Bi said after she returned to Beijing, she wanted to tell everyone what she had learned in Tibet. So she discovered writing.

"Although every one of my books is different, this is the one thing that doesn't change: the sense of solicitude for other people. Now I run a psychological clinic, and in some ways the impulses that drove me to write are the same ones that brought me here: an interest in the workings of people's souls and a desire to help them," Bi said.

She also tries to encourage young people to cherish life, to have the same sense of purpose that living in Tibet gave her. "I try, both through my work and my writing Appointed Death (Yuyue Siwang) to overcome the Eastern taboos against talking about death, and to help people see it as a natural thing," Bi stated.

 Physician-turned-writer

In 1969 Bi Shumin was sent to Tibet as an army medic in the PLA and stayed there for 11 years. Her writing career began in 1987 with the publication of Death in Kunlun (Kunlun Shang), a fictional novella based on those experiences. She was a doctor for 22 years, now acts as vice-chairman of the Beijing Writers Association, and opened a psychological clinic more than a year ago. She has written all her life.

Bi travels in the fields of medicine and literature, and is a unique person in Chinese literary world. She pays close attention to her writing objects from the perspectives both as a writer and as a doctor. She grasps clearly the essence of life from all aspects, such as physiology, psychology, ethics and morals; she focuses on medical themes and develops a school of her own because of her medical contents and narrative performance.

 Life and Death

Bi was one of the representatives for  "New Experience Writing," a literary school that originated in 1993 in Beijing and claims that the writers' personal experiences should be the foundation for literary writing. "A writer needs some reasons to write a novel. For my own part, my experience two decades ago has fostered a keen interest in human beings. While writing, I always pay special attention to life and death, which is the persistent theme of my novels," said the writer.

And her latest novel Save the Breast is no exception. The novel is about several breast cancer patients, and a psychologist who unites the patients and offers them support. Facing the threat of death, the patients are also experiencing mental crises. Some are discriminated against after the surgical removal of their breasts, some develop split personalities and some lose their zest for life and their belief in true love.

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