From: [email address omitted]
Subject: Some thoughts on your suggested project
Date: Tue, 19 Aug 2008
To: [doctor's email address omitted]
Dear Dr. X,
While I am most moved by your resolve to prevent unnecessary deaths
by going public with a health awareness campaign, there are some very compelling
reasons why such campaigns have not worked in China already, and I believe
you have just seen one manifestation of that earlier similar campaigns
have indeed failed.
Believe me, the sort of campaign you just oulined are conceived and
carried out by the dozen every day within China itself, mostly by elements
within the ruling party that share your frustration. Yet, these awareness
campaigns mostly fail to achieve anything tangible.
China is a country where you encounter people who tell you they just
start smoking because of the bird flu and they wish to strengthen their
lungs. You will find no one using their seat belts.
| You will find no pedestrians and not a single motorbike (far less a
bike) voluntarily honouring a red light, even when crossing traffic heavier
than you thought imaginable. |
|
 |
Compared to the rest of the world, China has the
most traffic accidents, construction accidents, home accidents, and
a disproportionately high incidence of easliy preventable diseases, many
of which are no longer seen anywhere else.
Hepatitis is a good example. At least the type of hepatitis which is
communicated through food may be contained if one maintains good hand hygiene
and use separate plates. Yet such elementary hygenic practices are rare,
almost unseen.
This does not mean that the knowledge about how to prevent this type
of hepatitis in unknown, on the contrary, almost everyone will reveal knowledge
about this when asked. The problem is that this knowledge is not acted
upon. ["60% of Chinese have had hepatitis B": source]
The long story first:
China is a culture which in spite of its 5000 plus year long written
history has not yet completed the transition to what we normally call a
written culture. It has what linguists call a "high oral residue".
This does not point directly to a high level of illiteracy, even though
one occasionally finds illiterates, especially women, especially elderly
women, and in particularly in the countryside. I believe I know about five
illiterate women, just among the people that I know very well and interact
with almost daily.
At this point I recommend the following references:
Walter J. Ong: _Orality and Literacy_, Routledge, 1982, 2006 reprint
There is an excellent presentation on how a transition from an oral
to a written culture impacts human thought patterns in the following book,
using ancient Greece as an example:
Eric A. Havelock: _The Muse Learns to Write_, Yale University Press,
1986
The following two works will further give you a glimpse into the details
of how European thought (and thus also American culture) developed as printing
and indexing further influenced us, remember this can de seen as an inventory
of all that did NOT happen in China:
Marshall McLuhan: _The Gutenberg Galaxy_, University of Toronto Press,
1962, 2002 reprint
Walter J. Ong: _Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue_, The University
of Chicago Press, 1958, 2004 reprint
The Chinese case is dealt with in length here:
David Ze (Simon Fraser University): _Walter Ong's Paradigm and Chinese
Literacy_, Canadian Journal of Communication, Vol 20, No 4 (1995):
cjc-online.ca/index.php/journal/article/viewArticle/894/800
The short version of the story is that the Chinese do not use language
as a major means of communication. Language here in a very broad sense,
embracing oral language and written language, signs, written warnings,
traffic lights, instruction manuals, or other people sitting down in front
of you and trying to tell you or warn you about something.
Typically mainstream culture Chinese have not what you and I would call
a proclivity for abstract thought. While highly educated Chinese do, and
while Chinese that have spent some time abroad do, this is not something
which is fostered from within Chinese culture.
Typically mainstream culture Chinese will not infer a principle from
having heard or read that something happened to someone else. Typically
mainstream culture Chinese will be less likely to learn from the experience
of others and instead be limited to learn from their own experience.
How do the Chinese typically communicate?
By action. They have to see that something is happening, either positive
or negative. Where I live, if I want the janitor to repair a door, I cannot
merely go the his office and tell him to repair a door. I have to tell
him many times, perhaps more than ten. It will take months. I have to escalate
visible anger. I have bang my fist in his desk, I have to threaten his
superior with lawyers. I have to withhold fees. Then the door will eventually
be repaired.
For the same reason you cannot necessarily take for granted the contents
of what a mainstream culture Chinese tells you, as language is not used
for communication. If you for instance wish to enquire about if a Chinese
is religious or not, merely asking does not provide an answer. You have
to observe if he goes to mosque or church. If you want to hire someone
that never smokes, you can not merely ask the candidate, as he will answer
what he believes you would like to hear. You have to observe if he normally
smokes.
I believe you now understand why the awareness campaign you outlined
will not work.
What will work, however, is to radically change the way primary and
secondary education in China is conducted. At the moment, students learn
virtually all academic subjects by rote memorization. Also foreign languages.
All exams at all levels are without exception multiple choice.
THIS IS WHAT NEEDS TO BE CHANGED and this change can only happen here
in China.
Without this foundation being there, meaning a modern, post- enlightenment
style of thought and education permeating society, you cannot hope to deal
with matters as health awareness.
At the moment there are 200 million child workers in the coastal regions
of China, coming from the poor interior. China has a desperately poor population
in the interior amounting to almost 800 or 900 million people. Poor not
necessarily only in a fiscal sense, but in the cultural sense which I have
outlined above.
I am engaged in work in trying to provide education and health care
to some of these. I invite you and encourage you to come here and work
here. We desperately need teachers and medical professionals to go to the
interior and we also need funds. (Though I gather we need teachers more
than funds.)
In the long run, this is what will ameliorate conditions.
With kind regards,
[name omitted]
[city omitted] China |
