14 minute read
THE NATION
What’s On Your Mind?
Mental Health Support is Available in China p10
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Quote of the Month P8 Podcaster P9
Epic Elephant Trek
Wild Herd Nears Major Chinese City
By Joshua Cawthorpe
Last month, a herd of 15 wild Asian elephants entered Jinning district in the southwestern outskirts of Kunming, the capital city of Yunnan province. China Daily reported the elephants had arrived in Yuxi city, only 20 kilometers outside the capital, and an elaborate defensive campaign was underway.
Initially, Kunming and Yuxi authorities dispatched 675 police officers, 62 emergency vehicles, 12 drones and 10 tonnes of food, according to South China Morning Post. The large mobilization of resources is intended to divert the elephants from continuing towards the heart of the city. Drones have been used to constantly monitor the path of the herd while fire and dump trucks serve to block entrances to villages. Large deposits of corn and pineapples were placed along the elephants’ route in an attempt to direct them away from the city’s downtown area, as per Global Times. Kunming is home to 8.46 million residents. Although the elephants generally avoid densely populated areas, measures are being taken to protect the elephants and the people of the city. SCMP reported that the elephants had destroyed RMB6.8 million worth of crops in the past 40 days of their journey.
Asian elephants, of which only about 300 live in China, have been recognized as endangered since 1986. The animals are protected under Chinese law, however, encounters between villagers and wild elephants often turn deadly. In May 2017, a 69-year-old Yunnan woman was tossed around and then torn to pieces by an adult and a juvenile elephant, as per SCMP.
Experts believe that the elephants are in search of food as a result of development in the region they left behind. In December 2020, the herd arrived in Pu’er city, having departed the Xishuangbanna National Nature Reserve. Forty percent of the natural habitat for Asian elephants has disappeared in the past 20 years to make way for rubber and tea plantations. Li Zhongyuan of the Xishuangbanna Forestry and Grass Bureau suggested to Global Times that the elephants have learned to depend on farmers’ fields as their food source, eating corn and sugarcane.
The herd traveled more than 500 kilometers, and two elephants were born along the way. A timeline by CGTN indicates that two elephants turned back on April 24 after allegedly discovering alcohol at a villager’s home in Mojiang County of Pu’er city. The herd entered the town of Eshan near Yuxi city on May 27, and police evacuated people and vehicles while the herd roamed the streets for six hours.
Thankfully, the herd has thus far refrained from trekking deeper into Kunming. After traveling several kilometers southwest, away from the city, the elephants doubled back and re-entered Shijie township, according to Xinhua. One of the males separated from the group and is roaming alone in a forest on the outskirts of Kunming city some 24 kilometers away from the herd. On June 21, police evacuated 4,106 residents, and monitoring teams deposited another 100 kilograms of food. Authorities hope to lure the elephants back towards the nature reserve from whence they came.
RANDOM NUMBER
6
That’s the number of people who were rescued by 49-year-old shepherd Zhu Keming during a 100-kilometer ultra-marathon in Baiyin, Gansu in late May.
Twenty-one participants died during the grueling race following extreme weather. The cold and heavy winds led many to suffer from hypothermia. Zhu was sheltering in a cave when he heard some of the participants cry for help. He took the six runners into the cave and placed them near a fire, an act that received praise from news outlets and netizens across China.
Marathon deaths have occurred in the past. However, the deaths of 21 participants in a single event marks the Baiyin ultra-marathon as an athletics tragedy. The number of victims could have been higher were it not for Zhu’s act of humanity.
DON’T YOU KNOW WHO I AM?
Marian Rosenburg
The general manager of Hainan #1 Translation Co., Ltd., Marian Rosenburg has lived in China since 2002. Having initially worked as a teacher in Hebei province, Rosenburg later found herself with a passion for learning Chinese which eventually led to her starting her own translation company.
She has also become an internet celebrity in China via short-video social media platform Douyin. After 16 days on the platform, she received her first million-view video.
However, Rosenburg later found herself locked in a legal battle with a TV station from Liaoning. The station used one of her viral Douyin clips without crediting her and without offering her any due financial remuneration. The case is one of many in relation to China’s legal gray area of digital copyright.
QUOTE OF THE MONTH
said Eric de Fontenay, founder of Music Dish. The phrase is a mantra from the music industry in de Fontenay’s native United States where Music Dish started. However, said mantra can sometimes be lost in a live-house setting.
De Fontenay asked himself the question: “What would some of these bands and songs sound like if we stripped away the amps, pedals and effects, drums, etc.? Well, you would be left with the song and the melody.”
That’s exactly the idea behind ‘Get Unplugged,’ an event hosted by Music Dish at Beijing’s Aotu Space on Sunday May 30, 2021. On stage were merely a stool, a microphone and a guitar. Three acts from Beijing’s buzzing music scene took center-stage; Da Gun, the “quintessential singer-songwriter” with her “wonderfully textured voice”; Qian Zi, lead singer of Chinese rock band Auburn with his distinctive reverb sound on the electric guitar; and American singer-songwriter Eric Allen with his blend of blues, folk and outlaw country.
De Fontenay hopes to host more ‘Get Unplugged’ events in the future, truly upholding the spirit of that old mantra – “great music starts with a song.”
PODCASTER
The Wasai Show
The Wasai Show is hosted by Neto Trevino from Mexico and Alice He who is local Chinese. The show’s name is a play on everyone’s favorite Chinese phrase, wasai ( 哇塞 ), and shares stories collected from listeners about a topic and includes a funny twist by both comedians.
The first half of the show is presented in English, followed by a Chinese segment. Now up to season three, The Wasai Show has continued to build a following and is based in the southern city of Shenzhen. While it may have a bit of local feel for the Shenzhen community, the discussions are relatable to many of China’s big cities.
You can listen to The Wasai Show on Spotify by scanning the QR code:
WHAT’S ON Mental Health Support is Available in China By Alistair Baker-Brian YOUR MIND?
When Sichuannative Xiaojie Qin was faced with mental health challenges, she found that in China, support groups were difficult to find.
Now a resident in Beijing, Qin is the founder of CandleX, a mental health NGO that runs awareness programs and a psycho-social support group for those experiencing mental health problems.
That’s sat down with Qin to discuss what kind of support CandleX offers, mental health challenges faced by the expat and local communities in China, the effects of COVID-19 and the future of mental health support in the Middle Kingdom.
How CandleX was founded
Qin stresses that the organization was very much borne out of her own struggle with mental health.
“I was born in the 1980s. Back then, there was virtually no mental health awareness. Even clinical terms like depression were generally considered to be under the umbrella of just ‘being crazy.’”
She says that after experiencing episodes of depression in her 20s, she decided she needed to do something about it.
After talking at a public event, she got a lot of positive feedback. That led to the idea of creating an organization.
CandleX is now in its seventh year. The key idea is to raise awareness of mental health and provide support for people who are depressed, anxious or have bipolar disorder.
Back in 2015, when the organization was first set up, Qin recalls that not many mental health support groups in China supported the international community. Lifeline Shanghai was around at the time, but offered services different from those of CandleX.
“There were people who were doing things related to mental health. For instance, there were counsellors coming into Beijing. However, there was no one particular person in China doing anything long-lasting.”
Support offered by CandleX
The support group, available both online and offline, is one of the organization’s main events. There are also community mental health activities that involve companies and various other organizations.
Qin stresses that these are strictly psycho-social support groups and not mental health support with a professional.
Other activities have a more novel approach such as the movie night and the art campaign.
Qin emphasizes that they try and make activities as memorable as possible.
“The approach that we are using is not to just sit down and have them (participants) listen to some really sad stories. Instead, it’s actually pretty dynamic, and we try to reach as many people as possible.”
One area which CandleX has focused upon in recent years is teenagers’ and young adults’ mental health.
“If you look at the data, it tells us that between the ages of 15 and 24, people are at a vulnerable stage in terms of their mental health. People who suffer from mental illness are likely to have their first episode sometime between those ages.”
The World Health Organization suggests that up to half of mental illnesses begin as early as age 14 and that many go unreported and untreated.
This led CandleX to launch the Teens’ Open Letter in which teenagers write about their experiences of battling mental health. Participants have written about bullying, eating disorders, depression and other problems.
Another key focus is that of Chinese students studying overseas. The mental health of those studying abroad has come under the spotlight in recent years, given reports of suicides among Chinese student communities. Many struggle to cope with the pressure of academic expectations and adapting to a new way of life in a foreign country.
The issue was reported on by China Daily back in 2017. The article included the story of Rong Xin, a 27-year-old doctoral candidate at the University of Michigan in the United States.
Shortly before taking his own life, Rong had left a message about depression in academia in late 2016, saying the problem was “significantly underestimated.”
“This (suicide) happens among those who are high achievers. So, CandleX started working with this company that deals with students’ applications to go and study overseas. And every year before heading abroad, we will do a workshop with the students and their parents. This helps them to prepare. This year, we are going to provide workshops to the company staff on how to deal with students suffering from mental health issues.”
Mental health among expats in China
How COVID-19 has affected the work of CandleX
In January 2021, CandleX launched a Chinese support service for the first time. Until that time, services have been solely in English. This means that, for the most part, the organization has dealt with English-speaking expats and what Qin describes as “internationally-minded” locals.
And there is good reason for targeting expats when it comes to mental health support. US insurance giant Aetna reported in 2017 that mental health issues had been on the rise among expat communities across the globe. Depression and anxiety ranked as the first and second most prominent issues, respectively, between 2014 and 2016 among Aetna members.
So, can expats in China easily access mental health support? According to Qin, it largely depends on their financial situation.
“If they do have the means, they can go to some of the big international hospitals. However, without those resources, it can be difficult because it’s simply expensive. They then end up not knowing what to do.”
Qin recalls dealing with several incidents of mental health emergencies among expats in Beijing, one of which involved a foreign embassy reaching out to CandleX regarding one of its country’s citizens.
“I think some expats are at higher risk. They may move abroad as a way to cope with their problems. They hope that moving will make their problems go away and things will be different. They arrive and realize that actually, things are still the same. And then, the depression kicks in.”
Against this backdrop, CandleX’s pyscho-social support can be a lifeline for many expats in China facing mental health problems.
Across the globe, the COVID-19 pandemic has brought mental health under the spotlight. Lockdowns have led many people to spend excessive amounts of time in isolation, while economic hardship and job losses have added an extra level of stress.
Like in many industries, a lot of CandleX’s work has moved online as a result of the pandemic. However, Qin says that in terms of the numbers of people making use of the CandleX support group, the pandemic period saw a drop before returning to normal levels.
“I was surprised by this. Part of the reason may have been because some people we would usually deal with were stuck outside of China. When those people came back, the number did start to increase.”
She says the biggest change she’s seen as a result of COVID-19 is that talking about mental health has become normalized.
The future of mental health support in China
Mental health issues that were once neglected in the Middle Kingdom are now being taken more seriously, for good reason.
China Daily reported that an estimated 90 million people in China suffer from depression, with around 90% not getting any effective treatment. Other research further suggests that mental disorders have generally become more common across China in the last 30 years.
China’s resources for dealing with mental health have not always been at the same level as other countries. A 2017 WHO report showed there were 1.7 psychiatrists per 100,000 people compared with 12 per 100,000 in the US.
Qin points out that in the past, mental health support has largely been focused on specific groups such as ‘left-behind children.’ However, many now recognize the need to make support more widely available.
One issue that Qin says has helped bring mental health into the spotlight on a national scale is that of ‘996’ work culture. The term refers to jobs in which employees are required to work six days per week from 9am until 9pm.
Many questioned the phenomenon earlier this year following the death of an employee at ecommerce group Pinduoduo. The employee in question had reportedly been working a lot of overtime prior to her death.
“With the 996-work culture, more and more people are starting to recognize that actually, mental health can affect a whole number of people. The government has known this for a very long time.”
The government is indeed devising policies designed to deal more effectively with mental health challenges in China. The country’s National Health Commission plans to introduce screening for vulnerable groups and require medical institutions as well as universities, high school and colleges to re-evaluate mental health policies.
The government plans to set up mental health outpatient services in 40% of the general hospitals in pilot areas by the end of 2021, a move catalyzed by the pandemic.
Qin says that along with the rest of her counsellors’ group, she will take a careful look at the new policies.
Whether said policies will be effectively implemented remains to be seen. However, what is clear is that mental health is now very much taken seriously across the Middle Kingdom.
And there’s no doubt that alongside clinical services, CandleX will continue to provide psycho-social support for anyone who needs it.
> To find out more about CandleX, search for the WeChat ID (candlex2015) and follow the official WeChat account.
