It’s quite fun to read your comments. Actually I’m fascinated some time about how religion play its role in US, how the state founder setup the constitution for a secular system ; bank notes with “In God we trust”. And how many different sects inside of US. I guess some of them like Amish, Scientific may treated as evil cults in China :). I was told to not discussion with American about religions and politics, especially in office, since it may be offending for some people.

It’s quite interesting to see that you relate the human compassion with “God Given”. This is typical if you view Chinese culture from your point of view, you may think that religion is necessary for every culture. And some western scholars marks Confuism as a religion, and China a Confucian country, but it’s hardly the case.

It’s hard to depict the whole scenario with short words, and I’m not the master of this topic, but in general, Taoism, Confuism and Buddhism play big role in Chinese culture, and mainly the Chinese culture is a secular culture. Here the Buddhism is referring to the Mahayana Buddhism, not the Tantra Buddhism in Tibet, although in Yuan and Qing Dynasty, the Tantra Buddhism was admired by the ruling ethic groups. Confuism has no “God”, and Confucian do not care too much about the “God” or “Devil” or “Angel”, instead they care more about how to be good person, they think that being a good person is a life-long studying process, which needs daily retrospection and learning. There was a saying “stay away from ghost, being a good man first”. All those teaching are not telling people to give up Human compassion.

I remember when I was at university I had a philosophy class a few days after a major railway accident and asked our group what we thought about it, nobody had much to say except that it showed you could go at anytime. There was nothing we could say really.

As for the whole ‘people lieing in the street and nobody doing anything about it’, welcome to the city. Every country has this kind of situation - the most famous case was that of Catherine Genovese, a New York nightclub hostess who was stabbed repeatedly in front of at least 36 witnesses, she took at least 20 minutes to die and none of them did anything about it.

Prompted by this incident a pair of psychologists decided to do a study of the problem and found that people who have had an accident are much less likely to receive help when a large number of people witness the accident than when only one person witnesses it. See here for the rest of the story:

http://timesonline.typepad.com/comment/2008/04/the-death-of-th.html

If this phenomenon is more prevelant in China (and there is only anecdotal evidence to go on) then it may be because there is more of a group mentality and people are more afraid of being the odd one out who actually stops and helps. The old one about Chinese not put so much value on human life needs looking at again, I personally never agreed much about this one until I witnessed a suicide where people were laughing and joking as they looked at the body - the man had jumped from the 5th story. However, I’m inclined to go with Richard Mason, the author of ‘The World Of Suzy Wong’, on this one and say that it is just a different way of showing the same emotion that people anywhere would have - nervous shock. No, I do not believe people in Chinese cities are anymore callous than people in cities in other parts of the world are, but I have to say that cities anywhere can be a pretty callous places to live.

There is a Chinese saying: “Everyone shovel your own snow, and don’t bother with icicles on eaves of your neighbours”. That’s the spirit.

Thank you for your comments. Hopefully, that’s NOT the reaction that any Chinese people had but you do bring up an important and challenging aspect of Chinese culture. It must be so frustrating to graduate from college and have to compete with hundreds of other people for a decent job. I can’t imagine….

FOARP,

I don’t know about the UK but I do know that in the US, Americans seem to take these events to heart. A student of mine reminded me recently that the Chinese government is always there to take care of people in time of tragedy. Maybe that’s another part of the reason why people seem to be indifferent here. They assume that the government will take care of everything and that there is no need for any emotional or physical outreach.

Mark,

Thanks for your comments. If the issue “isn’t about Chinese people not caring about their fellow citizens” then how do you explain the lack of willingness to help their fellow citizens when they need help?(such as in an accident or robbery). A student of mine, who is in her twenties, was recently knocked down to the ground by a group of motorcyclists who came up behind her and stole her purse. She lay on the ground for 10 minutes and not one person bothered to run to her rescue or help her up. They just stared and continued on their way. I think this story as well as the lack of interest in the ‘train collision story’ is related to a ‘every man for himself’ mentality in China.

The typical expression in these situation is “Zhonguoren tai duo le!” meaning Chinese are too many..!

So.. the fewer - the better: less competition for survival!