A Den for Elites

gosh.. i am really living in a very very horrible place. about a month ago somebody moved in No 28, two doors next to my flat. that guy seems to be some pentioner who never goes to work. he plays loud music every afternoon for about 3 hours. finally i can’t stand any more and decided to call the council noise nuisance control for some help. i told them concerned about my security i dont feel like talking to the lousy neighbour about the issue and would rather have the council to deal with it for me. after weeks back and forth mailing exchange they finally took some action. an officer came to the street himself and talked with people for testimony about the noise. fortunately the result was very satisfactory—many people complained about the loud music going on within the couple of weeks. the officer than sent No 28 a warning letter stating further possible legal actions the council may take against his misbehaviour in the neighborhood.

it seemed to have worked for couple of days until recently the noise starts again. what is even worse is that a stupid lady with loads of kids living right in front of NO 28 also starts playing loud music in the afternoon.

what a life…. don’t understand what kind of education they have had and are ready to give to their next generation…..i really worry about the future of this country, although it is not mine.

Hi Keith,

I am not sure whether what I have said is to be understood as a question in regard to having an advanced degree or I am really saying that to do a PhD you will need an open mind to reason! Trying to be unbiased is not easy but that what is required in doing a PhD. I am not saying I am 100% unbiased but at least I am trying to see the point, instead of holding the stereotype of one way or another. It is ignorant to say that China is 100% free of flaws and be defensive indiscriminatively. Equally, to question Chinese government with no understanding of Chinese situation would not be helpful as well. As you have already brought up some interesting issues I’d like to try seeing them from a different angle, with a hope to balance the biased views. My responses would be in red.

Hi Benny

I'm not sure having a Ph.D. is going to make a difference. It's not having an advanced degree that is the issue here. However, you have asked:

The problem I've had in discussing issue with people from China is that there is no discussion. There is only one truth and that is the official truth put out by the Chinese government. Tibet has been a part of China for 2000 years. China has been around for 5000 years and has been a continuous whole for all of that time. China has no interest in anything but a peaceful rise in the world order. And so on. That the rest of the world sees a far more complex and not so benign reality is ignored. I agree some of the Chinese are indiscriminative in discussing the government. Being too patriotic would blind their eyes to see the both sides of the problem. However, you also used the word ‘truth’. Be it one only given by the government or from whatever sources, do you accept the fact that these are the truth. If anyone would like to challenge this truth then show the Chinese some facts that argue otherwise. Many a time, westerners would only say: this is propaganda. But whatever, it is, what is important is whether it is true or not. The discussion is impeded, as I understand, is also because those who question the Chinese government’s claims are also running out of facts. Facing the lack of sound arguments and the facts given by the Chinese government, it is really difficult for the Chinese not to choose to believe the one who has evidence! Not talking about problems does not necessarily mean not accepting their existence. That is why the world has seen a uprising China within such a short period of time.

Last year I had a talk on Taiwan with one of the members of the lab where I used to work. What he mentioned was that China feels threatened by the rest of the world This is true, and I wonder any other countries would not feel the same! and that Taiwan was also a military issue. It stopped me, because he was right. But it was not for good reasons. It was because China has absolutely no friends in this world it is really interesting to talk about friendship between countries! How do we defy friendship? If the criterion is to see whether the president of a country has expressed his intention to be friends with China, then I think the accusation would fall by itself! I cannot find out a second one that can defy this kind of ‘friendship’; contrarily, I doubt whether there is any friendship between countries at all. Interestingly I am not alone to share this kind of doubt. If you read through some politicians, western ones in particular, you might find the same understanding of bilateral ties, which can never go over the interests of the participating countries. I feel really difficult to see any pure ‘friendly’ countries in this world!!! and in its present guise never will. It pays for all of its relationships and since they are merely business deals, if the money goes, so will go the relationships. Yes, it’s just like when the oil goes, then the war comes the next, isn’t it! (The American director Michael Moore has told us much more about how the deep friendship developed into an adverse one!)

This was ironic because I'm not much of an admirer of the present U.S. policies, which totally disgust me. I do appreciate Americans’ bravery in denying everything! But even in the worst parts of the Bush regime's corruption and duplicity, there were still many relationships between people in the U.S. and Europe (or Canada, or Japan, or fill-in-the-blank) well, such kind of relationships should be there because a lot of Americans are originally from US and Europe. If you go further to talk about the relations with Japan and other countries I started to doubt what kind of relation it really is???? Even if there is any kind of relation between the peoples, I wondered what’s wrong with the Chinese ordinary citizens. I do have friends from almost all over the world and we don’t seem to have any problem with each other. Are you suggesting this kind of relation is not relation? Or what exactly you would like to call this? because there was a clear distinction between the self-centered bigotry of the U.S. government and the longer-term relationships that had built up over time among the peoples of the various countries. It’s difficult for me to imagine that Chinese people are totally isolated or even hated by other peoples. At least I do not feel that way, living and studying in the UK. Contrarily, Chinese people are more often than not, related with honest, smart, hard-working! I am doing my PhD with full funding from NHS (affiliated to the UK gov), not from Chinese government, nor is the research has anything to do with China or Chinese language! And I am definitely not the only Chinese, working abroad and receiving respects. nd i l  If therre to think otherwise!nisiona nd a , smart, hard-working! i d the same understanding of bilateral ties, which caIf it were not for a long-term recognition and good experiences with Chinese people, I do feel impossible to think otherwise! And now with the twilight of the Bush League, these relationships continue, and we can only hope will return to the fore as someone (anyone) else takes over in the U.S. government.

I don't see this happening with China so quickly. To SEE this you really have to go outside Taiwan and talk with people who have really ever worked with Chinese and know Chinese. It's not that Chinese coming from China to the rest of the world are in any way monolithic. It's that unless they openly agree with the policies of the present Chinese regime, all the Chinese coming out of the country are the beneficiaries of Chinese opening up policies. What they see may not be the whole picture of China but at least an authentic picture of China. they tend to remain virtually silent I did research on Chinese students language ability development by asking them to talk about Tibetan issues when I was doing my MA. What I found is that they were confident and open enough to talk about Chinese policies or whatever as long as they do not have language barriers. They themselves are the best evidence to show the merits of the policies.. They do not feel free to state their opinions on the world or China if they should disagree. I couldn’t see the reason why? And I didn’t see such thing happen!!!

While in some ways China has opened more to the rest of the world, it has such huge problems that unless it opens further it will not be able to solve them. Abstractly talking about the opening up, this is absolutely true that China needs further opening up to solve the current restrictions. It's really nice to have a fast train in Shanghai, but 80% of the population (in Shanghai, alone) remains poor and unable to voice their feelings. I am not sure about the figure. Chinese usually know less about such figures than foreigners! That might not be good. I would agree, instead of holding Olympics, the money should be given to the poor. It's great that China's population has slowed its growth, but the population ages rapidly and has little health care or social security to support it. That is a problem but it does not necessarily mean that the government intends to leave it like that. The thing is whether the government is capable of tackling the problem, considering the huge population! I wondered whether the country’s primary care system would still work, if China pours half of its population to the US or any country where the primary care is the best. I am not in the position to judge whether the Chinese government is doing enough in regard to its capacity but I do see it’s doing something and it’s changing and I do understand there is a progress before everything is established and everyone is happy. It's wonderful to have cheap factories putting out cheap materials, but most of it is low quality, this stereotype is really out of date, I am afraid. Nowadays, over 90% of the products in the market are made in China. If they are all of low quality I am sure those supermarkets have closed down long before they set China on fire! And I wondered who it is that is really to blame even if this blame were true—knowing the quality is low the companies are still pouring into China to set up manufactories. Is that moral? put out by people who have little control over their own lives, many of them are now working for foreign capitalists. Who is to blame? who are now being shed as the economy slows down, and that despite the relatively cheap prices, must mostly be exported because little of it is affordable to the people who live in China while causing vast long term pollution issues. This is another issue! All of this will at some point come back on China, and it is the Chinese who will most suffer from it what always interests me is that foreigners worry about China much more than Chinese ourselves. But except criticism China has not receive any concrete help from any other countries, who are pointing their fingers at all the issues related with China, while leaving their own problems unsolved. No government is free of mistakes but a good government should be one that makes sure people’s situation is getting better at a satisfactory level. Money is the first issue a country has to solve and it is the core of a country really, a crucial fact everyone has to accept! Now China seems to be doing pretty well till this moment and going through China, no one would deny the improvement of people’s life compared with even couple of years ago. Chinese people do not have religion but the world has to understand: when China is misunderstood or misreported by BBC and CNN months ago, millions of Chinese, the young and old, marched into the street to voice themselves. There must be a reason under that!!! And I would not see it as anything other than the much better off life they are living because of the countries development.  (even more than they already have).

Much of the present positive spin towards China sounds very like the positive spin of the Soviet Union in the 1950s, I doubt how many economists and politicians would agree with this statement at this moment! Even BBC, when talking about Chinese uprising, has not talked in such kind of tone! most famously voiced by Nikita Khruschev's "We will bury you" speech. However, what happened there as elsewhere was that the underlying weakness eventually crushed the Soviet Union and caused still-continuing pain for all of the various people who lived there. And I do not see China having learned anything from it all. And I am really sorry that the lessons China has learned may be too many for you to easily find out this particular one among the list!

CA vs. Pragmatics

I finally reach a dilemma whether to use CA which only focuses on the talk at turns and interpret meanings of utterance according to the local context; or use pragmatics which looks at how the intentions of the speaker are produced and understood in the interactive communication eventually. Maybe using the pragmatics to see how meanings are negotiated through a third person is more interesting and productive at the end of the research. By drawing upon the social conventions sharing by people (despite nationalities), doctors can better use interpreter to realise the goal (his attention) in the medical consultation. The research my use the analytical tools from CA to analyse how the doctors can understand what is said by the patients.

I have thought of the following intentions in medical consultation:

1. The patient comes with his own intentions. In this case the doctor first will have to understand this intention. In this case the patient is the speaker to make clear his/her intention, while the doctor should draw upon his/her own knowledge to understand it. However, the doctor is also responsible to guide the patients to disclose their intentions in the consultation by giving signposts.
2. The patient revisits the doctor according to a previous talk with the doctor. In this case the doctor has an intention to make clear to the patient. In this case the doctor should be direct when possible (when breaking bad news it's another story!).

There are two levels of doing the communication study. First is to establish a model for how to interpret intentions of patients and how to make intentions clear as doctors. Second is to go into the subset of the model to see in each case how the process of consultation is carried out. Detailed skills for the doctors will be explored at this level.

由于作外事的缘故，一直来自己都很有安全意识。特别一个出国了，更是特别谨慎。但见国外生活也逐渐平静，没有刚来时的兴奋也自然少了先前的谨慎。原来自己出门也要想好，万一出个什么三长两短朋友怎么能给国内汇报，现在国外已经成了生活，而天天计划周密再出行实在累得晃，也渐渐觉得煞是没有必要。

      同宿舍女孩子也是大人了，毕业后自己也逐渐打开了交际面，认识了不少的朋友。我也习惯的认为那实属正常。看她天天找工作搞得不亦乐乎，也不觉有什么异样，没有去多管闲事。但昨天发生的事还真事蹊跷。前一天晚上女孩很早就睡了，说第二天有重要的约会。听说是约会而且在白天，我的警觉神经一根儿也没有触动。第二天自己也是要上班，也就忙开了没有估计什么。直到下班的时候，同工作的医生突然忐忑的问我：‘双宇，知不知道小马到哪里去了？’我以为大夫又和她有什么私人的约会，转眼记得她说过晚上有朋友约，猜想小马怕是打算水大夫的约，于是只说‘没听她提起什么。’哪知大夫突然说：‘今天她和我老婆出去找工作，说是一大早有车子在学校附近接。给他们找工作的其实就是个陌生女人，有一天来我们这里看病，顺带提起要招工，于是她们就很感兴趣说要一起去试工。我刚才一直给两个人分别打电话，可是一个都不接。’这话说得我一沉，我知道小马是个大咧的女孩儿，如果是她一个人出去了没有接电话我到不觉得什么奇怪的，但是大夫的太太一向很有责任心。现在扔下孩子老公不顾，而且找工作那么大的事情也不说一声，好像却是有点不妥当。

        我还正想着，突然大夫说：‘这事情不对，我们报警去吧。’虽然自己也觉得不对劲，但是警察局接受此类报案也要等24小时，现在天都没黑就报案，我怕警察不受理，于是安抚大夫先下班，回家等到晚上12点再报案也来得及。回家路上只见大夫又打来电话：‘我觉得不对，他们跟了那么一个陌生人走了，而且工作怎么可能工作到晚上6点，在英国这是不可能的。而且我老婆是很又责任心的人，不可能丢下孩子不顾到现在的。我看是肯定出问题了。’我觉得他的分析不无道理，于是赶快给室友电话，确认下马没有回家，同时回到商店和大夫汇合。只见大夫心急如焚连孩子也带了出来。小孩话不多但是看得出来没有什么神采，一定是被父亲的焦虑吓倒了。随便吃了点汉堡，我们来到了警察局，几个人无所事事的一边聊天一边填表，好像是和申请什么福利有关。几个人谈笑风生，一直耽误着，也每人问问有什么急事没有。我想，如果等一下还这么着我就要过去打断他们了。正想着，大夫突然吼起来，原来是她太太回电话了，说试工到现在，一点休息都没有。

       折腾了半天，也算是虚惊一场见到俩人满面春风有说有笑的走过来，我们才算踏实。回来的路上我也给小马讲了整个担心的来龙去脉，回想也觉得后怕，很多的以外其实就是在我们这样不经意间发生的，小马兴许就认识了国际人口贩子，兴许今天就被买到国外当妓女，随她三言两语的说有约会，我们可能要好几天才会发现问题，但这一切都晚了。

       很多时候我们多个心眼总是没错，特别一个人做事，因为很多以外就是在这么一次就发生了。而我们也许永远没有第二次的机会。这种事情宁愿永远遗憾自己多虑也不要让自己永远失去遗憾的机会！