story.

Such an incident occurred last week. We were crossing as a group of four strangers and rain began to fall, gently at first, then heavily, followed by hail. Within seconds we were soaked and running for cover.

The closest shelter we could find was the entrance to a strip club, one I had walked past many times in the past but never inside. As we huddled together, sharing in each other’s warmth, the bouncer said something in a thick Italian accent which nobody heard: we were all too wet. Eventually, he noticed that a member of our party was shivering, a middle-aged woman in a singlet, so he offered her his thick black jacket. She took it gratefully, though it was immediately apparent that the jacket was too large for her. It nearly went down to her ankles and looked more like a blanket.

At this sight, one person began to chuckle. Then another, then myself, and soon the sound of laughter rang out into the depths of the building. All of this had transpired in less than 30 seconds, and only now were we beginning to see the absurdity of the situation. Outside, the hail was assaulting the roofs of cars like little bullets.

And so the five of us huddled, watching the weather unfold in front of us. All that sustained us were the body warmth and clothes of strangers in an unusual building, laughter ringing through its walls.