Death is the loneliest experience for human beings. She believes film narrative can help young people break reasonable, systematic and repetitive learning pattern and meet the real world spiritually.
Film Wit reveals the eight-month treatment of a cancer patient. The emancipated patient reminds Yuan Yufei of her grandmother who died six months ago. She went out of the classroom in advance and had a good cry.
For Bi Weile, she started to understand her father's proposal. He hoped the daughter could let him pass away early if he lost the ability of taking care of himself.
When a film clip comes to an end, Lu does not turn lights on or allow students to discuss, but asks students to "stay with their own". "You can cry. You can feel ashamed... These are very good observation on life," she tells her students.
Depending on students reactions, she may keep asking questions like, "What does your tears mean?", "Why are you crying?"
Lu changes her testament every birthday since her 60th birthday. She takes anxiety of death as a tool. "When I realize that people must face death, I start to consider how can I live better," she said.
This "tool" also works for her students. A student picked up paintbrush again, another started to learn drums. And there is a student who said that he pulled himself together to lead a new life.
Contrary to the mounting anxiety of death, the fear of death decreases.
After being taken to Wan'an cemetery by Lu as part of the course lesson, Bi Weile has got interested in exploring cemeteries. Bi said that facing tombs is like "having a conversation with a life". "They are not ghosts, but ancestors, who tell us stories of life," she said.
"Everyone who keeps a watchful eye on death, including myself, must has a reason of their own," Lu writes in her book "Life and Death Studies in Films", a title that is same as her course.
In the flyleaf of her book, she writes "Dedication, for dad". The editor suggested change "dad" to "father". "No," said Lu, laughing silently. "I like to go back to be a little girl. I want to keep a relationship between a little girl and a dad."
"I think it is a way to deal with my sadness," said Lu.
Lu's father died in summer of 1987. She misses him a lot. She still keeps her father's diary and writes to him like she is having a conversation with him. She also visits places her father once visited.
When Lu opened the course in 2012, she was 58 years old, an age close to that when her father died. She was wondering whether she would also die when she turned 60. So she resigned from an NGO founded by her, and spent more time to accompany her mother who suffered from dementia.
Lecturing the course is a way she fights against the fear of death. Every round of the course makes her feel more assured. Four years haves passed, her fear of death has eased.
On January 25th, she underwent an operation. This was the fifth operation she underwent since a lump was found in her breast when she was 32.
Lu joked that God may want her to know deeper about life and death, so He let her become a breast cancer patient.
Lying nakedly in a hospital bed, Lu waited to undergo the operation alone and wrote a poem.
I lie on a bed outside the operation room,
only see the ceiling,
but naughty sight,
have to pass through the white idleness,
to reach Centaurus,
and look at the rosy nebula...
Lu wears a red scarf presented by one of her university classmates who passed away. Every year, she chooses one day to wear it attend the class as a ceremony. She tells the story of her classmate and warns students "not take life for granted".
