Chinese virtue

Chapter 19 Vigorous Vitality

The vitality of the Chinese people is very tenacious, which is the basis of other characteristics of the Chinese people, and this characteristic itself is worthy of deep consideration by foreigners.The vitality of the Chinese people is mainly manifested in the following aspects: reproductive ability, adaptability to unfamiliar environments, longevity and recovery ability.

When it comes to China, most foreign travelers will first think of the country's "overpopulation".

It seems that there are people in every corner of China.Although Japan has a large population, compared with China, Japan's population density is still far behind.In terms of absolute and relative population density, only India can be compared to China.However, India has many ethnic groups with various languages, while most of the Chinese are of the Han nationality, and the influence of other ethnic groups is minimal.

There are a large number of residents living on the land of China, and these dense crowds further consolidate the first impression of foreign travelers on China's "overpopulation".While some places are sparsely populated, there are reasons for this: the Taiping raids, the Hui riots, and then the five-province famine of 1877-1878 wiped out China's population by millions .Chinese people don't like to migrate and are very attached to their hometown.So the damage done to China by the war is not as easy to repair as the West.But no matter how great the destructive power is, it cannot match the ability to repair.As long as China has decades of stability and good harvests, it will be able to recover quickly from a series of blows.We cannot deny that China has all the conditions for recovery.

In China, whether it is a village or a city, the most striking thing is a group of children playing, just like the British writer Charles Lamb said when he satirized those proud mothers: "Every dead end is densely packed." Yes. For us, what to feed these children is an eternal mystery.But in fact, there are many children in China who can't even solve the minimum "food and clothing".Of course, this also proves from one aspect that poverty cannot reduce China's population.

If you want to stop the growth of China's population, you can only use some extreme means, such as opium, war, starvation, plague and so on.These methods of direct death are undoubtedly effective and long-lasting methods.The reproductive ability of the Chinese is far greater than that of other countries, so the population is also the largest among all countries.It is conservatively estimated that China's current population is around 5000 million.The population size is not a problem, what is scary is the rapid growth rate.Although we cannot accurately calculate the population of China, the results obtained are very close to accurate.

Passing on the family line is the most deeply rooted concept in the hearts of Chinese people. This concept is more important than the love of money. Therefore, in order to be able to reproduce earlier, Chinese people get married very early.

Compared with the Chinese, the demographic situation in France is not so optimistic. France's population growth rate is the lowest in Europe.And according to the latest reports, France's population is still declining.

The report has raised concerns for many in the country.The Chinese, on the contrary, have no tendency to decline, just like the Anglo-Saxons.The Bible says that God wants people to "be fruitful and multiply and flourish in the earth."A scholar once said: "This order has been obeyed by mankind, and this is the only order of God that people obey." The Chinese are obviously the best country to implement this order.

As I said before, China has a vast territory and abundant resources.Almost all the soil and climate in the world.The people in any part of China seem to be very prosperous.Even if there are some differences, it is not a difference in the ability to adapt to the environment, but a characteristic unique to the people in the region.Cantonese and Fujianese in China, whether they immigrate to India, Burma, Siam, or the Pacific Islands, Australia, Mexico, or South America, they can adapt well to the new environment, and they are more industrious and thrifty than the locals.And the Chinese themselves are so united that the locals in these countries collectively drive out the Chinese for the sake of national security.Because of this, the Chinese no longer immigrate to foreign countries on a large scale, which is undoubtedly reassuring news for other ethnic groups.If East Asia is now full of ambitious people, eager to conquer and invade like medieval Central Asia, then we will not be able to predict what the natural law of "survival of the fittest" will look like in the end.

Since there is no precise statistical data, we can only talk about the longevity of Chinese people in general.Many people will find that there are many elderly people in every region of China.These old people are very respected, for the Chinese, "longevity" is the first of the "five blessings", so "longevity" is a kind of honor in China.Therefore, the Chinese attach great importance to the record of the date of birth, and even the time of birth will be recorded.Although the Chinese method of calculating dates is not precise.Chinese people are always used to engrave the age of the deceased on the tombstone, but except for the origin of the stone, cemeteries in other areas do not use stone tablets.Therefore, it is far from enough to infer the age of the deceased only by tombstones.

Although I have never heard of anyone in China who has lived over a hundred years old, if you look carefully, you will find that there are old people who are close to a hundred years old everywhere in China.In fact, most of China's population is poor, and these poor people are extremely malnourished.We really don't understand how these people lived to such an advanced age under such circumstances.Today, the average life expectancy of Westerners is inseparable from the improvement of lifestyle, and people continue to improve medical methods.It is worth noting that the living conditions in China have hardly changed since Columbus discovered the New World.If China's social science and medical science can be as developed as the UK, then the number of Chinese long-lived people will increase.

Every Chinese doesn't seem to pay much attention to hygiene, even if they already understand that "doing this is unhygienic", they still do it.All foreigners living in China know these things.These foreigners have always wondered why the diseases caused by ignorance and contempt for the laws of nature did not make the Chinese extinct?In fact, many people in China die from these preventable diseases every year, but the number of people infected with diseases is far more than these, which fully proves the admirable disease resistance and recovery ability of the Chinese people.Chinese people often risk their own lives when they are angry, and at the same time they cherish their own lives very much. This kind of contradictory character is one of the remarkable national characteristics of Chinese people.

We have mentioned repeatedly in this chapter that we do not have detailed statistics and must rely on the records of foreign observers.Fortunately, the number of hospitals in foreign countries is constantly increasing, and the records are also increasing, becoming more accurate and more valuable.

In order to find out the Chinese people's disease resistance and recovery ability, it is necessary to organize and analyze the annual medical reports regularly. We believe that we will be able to obtain the information we want and get unexpected results.Here, let's give a few examples and explain a little bit. I am familiar with the first two things, and the other one is taken from a report of a hospital in Tianjin.These few cases are as special as the facts known to most readers, and they are also related to each other to a certain extent.

A few years ago, I lived in the same courtyard with a Chinese family.One afternoon, I suddenly heard someone screaming under the window. It turned out that there was a hornet's nest in the hole under the window sill made of broken bricks. A fourteen-month-old child thought the hole was a fun place, so he crawled in. , As a result, more than [-] packs of bee stings were stung on his bald head.The child just fell asleep on the kang after crying for a while, without any medicine or anything applied.The strange thing is that the child didn't cry all night, and the bag on the child's head disappeared the next day.

In 1878, many people in the world died of epidemic typhus, and a coachman hired by a foreigner in Beijing also suffered from the disease. No. On the 13th day, the driver's illness was already very serious, and several people could not subdue the driver who became violent.That night the coachman was tied to the bed, but when the guard was asleep, he secretly untied the rope and escaped.About three o'clock in the morning, the watchman awoke, found the coachman missing, and started looking for him, until he was found against a wall about ten feet high.He first climbed a tree, then climbed over the high wall and escaped along the moat of the palace wall.When people found him, his head stuck into the iron fence of the city wall culvert, probably because his head was so hot that he couldn't stand it and wanted to cool off.He's been in this state for a long time.On the way to take him back, the guards were amazed to find that, except for some rheumatic pains in his legs, the symptoms of fever disappeared completely.It's incredible.

There is a 30-year-old man from Tianjin who earns his living by collecting spent shell casings near the training ground of the Chinese army.Once when he was dismantling the shells he picked up, his left leg was blown off.The hospital performed an amputation operation for him, and his left leg was amputated below the knee.After he was discharged from the hospital, he quickly returned to his old job and continued his life of collecting bullet casings.Half a year later, the tragedy happened again. His left wrist and arm two inches above the wrist were completely blown away, and the upper half of his right arm was also severely burned by gunpowder. The bridge of his nose and upper lip, his right cheek, the upper eyelid of his right eye, and his forehead The rear side of his body was scratched to varying degrees by the exploding shrapnel, and his right calf was cut open, exposing even the bones.He was knocked unconscious and was exposed to the sun for more than four hours before passing officials saw him and ordered him to be carried to the hospital.The person who carried him threw it into the ditch as soon as the officials left.He was very weak from the blood loss, but he crawled out of the ditch, hopped a long way, and ate something at a shop.In order not to let him continue to interfere with business here, the shop owner carried him to the hospital gate in a basket and left him to fend for himself.Although he was very weak from blood loss, he was perfectly sane and could even speak clearly.He had been smoking opium for a while, which was very detrimental to his physical recovery.However, in the past few days of treatment, he only had mild diarrhea and malaria on the fifth and sixth days, without any other bad symptoms.Eventually, he was released from the hospital after four weeks with a prosthetic leg.

If the people of a nation can have the same physical fitness as the Chinese, then this nation will be able to survive various adverse conditions, and war, opium, famine, and plague will no longer be terrible.If they can pay more attention to some physiological and hygienic laws, and have sufficient food and nutrition, then such a nation will stand at the top of the world's nations and occupy most of the world.

(End of this chapter)