06/16/24 - Are human lives more important, or are lectures more important?
#County government responds to Jiang Ping’s popularity. “As her neighbours, we feel very proud. We’ll organise research efforts once her competitions end. Lately, 17-year-old technical school student, Jiang Ping, came 12th place in Alibaba’s International Maths Competition. After she went viral on the internet, her hometown of Jiangsu, Wei’an City, Lianshui County, Hongyao Town has gained a lot of attention too.
On the 16th, a town government worker told Poster News that Jiang Ping is still preparing for the next rounds of competition. Once her competitions end, they’ll organise events to learn from her. “We’re very proud to produce this kind of genius. We’ll definitely research how that came about.”
Another villager reveals that Jiang Ping’s family isn’t that well off. Jiang Ping’s school explains that the finals will take place on the 22nd of June. Jiang Ping is devoting herself to preparations right now. In order to not affect her, the school is declining all media interviews.
Comments say, “Organise research? What are they researching?”
“Yeah, what are they researching? Don’t blow money on even more poorly-defined projects.”
“A phoenix flew out of a chicken’s nest, and a bunch of chickens are studying how to turn that phoenix back into a chicken. This isn’t the first time this sort of thing has happened. The media is making such a big deal out of this that they’re afraid better universities are going to headhunt her away, so they’re trying to turn this into some kind of moralistic issue. If they really brought anything to the table, they wouldn’t be so insecure.”
#Liu Ben tells Jiang Ping to maintain her passion in fashion design and maths. After 17-year-old Jiang Ping went viral, in order to give people a better idea of just how prestigious this 12th place ranking is, the third place finisher, Liu Ben, has also made it onto the trending tags. Liu Ben is a math graduate from Shandong University in 2016. He undertook postgrad education in maths in Paris, and is how a PhD from the Chinese Academy of Sciences. After this ordeal, he’s been given the nickname of “Lord Thirteen” by netizens.
After he made it onto the trending tags, Liu Ben responded, “Sister, you’ve taken me onto the trending tags too. I’m pretty stressed now. Good luck in your finals!” And at the same time, he gave his blessings, “Use your smiles to face future frost. Use your talent to complement the morning dew.”
Comments say, “Oh, he’s actually pretty hot.”
“I advise God to reconsider and not use one criteria to select talents.” [A line of Chinese poetry.]
“I hope we get stories like this every day on weibo’s trending tags. I’m sick and tired of all the bullshit going on in the entertainment industry.”
#Southern University of Medicine explains the situation. A teacher at the Southern University of Medicine faces severe punishment for being late to class because she was busy saving a patient.
Are human lives more important, or are lectures more important? The school’s answer is very clear—lectures are more important.
Lately, on the 16th of June, a teacher at the SUM was punished for saving a patient, and the university has since responded to this.
Last month, Professor Yu Lie had a patient in her paediatric care who suddenly took a turn for the worse and was in critical condition, with very high risk of death. She was required to treat what looked like an case of brain bleed. She didn’t think that this would cause her to show up late to her classes that day, and this would be considered a major teaching incident, causing her to face fines and be publicly criticised in the school newsletter, and even had her chance to get promoted cancelled.
Normally speaking, principles like “humans come first” and “lives are the most important” are enough to indicate what a doctor should do in this case. After all, in any emergency situation, a doctor has a duty to put individual lives first. What could be more important than saving lives?
But “humans first” is a double-edged sword. As a doctor, it’s her duty and responsibility to save lives. But on the other hand, she’s also a teacher. Her students are people too. Their rights to be educated shouldn’t be ignored either.
Both sides are important, so which should be prioritised?
This sort of cases actually happen at lot at teaching hospitals. In order to make sure lessons never fall out of step with practice, internships is only the entry-level of the hoops a medical student has to jump through. It is painful to grow as a doctor. Once you get used to your suffering, more suffering will come your way.
When you have to deal with surgery and teaching, your double duty will become a heavy burden on doctors, who have to choose whether they’re going to forsake God or forsake their love [also a line of Chinese poetry]. Even worse, a lot of hospitals attached to universities are a holy trinity. In addition to performing surgery and teaching, a lot of teachers also have research KPI they have to meet. If they want to do everything well, they can only choose to slack off when it comes to teaching.
This ridiculous punishment is the spark that flies when administration and workers collide in this high-stress environment.
When thousands of threads are threaded through one needle, the stronger the pressure in an area, the more rules and responsibilities become vital. In order to make sure the needle lands on the right spot every time, you need a large amount of manpower supervising. They need to be constantly cracking their whip in order to make sure everything goes well on scene. And sometimes, they have to kill the chicken to intimidate the monkeys.
From this angle, the administration who issued this punishment might not have been wrong. It’s their job to follow the rules within their capabilities. It’s not a requirement of their job to interpret the spirit of the law or to make exceptions. So they very sincerely wrote down, “She didn’t deliberately skip class to save a patient, and Professor Yu Li hurried to the classroom as fast as she could once the situation was resolved, restructured her lecture, and completed her educational goals. No negative impacts have resulted from this.” And then, they continued insisting on punishing the teacher.
This sort of inflexible mindset reminds me of Inspector Javert in Les Miserables. When he saw the protagonist, Jean Valjean, on parole, he immediately began doggedly pursuing him, even making a vow under the stars to never give up, to show his loyalty towards “law” and “justice”.
In a black and white world, rules are rules. And even when everyone is saying that obviously, saving the patient should come first, they’ll still insist that it’s still wrong to be late. The rules already allowed for this scenario—this teacher should have called ahead first, and made some kind of backup plan for when she can’t show up to teach.
This reminds me of 1921, when a young woman went to Shanghai to apply to the Beijing Xiehe Medical Hospital, and wasn’t able to complete her final English exam because she was busy saving another girl who came down with heat stroke at the exam location. When that girl thought she’d lost her chance forever at becoming a doctor, she received an acceptance letter from Beijing Xiehe Hospital. The examiners believed that, “We can raise countless students with great medical skills, but perhaps not a single student with great medical ethics.”
This girl later became the “Mother of Obstetrics”, Lin Qiaozhi.
Exactly 100 years has passed, and I never thought that this scenario would replay itself in SUM.
I can’t even say that this is even a repeat of history. I just saw four solid walls, and in the corners of these walls are countless exhausted teachers and countless supervisors.
After all, all doctors have to worry about is saving the patient. Administrators have much more they have to think about.”
Comments say, “I just think it’s ironic that this was a medical university.”
“This world’s really gone crazy.”
“What the fuck. If she’d just walked away in the middle of that surgery, what kind of incident would that be? What would be the results? How would she be punished then?”
#Southern University of Medicine teacher was teaching international students. This is a coverage of the same news story as above, covering much the same details, with the addition that, “After the incident, some netizens discovered that Professor Yu Lie was teaching a class called “Paediatrics” [that is, the lesson is in English] for the international students in that school. In 2019, SUM admitted a total of 229 international students, and 100 of them were in Professor Yu Li’s English class.
Red Star News has called SUM and nobody picked up the phone. After that, the reporter called SUM”s Children’s Hospital, and they said that Professor Yu Lie was not at work that day and refused to answer any further questions.”
Comments say, “Oh, I see, we inconvenienced our foreign masters. What a grievous sin. Don’t you know we paid out the ass to invite them here? Wasting their time is like wasting gold.”
“This school’s administration needs to reflex exactly why they would make such an inhumane decision.”
“Board of Education: She affected China’s image overseas! [doge]”
A young man from Hebei shows off one of China’s non-material historical relics [historical artisanal skills or performance arts, usually], “teeth play”. He explains that it’s very painful to hold these hog teeth in his mouth and it would cause his gums to get inflamed. He had to file his canine down so they were flat. He also goes into how it’s hard to obtain nice, long, intact tusks from domesticated pigs, because their tusks won’t grow when they’re raised on feed.
Comments say, “This is pretty far from the modern sense of beauty.”
“Yeah, I don’t get it.”
“Looks hard.”
This SUM post was pretty incredible, riddled with idioms and metaphors, and your translation preserved all that, stellar work!
medical ethnics -> medical ethics