The Wacky World of Chinese Psychiatry

"Do you suffer from a mental illness?  If so, explain."

That was one of the questions on the visa form the first time I came to China.  Of course I checked no, because otherwise I wouldn't have gotten in, but as a matter of fact I do: I have OCD, and I take meds for it.

Meds which, at the moment, are running fairly low.  This means that one of these weekends, I'll have to shell out a few thousand kuai for a weekend in Beijing to visit an expat-run hospital.  Why not a local hospital, you ask?  Chinese hospitals are bad enough when you have a cold: now imagine telling them you need Head Meds.

Here's what happened the last time I stuck a toe in the Wacky World of Chinese Psychiatry.  It was about two years ago, in Hangzhou.  I needed to get a mental health check for a job I was applying to--a routine procedure in decent places, but as Gollum said, silly hobbitses, this isn't decent places.  This is a Chinese public hospital.

Apparently in China, "Mental health check" is a euphemism for "interrogation of political dissidents and/or the criminally insane".  But I head to at least try.  More or less knowing from the start that my endeavor was doomed, I headed down to the local public hospital.  I was talking with a nice doctor who spoke some English, and she was baffled by the idea of giving mental exams to the non-straitjacketed.  "Why would you need that?" she asked.

"Well, in some countries we have to pass a mental exam to work as a teacher." I said. "Basically all I need is a paper that says 'Bro is not crazy' with a doctor's signature."

She called around to find a doctor with the qualifications to make such a statement, apparently a rarity over here.  Eventually she ended up calling the infamous #7 Hospital, which is essentially an insane asylum circa 1940 and figures prominently in discussions with Chinese 6th graders (e.g. teaching Alice goes to school by bike quickly devolves into "Haha, teacher goes to #7 hospital by pig".  An actual quote.)

With a look of resignation, my doctor friend hung up the phone. "They won't do it." she said.

Figures. "Why not?"

"Well, how to say in English..." she thought for a moment. "he said that Chinese people, white people and black people have different brains.  So he can't give you a test for Chinese people."

...huh.

Of course, we shouldn't shoot the messenger.  My doctor friend was very sympathetic and did help me schedule my physical for the next morning, which was nice.  I guess she realized it wasn't my fault I was born with a tiny caucasian brain.

Rise and Fall of the Jie, Part 4!

Part IV!

 

Shi Hong was helpless.  In fear, he offered the throne to Shi Hu.  Shi Hu, acting after the example of Cao Cao, sarcastically declined and said something along the lines of “No, you’re the crown prince after all, go ahead and take it, but I ‘strongly suggest’ that you make me the prime minister and the King of Wei—and give me the nine bestowments while you’re at it.”  Note that these are the same titles that Cao Cao took!   Poor Shi Hong must have seen what was happening.

Now, again, if I had been Shi Hong, I would have said something awesome like “Golly gosh Shi Hu, who was my dad again?  Oh yeah!  He was the emperor!  And he’s dead!  So…wait a minute!  That…that makes me…the emperor!  And…and you’re not the emperor!  Off with your head!”  As you can tell, I spend a lot of time fantasizing about this.  Perhaps, you would say, he knew he would’ve been killed if he said that, but surely there must’ve been some faction loyal to him.  He could’ve even drawn his sword and made a heroic last stand with his bros.  But he didn’t, and allowed the situation to get worse.

Anyway, Shi Hong for whatever reason didn’t do this, nor did he take a lesson from the story of Cao Cao.  Instead he asked his mom, the empress dowager, for help.  This was the same lady who had saved Shi Hu when he was in danger!  She tried to enlist another prince to attack Shi Hu, but the plan failed.  Shi Hu, emulating his old hero Cao Cao, had her killed.  Imagine the nerve of this guy!  Shi Hu was by rights the empress dowager’s subject, and he had her executed as if she was a common criminal!  I can only imagine the language he must have used to have her executed—for he could not have done so without the emperor’s ostensible permission.  It must’ve been something along the lines of “Your majesty, this woman has threatened the security of your royal person and must be punished, I ask you to order her death.”  Something like that.  Imagine doing that with a straight face!  What a bastard.  And he did this to his very aunt, who had previously saved his life!  What a savage twist of irony.

So let’s look at Shi Hong—that was the emperor, remember.  These names all sound alike, at least to me, because I don’t speak Chinese.  Understandably dismayed at being forced to approve his mom’s death, he couldn’t stand it anymore.  Talk about a golden cage!  This guy was—supposedly—the Son of Heaven, and the ruler of all beneath it, but he was basically the captive of Shi Hu, and had to go along with it.  So what did he do?  He decided to make one last plea for humane treatment.  He must have known it wouldn’t work, since his cousin was a psychopath that made the Joker look like Gandhi.  At any rate, however, Shi Hong made his way one night to Shi Hu’s palace, carrying the emperor’s jade seal, and said something along the lines of “the mandate of heaven has passed to you.  For the preservation of the dynasty, please take the throne and rule all under heaven!”

That’s right, Shi Hong offered the throne to Shi Hu again!  Imagine having to do that to the man who had your mom killed!  What agony poor Shi Hong must have gone through.  But Shi Hu, in true psychopath fashion, said something dripping with sarcasm, like “Oh, I am only your lowly servant, I would not dare take the throne from Your Highness.”  Poor Shi Hong had to return to the palace to await his fate.  Of course everyone, Shi Hong included, knew that Shi Hu wanted to be emperor, and this was as good a time as any, but of course he had nothing better to do than insult and torment Shi Hong first.

By now Shi Hong had been “ruling” for about a year.  Not long afterward, Shi Hu made an announcement.  He said that Shi Hong had violated the mourning customs regarding his father—which he hadn’t.  As a result Shi Hong was “strongly advised” to abdicate the throne.  Poor Shi Hong by now seems to have been completely despairing of his fate.  He made no attempt to resist.  In fact, he probably thought that by not resisting he would escape with his life—which he didn’t.  Not long after being deposed, Shi Hong was executed—which by rights should’ve happened to Shi Hu, if only Shi Hong had had the courage to try.  Poor Shi Hong never got the justice he deserved in this life, but we can hope that he found rest in the hereafter.

But, as the ever-quotable Gandalf the Grey said, many that die deserve life, and some that live deserve death.  Shi Hu’s first act as emperor was to change the era name, following an ancient Chinese custom where not only emperors have names, but their reigns too.  He named his reign period “jian-wu”, which appropriately enough means “establish militarism”.  He even lived in a palace called Tai-Wu, or “excessively militaristic”.  The two decades that followed were an orgy of bloodshed and chaos to the people of Northern China.  His atrocities I have already described, and the common people of China were forced into slave labor to build an extravagant series of palaces, where Shi Hu ate, drank, and made merry with his concubines until he died in 349. 

As a side note, as if killing his cousin weren’t bad enough already, he also murdered his own son, daughter-in-law, and grandchildren.   While doing this, he even claimed to be a Buddhist—I suppose much the same way that the Spanish Inquisition was Catholic.  Maybe he thought he was helping his victims by speeding them on to their next incarnations.   More likely he saw Buddhist missionaries from an Inner Asian perspective: as shamans with weird powers, and therefore to be respected and feared.

Of course, the inevitable fate of tyranny is downfall, and though Shi Hu seems to have died a natural death, his empire was not to last.  Three emperors were enthroned and deposed in two years, and the realm descended into even worse chaos than before—I am sorry to say that this tragic story ends with nothing short of an ancient genocide.

As we’ve discussed, Shi Hu and company were not actually Chinese, ethnolinguistically speaking.  They ruled and terrorized a Chinese population, and took on the trappings of Chinese emperors, but were themselves Jie.  Apparently, the Jie language was completely different from Chinese, and even from other Xiongnu languages.  The Jie people even had a different appearance from their neighbors.

It is a sad reality that very often, an entire ethnic group suffers for the terrible actions of a few of its members.  The Jie were one of these groups.  Following the overthrow of the Later Zhao dynasty, the Jie people were completely hunted down and killed.  This included everyone of the ethnic group, even those who had nothing to do with the dynasty’s reign of terror—women, children, whatever.  Escape or blending into the Chinese population was impossible, since the Jie seem to have had such distinct features.   It was horrible.  Even though Shi Le and Shi Hu were bad guys, I’m sure there were lots of nice Jie people too, and like Shi Hong, they had to suffer despite having done nothing wrong.  Racism is bad.

As a matter of fact, along with the Jie, other Xiongnu were killed and the survivors driven from China.  Could this have been the beginning of the migration of nomads that would end a hundred years later at the gates of Rome?  Maybe!   The “Xiong” in “Xiongnu” sounds kind of like “Hun” after all, don’t you think?

This genocide was so thorough and complete that as a result, we don’t even know who the Jie were!  All that remains of their language is a single sentence transcribed by a passing monk.   What was this sentence?  Does it contain the key to unlocking the mystery of the Jie people—who they were, where they came from?  Probably, because otherwise there would be no material for a video!  At any rate, we’ll talk about it next time.

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jie_people

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shi_Hu

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shi_Hong

Rise and Fall of the Jie, Part 3!

Part III:

 

Given the barrage of names, let’s review: Shi Le is the aging emperor who established the dynasty, Shi Hong is the heir apparent, and Shi Hu is a jealous cousin.  Their dynasty is known as the Later Zhao.  They belong to the Jie ethnic group, which was one of many tribes known to Chinese historians by the umbrella term “Xiongnu”.

Before long, Shi Le’s health began to fail, and he died, leaving the empire in the somewhat unsteady hands of Shi Hong.  The tragedy that followed can be described as comparable to something you’d see in Ancient Greek Theater, but to understand it we have to go back a hundred years to the early third century, to the time of the Three Kingdoms.  So again, from the fourth century, we’re going back to the early third century, to a completely different cast of characters.

One hundred years before the Later Zhao, China had been split up into three warring factions.  In Northern China, the Emperor reigned in name, but was in truth nothing more than the plaything of Cao Cao, a brutal warlord who filled court with his henchmen and tormented the poor emperor day and night.  While Cao Cao paid lip service to the emperor, he actually kept the emperor as a virtual prisoner, going so far as to have the emperor’s two wives executed when they crossed him.  One happened to be pregnant at the time, which means that, in effect, Cao Cao murdered the child of the emperor of China.  But even this was not far enough for Cao Cao.  To add insult to injury, Cao Cao then forced the emperor to marry his daughter, as a vacancy had been created.

Cao Cao then “strongly suggested” that the emperor make him the Prime Minister, as well as the King of Wei, a region in north China.  On top of that, Cao Cao got what were called the “Nine Bestowments”, which were in theory a reward given by emperors for good service.  Remember, this is after killing the emperor’s wives and unborn child.  Can you imagine the agony this poor emperor must have gone through?

The whole affair was an absolute farce.  When I read “Romance of the Three Kingdoms,” reading about the way Cao Cao treated the emperor made me so angry that I used to throw the book across the room, and then go for a walk to cool off!

That said, the emperor was partially at fault:

Here, we see the emperor’s wife being arrested, with the poor emperor looking helplessly on—that’s him in the chair.  The guy with the sword is Cao Cao.  Remember, he’s daring to draw his sword before the emperor of China!  At any time, the emperor could have stood up and said, “You know, Cao Cao, I don’t recall this being a constitutional monarchy.  Off with your head.”  But he never did, because he was too afraid.  Even when his wife was executed, and she asked him to save her life, all he could do was mumble something about not even being able to protect himself.  Of course, hindsight is 20/20, but I always like to daydream that if I were the emperor, I wouldn’t have any of Cao Cao’s nonsense.  But this guy, it seems, was just too much of a spineless coward. 

The one thing that Cao Cao never dared to do was claim the throne for himself, but that kind of actually makes sense, because he knew that if he did, his descendants would one day fall into the position of the poor emperor that he so tormented.  His son, however, was less intelligent, and soon after he died, “strongly suggested” that the emperor abdicate in his favor.

With this in mind, let’s return to the Later Zhao a hundred years later.  Shi Hu—remember, that’s the envious cousin—looked at Cao Cao as a personal hero.  He even lived in a palace that Cao Cao had built.  But Shi Hu, while being even more evil than Cao Cao, could not match him for brains.  All he could do was look to the past and try to imitate his predecessor.  So, when Shi Le died and the gentle, studious Shi Hong ascended the throne, Shi Hu muscled his way into the palace and staged a coup—in this case at least, the sword proved mightier than the inkbrush.

Rise and Fall of the Jie, Part 2!

Part II!

 

In our last video we talked about the rise of Shi Le and his establishment of the Later Zhao dynasty in 4^th century China.  I want to begin by reviewing names, since this can be confusing, especially to people like me who don’t speak Chinese.

I’d like to start by reviewing that, in the year 220, the mighty Han Dynasty split into three kingdoms.  The strongest of these was called Wei, led by the wily and devious Cao Cao.  However, Wei’s hegemony was not to last.  It was replaced by the Jin Dynasty, which reunited China for several decades at the end of the 3^rd Century.  Soon, however, trouble began with a loose confederation of tribes in the north, called the Xiongnu.  They invaded northern China, pushed the Jin into South China, and established their own Sinicized dynasties.

The Xiongnu were not ethnically homogenous!  “Xiongnu” is a catch-all term for a group of tribes.  One of these tribes was called the Jie, led by the warlord Shi Le.  Shi Le conquered most of northern China, and declared himself emperor.  His dynasty was called the Later Zhao, having supplanted a dynasty called Han Zhao—not to be confused with the Han dynasty of 100 years earlier.  Shi Le established his capital in what is now northern Shandong province, in the very shadow of the Tai Shan, China’s holiest mountain:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Tai#/media/File:Mount_tai_azure_clouds_temple.jpg

He may very well have even climbed this mountain, as many emperors have done, to symbolize the legitimacy of his dynasty.  Even Chairman Mao did this, an interesting move for someone who claimed to be the elected leader of a “People’s Republic”.  History doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes very well.

Shi Le was a barbarian who had no sense of honor or mercy.  All that mattered to him was plunder and power.  However, having established his dynasty, he seems to have cooled off in his old age.  In fact he even became a Buddhist.  As one of the first emperors to convert to Buddhism, he played a key role, though largely unrecognized, in the early spread of Buddhism in China.

Having established his claim to the Imperial throne, Shi Le attempted to arrange for the continuance of his dynasty after his death.  There were two primary candidates for the succession: first, the bookish, mild-mannered and popular Shi Hong, his son.  Even though Shi Le was a ruthless and often cruel warlord, his son seems to have been a pretty decent guy.  He was by all accounts a compassionate and all-around good-natured person who spent his time studying the Confucian and Buddhist classics.  The second candidate was the psychopathic Shi Hu, a nephew of the royal house who had accompanied Shi Le on his conquests. 

Shi Hu was a real bastard.  It’s really impossible to overstate how bad of a person he was.  He was famous for having his own men—even his own sons—beaten to within an inch of their lives.  Even worse—by the way, if you’re eating right now I recommend you pause the video until you’re finished—it’s said that he had his armies cannibalize local people, as a form of both psychological warfare and saving on provisions.  Even Shi Le’s hardened crew of badasses trembled in fear at the mention of his name.

Shi Le, who was himself no Mother Teresa, found his nephew’s shenanigans disturbing to say the least.  He wanted to have him killed, but was dissuaded by his wife.  According to her, “before a bull grows up, it breaks the cart”, preemptively quoting the Bard in Much Ado. 

But alas, this savage bull did not bear the yoke, and taking this advice was arguably the worst decision of Shi Le’s career, and could be said to have doomed his dynasty—and, in an ironic twist worthy of Sophocles, doomed Shi Le’s wife.  But more on that later.  Instead of having this psychopath killed, Shi Le simply disenfranchised Shi Hu in favor of his son, Shi Hong.  This only served to irritate Shi Hu, who felt that he should be the heir, as he did most of the work of conquering the empire.