Teachings from classical texts in promoting well-being in modern China

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. Chen
Keyword(s):  
Author(s):  
Lili Wang

The purpose of the article is to study the process of migration of peasants to the cities of modern China. As a result of the economic reform and the increase in the material well-being of the Chinese, the mobility of the country’s population has increased significantly. By its nature, migration in China is divided into permanent, seasonal and temporary (of two types — “pendulum” and “shuttle”). In terms of directions, migration in China is divided into migration from a village to a city, migration from a suburb to a city, and migration from one city to another city. An example of “pendulum” and “shuttle” (up to three months) migration can be the movement of workers freed from the agricultural sector in search of other forms and options for agricultural activity.


Author(s):  
Wei-Jun Jean Yeung ◽  
Shu Hu

This article aims to (1) describe trends for Chinese young adults’ pathways into adulthood for birth cohorts that have experienced distinct historical events over the past half century and (2) examine factors that shape young adults’ transitioning behavior. We draw data from the 2005 to 2008 Chinese General Social Survey. In contrast to the increasingly protracted trend seen in many Western societies, the more recent Chinese cohorts transitioned to marriage and parenthood sooner than those who grew up during the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. The economic and education reforms since the late 1970s have greatly increased urban-rural disparity in youths’ life trajectories despite their generally positive impact on young adults’ educational attainment and economic well-being. While near-universal marriage and childbearing within marriage prevail and son preference remains strong in modern China, evidence suggests that today’s young Chinese are exploring new pathways to adulthood, including cohabitation and premarital sex.


Author(s):  
David L. Hall ◽  
Roger T. Ames

Any attempt to survey an intellectual tradition which encompasses more than four thousand years would be a daunting task even if it could be presumed that the reader shares, at least tacitly, many of the assumptions underlying that tradition. However, no such commonalities can be assumed in attempting to introduce Asian thinking to Western readers. Until the first Jesuit incursions in the late sixteenth century, China had developed in virtual independence of the Indo-European cultural experience and China and the Western world remained in almost complete ignorance of one another. The dramatic contrast between Chinese and Western modes of philosophic thinking may be illustrated by the fact that the tendency of European philosophers to seek out the being of things, the essential reality lying behind appearances, would meet with little sympathy among Chinese thinkers, whose principal interests lie in the establishment and cultivation of harmonious relationships within their social ambiance. Contrasted with Anglo-European philosophic traditions, the thinking of the Chinese is far more concrete, this-worldly and, above all, practical. One reason for this difference is suggested by the fact that cosmogonic and cosmological myths played such a minor role in the development of Chinese intellectual culture and that, as a consequence, Chinese eyes were focused not upon issues of cosmic order but upon more mundane questions of how to achieve communal harmony within a relatively small social nexus. The rather profound linguistic and ethnic localism of what Pliny the Elder described as a ‘stay-at-home’ China, reinforced by a relative freedom from intercultural contact, generated traditional radial communities in which moral, aesthetic and spiritual values could remain relatively implicit and unarticulated. By contrast, in the West these norms had to be abstracted and raised to the level of consciousness to adjudicate conflicts occasioned by the complex ethnic and linguistic interactions associated with the development of a civilization rooted almost from the beginning in the confluence of Greek, Hebrew, and Latin civilizations. The distinctive origins and histories of Chinese and Western civilizations are manifested in a number of important ways. The priority of logical reasoning in the West is paralleled in China by the prominence of less formal uses of analogical, parabolic and literary discourse. The Chinese are largely indifferent to abstract analyses that seek to maintain an objective perspective, and are decidedly anthropocentric in their motivations for the acquisition, organization and transmission of knowledge. The disinterest in dispassionate speculations upon the nature of things, and a passionate commitment to the goal of social harmony was dominant throughout most of Chinese history. Indeed, the interest in logical speculations on the part of groups such as the sophists and the later Mohists was short-lived in classical China. The concrete, practical orientation of the Chinese toward the aim of communal harmony conditioned their approach toward philosophical differences. Ideological conflicts were seen, not only by the politicians but by the intellectuals themselves, to threaten societal well-being. Harmonious interaction was finally more important to these thinkers than abstract issues of who had arrived at the ‘truth’. Perhaps the most obvious illustration of the way the Chinese handled their theoretical conflicts is to be found in mutual accommodation of the three emergent traditions of Chinese culture, Confucianism, Daoism and Buddhism. Beginning in the Han dynasty (206 bc–ad 220), the diverse themes inherited from the competing ‘hundred schools’ of pre-imperial China were harmonized within Confucianism as it ascended to become the state ideology. From the Han synthesis until approximately the tenth century ad, strong Buddhist and religious Daoist influences continued to compete with persistent Confucian themes, while from the eleventh century to the modern period, Neoconfucianism – a Chinese neoclassicism – absorbed into itself these existing tensions and those that would emerge as China, like it or not, confronted Western civilization. In the development of modern China, when Western influence at last seemed a permanent part of Chinese culture, the values of traditional China have remained dominant. For a brief period, intellectual activity surrounding the May Fourth movement in 1919 seemed to be leading the Chinese into directions of Western philosophic interest. Visits by Bertrand Russell and John Dewey, coupled with a large number of Chinese students seeking education in Europe, Great Britain and the USA, promised a new epoch in China’s relations with the rest of the world. However, the Marxism that Mao Zedong sponsored in China was ‘a Western heresy with which to confront the West’. Mao’s Marxism quickly took on a typically ‘Chinese’ flavour, and China’s isolation from Western intellectual currents continued essentially unabated.


2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 274-284 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Convery ◽  
Gitte Keidser ◽  
Louise Hickson ◽  
Carly Meyer

Purpose Hearing loss self-management refers to the knowledge and skills people use to manage the effects of hearing loss on all aspects of their daily lives. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between self-reported hearing loss self-management and hearing aid benefit and satisfaction. Method Thirty-seven adults with hearing loss, all of whom were current users of bilateral hearing aids, participated in this observational study. The participants completed self-report inventories probing their hearing loss self-management and hearing aid benefit and satisfaction. Correlation analysis was used to investigate the relationship between individual domains of hearing loss self-management and hearing aid benefit and satisfaction. Results Participants who reported better self-management of the effects of their hearing loss on their emotional well-being and social participation were more likely to report less aided listening difficulty in noisy and reverberant environments and greater satisfaction with the effect of their hearing aids on their self-image. Participants who reported better self-management in the areas of adhering to treatment, participating in shared decision making, accessing services and resources, attending appointments, and monitoring for changes in their hearing and functional status were more likely to report greater satisfaction with the sound quality and performance of their hearing aids. Conclusion Study findings highlight the potential for using information about a patient's hearing loss self-management in different domains as part of clinical decision making and management planning.


2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (10) ◽  
pp. 109-115 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Oates ◽  
Georgia Dacakis

Because of the increasing number of transgender people requesting speech-language pathology services, because having gender-incongruent voice and communication has major negative impacts on an individual's social participation and well-being, and because voice and communication training is supported by an improving evidence-base, it is becoming more common for universities to include transgender-specific theoretical and clinical components in their speech-language pathology programs. This paper describes the theoretical and clinical education provided to speech-language pathology students at La Trobe University in Australia, with a particular focus on the voice and communication training program offered by the La Trobe Communication Clinic. Further research is required to determine the outcomes of the clinic's training program in terms of student confidence and competence as well as the effectiveness of training for transgender clients.


2010 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 68-74 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine S. Shaker

Current research on feeding outcomes after discharge from the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) suggests a need to critically look at the early underpinnings of persistent feeding problems in extremely preterm infants. Concepts of dynamic systems theory and sensitive care-giving are used to describe the specialized needs of this fragile population related to the emergence of safe and successful feeding and swallowing. Focusing on the infant as a co-regulatory partner and embracing a framework of an infant-driven, versus volume-driven, feeding approach are highlighted as best supporting the preterm infant's developmental strivings and long-term well-being.


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