Chinese volunteers working for the upcoming Paralympics have learned some hard lessons from the rebuff they've received for trying to lend a helping hand to some of the wheelchair-bound athletes.
From the TV news footage, I can sense the volunteers' uneasiness as they stand by, while the athletes haul their own luggage.
Both the rebuff and the uneasiness reflect a profound cultural difference. For many visiting Paralympians, respect for personal independence - mental as well as physical - overrides all other concerns.
For most Chinese, however, care for the elderly and for people with disabilities is a virtue they have learned from their first day in school.
Over the years, there have been several media stories about wheelchair-bound teens who were able to finish primary and middle school with their classmates' help. Sometimes, the classmates take turns carrying the teen up and down the stairs, since no primary or middle school on the Chinese mainland has elevators.
Care-giving, or zhaogu in Chinese, has been a part of China's administrative or social policies as well.
Under special care-giving policies, middle school graduates with physical disabilities did not have to go to the countryside to receive "re-education" during the "cultural revolution" (1966-76). They were able to start earning a salary at factories or plants near their homes. In fact, most of these factories were established to provide jobs for people with physical disabilities.
In the days when New China was still economically backward, such policies were appropriate, affirmative actions. Unfortunately, they ignored a fundamental concern of disabled people: how to enjoy the same dignity and independence as their able-bodied peers.
Many disabled people learn from an early age what they "cannot" do.
I remember my first sports meet, when I was a first grader. There was a relay race with 30 students from each of the four classes participating. In my class, however, there were 33 students, so three had to be excluded: a boy who had had polio, another boy who was too overweight to run, and a girl who was too weak to participate.
I was the girl who was left out. Like the overweight boy and the polio victim, I felt deeply disappointed to be sitting on the sidelines.
As I grew up, I came to notice similar disappointments in my schoolmates or workmates with disabilities. Though talented and with almost perfect academic records, very few of them qualified for college entrance exams or for jobs with State-owned factories or academic institutions.
Although they benefited from the State's care-giving policies, they were barred from competing equally with their able-bodied peers.
Many readers are familiar with the moving stories of Zhang Haidi, from Shandong province, and Hou Jingjing, from Jiangsu province. These two women have managed to overcome severe paralysis and teach themselves English and other subjects. Zhang Haidi is now a writer and translator. Hou Jingjing is luckier, as her application to enroll in a master's program was accepted as an exception from Nanjing Normal University. Hou earned her Ph.D and is now an associate professor of English there. However, Zhang and Hou are the exceptions.
As China's economy continues to boom and the government's coffers swell, care-giving has expanded and money is available to enable disabled people to move around their neighborhoods and even around town easily, without troubling other people.
But genuine affirmative policies should now be formulated to enable universities and colleges, as well as all government departments, to take the lead and evaluate all their applicants solely on their merits, without regard to their physical abilities.
Only when they are able to compete on an equal footing will those with disabilities develop a sense of dignity and independence. This, I believe, is care-giving in its true sense.
E-mail: lixing@chinadaily.com.cn
(China Daily 09/04/2008 page8)
