A Tribute and some other thoughts

Several weeks ago, on the university campus, a young woman committed suicide. She leapt to her death from the roof of the building that I teach in. Her body was discovered the morning after her death. The scene was cleaned up quickly and quietly, and activities being held in that teaching building and around campus continued as usual. The schedule of things here, so it seems, had to be preserved.

The philosophy would seem to be, “if it’s not talked about, it didn’t happen.” No meetings were held. No help was publically extended to her friends or her family. The community was left in the dark about the whole event. No public grieving process was permitted. No questions about what may have precipitated this tragedy were asked.

Gossip about the suicide, of course, was rampant. As one of my students described it, “it was quite the sensation around campus.” A sensation, certainly, but not one that was too out of the ordinary. As I’ve learned from some of the foreign teachers that have been around for a couple of years, there are at least several suicides here a year. Between pressure from school, romances gone awry, and a lack of a psychological support system for students (counseling, etc.), the school becomes something of a pressure-cooker for emotional strife.

In the days and weeks that followed, I have very gingerly attempted to find out a little bit more about the circumstances surrounding this tragedy made more tragic by the school’s inept reaction to it. When I asked several of my students in office hours about the situation, the first look that came to their faces was disgust. A second of uncomfortable silence passed. The description about the scene was vivid and no doubt exaggerated by the chain of people through which the information had passed.

After having said what he had to say, the student continued on his way out of my office. His facial expression immediately changed from one of disgust to display a beaming smile as he said, “Thanks for all of your help! See you next week!” It was as if a switch had flipped in his head, and the unpleasant conversation we had been having was instantly forgotten.

This is the common reaction that most Chinese display when faced with an emotional situation that apparently overwhelms them. One would think that, given some of terrifying moments that mark the country's not-so-distant past, such a stoic approach to life seems appropriate. To some extent, in the context of the Chinese way of dealing with emotion in general, it makes sense that there is no counseling services offered here on campus. Emotion—like anger or sadness—is something to be handled privately, so it seems. With anger, for instance, there seems to almost be a kind of shame associated with displaying it in public. This particular cultural tic sometimes goes from striking to downright infuriating when some kind of mindless bureaucratic nonsense causes someone to tell you that something perfectly reasonable isn't possible, at which point I used to become even more annoyed as the nervous smile on the person's reddening face across from me began to stretch from ear to ear. Although frustration is my immediate reaction when someone laughs in my face when an emotionally-sensitive topic is being discussed, I’ve come to realize that people here mean no offense—it’s simply the way things work.

Although most Chinese personalities are able to healthily deal with the weight of complex emotions that they encounter that seem to eventually go unexpressed, for some the weight of these unexpressed things becomes overwhelming. Regardless of what produced such a dire emotional strain, this seems to have been the case with the poor soul who passed away several weeks ago.

Order must be preserved. As it has in the past, I am sure that these tragedies will continue to happen, and that the school will continue to disregard them in an effort to achieve the cheap sense of harmony that is valued so highly here.

If anything, I wanted to write at least a little about this in order to provide this student with some kind of tribute—a tribute that she did not receive here at the university. The pressures that students have to deal with here in China are absolutely immense, and it scares me to think about how alone students must feel bereft of a system to support the life of the mind that is common to all people but that is frequently disregarded so disgracefully here.

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Explosions are periodically heard in the distance around Beijing. On perfectly sunny days, I am sometimes startled by the loudness of what sounds like an artillery shell blowing up in the sky far overhead. These bombs are not fireworks. They sound like brief, sharp thunderclaps. Sometimes the sound is loud enough that I jump while sitting in my room or office, typing emails or classwork or blog entries. They could be cloud-seeding shells, or they could be military exercises. Who knows. No one asks. Who would you ask, when asking might only get you in trouble? Who would you ask, anyways? Could you legitimately hope to get a straight answer, even from an individual who actually knows the real answer? Bombs go off in Beijing all the time, but no one seems to hear anything.

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I find myself constantly cutting my nails over here. If I let them grow out even a little ways over the tips of my fingers, dirt starts to get trapped underneath. If you let them go for too long, then the tips of your fingers start to smell a bit because of the dirt that gets caked in there. Even when they’re cut down as far as my fingers will allow, some dirt and grit still manages to creep in. There is dirt in the air here, and it gets on everything and it sticks to you despite however much you may clean yourself. Eventually, though, I suppose you begin to forget the dirt. After a while, you realize that the norm over here might always involve a bit of dirt, that the dirty can become a kind of clean with time. There’s always that smell coming from your fingertips, though.