Author 丨 Liu Sijie Editor 丨 Sydney King
"If human beings could live forever, what would you like to do?" Try to think about that scenario. ”
Old Yuan stood on the podium and asked questions to the students. Liu Chan under the podium thought to himself, Eternal life is a good thing, isn't this something that human beings have always wanted to achieve? Liu Chan was a 2016 biomedical student at Southern University of Science and Technology, and Lao Yuan's "Understanding Death" was a compulsory course for their major at that time. Like most of her classmates, Liu Chan's future was determined the moment she entered the university — doing scientific research and studying abroad. This is a future that looks perfectly correct and bright.
In October 2017, Liu Chen began to work on a project. It was a subject that she did not think was of academic significance, because liu Chan was assigned a job that the seniors hated— dissecting mice. The project continued until 2018, that spring, when she began to study the lesson of "Understanding Death".
Liu Chan couldn't think of anything he could do for the time being if people couldn't die. In dissecting mice day after day, she has no special goals to achieve, and she does not know what the meaning of life is.
"Eternal life is actually a terrible thing." Old Yuan's voice interrupted Liu Chan's thoughts.
"Old Yuan" is really named Yuan Changgeng, in his thirties, flat head, small beard, wearing a pair of black-rimmed glasses, speaking very quickly, clear logic. He's an assistant professor at Southern University of Science and Technology, and in this elective course called Understanding Death, he talks to a group of 20-something students about "which way you want to leave the world" and the hidden suicides and funerals in traditional Chinese culture.
The sparks of thought stirring in this boxy classroom seem to be out of place with everything around them — in the innovative school of Southern University of Science and Technology, which was only built in 2012, young students run on the playground, and cutting-edge scientific research is produced under cutting-edge scientific research equipment, and everything seems to be vibrant. In Shenzhen, where SUSTech is located, the gears of development are rotating at high speed, and death is difficult to find.
But old Yuan wanted to be the maverick.
The "cow ghost snake god" is confused in their lives
In Shenzhen in April 2018, the weather was humid and hot, and after the first class of "Understanding Death", five students, including Liu Chan, had not dispersed. They surrounded Old Yuan, "Teacher, what is the meaning of life?" "Teacher, should I change majors?" Most of the questions are not related to the course itself, and students are looking forward to getting some answers to some questions about life from this course.
In the eyes of the students, Lao Yuan is a teacher who will always stand in the camp of students. He often interacts with students, attends film salons, books, and even meets him at concerts. He is active in social platforms full of young people such as Douban and Station B, likes to share his life and insights, and sincerely answers the confusion raised by students.
Classmates like Liu Chan, who always surrounded Old Yuan, were jokingly called the "Cow Ghost Snake God" of SUSTech by Old Yuan. They are not outstanding students under the evaluation system of SUSTech, they are not the winners of national competition projects, they have no scientific research results, their grades are not top-notch, and they have not even served as cadres in classes or schools.
After Old Yuan answered his questions and left, the five students gathered in the middle of the patio between the dormitory buildings. It was three o'clock in the morning, and the conversation they were talking about had transitioned from the value of life to the symptoms of depression and how to take medication. A classmate talked vaguely about her depression, and a girl said that she often climbed the roof of a certain teaching building and hesitated many times whether to jump.
Some students have spoken out that life is absurd; some people think that life should be happy in time; some students are optimistic and positive, believing that life is to realize ideals, study and work well, and serve the motherland. Several students found arguments to argue with each other, and they would refute each other's views without hesitation, but no one wanted to convince anyone.
In the darkness of the night, Liu Chan saw the light in the eyes of her companions, which was one of the few shining moments of her college days in her memory.
That time was the low point of Liu Chen's life, and she was always doubting the meaning of the work she did. The mice that died under the knife made her fall into a deep sense of guilt. Doubt also extends from an experiment and a subject to the path you have chosen and the meaning of life. She lay in bed at 12 o'clock every night, fell asleep at two or three o'clock in the morning, and woke up naturally at four o'clock. As a result, she lost 20 pounds and kept losing her hair.
"Suppose you had 4 ways to leave this world, which one would you choose?"
Old Yuan on the podium asked questions again, and he threw out four options at the same time - A. Lonely Old Man for life; B. Sudden cardiovascular disease; C. AIDS; D. The plane he was riding on disintegrated at an altitude of 10,000 meters and died in an air crash.
Liu Chan did not hesitate to choose to "die in an air crash." In her eyes at the time, such a death was as brilliant as fireworks, without pain. And similar to dying of a disease, it must be painful. Dying in an air crash is the option that students in each class choose the most.
When designing this question, Yuan Changgeng originally thought that the "air crash" would be the most difficult for everyone to accept. In his conversations with students, he found that the students had not thought about how such a death would affect their loved ones and society. Most of the students who come to this course are growing up, well protected by the school and society, and most of them are ignorant of death.
"In many cases, this era is shielding death." Hu Yi'an, who opened a life and death class at Guangzhou University in 2000, bluntly believed that "the same is true in family education, some sayings have a long history, such as relatives seriously ill and hospitalized, it is best not to let children in at the time of death; disaster scenes, farewell to the body will make children avoid; after tea and dinner, avoid talking about death, think it is unlucky things." In the 22 years since the beginning of the course, Hu Yi'an has approached thousands of students, some of whom suffer from depression and have thought of committing suicide, and some of whom want to find an answer in this class after experiencing the death of a loved one. When truly facing death, students show not only dazedness, but also fear, resistance and other emotions.
"Chinese when we talk about death, it's like elementary school students, because there has never been real education on death in China." CCTV host Bai Yansong said. This claim is not unfounded — death education emerged in the United States in the 1920s; in 1963, Minnesota State University first established a death education curriculum. A long-term survey from 1975 to 2005 shows that in this 30-year period, lectures and short courses on death education have grown from 7% to 87%, and the number of institutions offering independent death education courses has grown from 7% in 1975 to 18% in 2005. The United Kingdom, Japan and other countries have also successively opened the practice of death education after the United States. In Contrast, in China, it was only after 2000 that death education slowly spread in colleges and universities.
In 2006, Wang Yunling of the School of Basic Medicine of Shandong University wanted to open an elective course related to death education for the whole school, but when it was submitted for approval, it was rejected by the university. In the end, he chose a compromise approach and applied only for classes in medical school. Talking about death with medical students who will face life and death every day in the future is considered understandable, and the hospital leaders agreed with Wang Yunling's idea. The course did not become a school-wide elective in 2021 until it attracted media attention and was selected as a national elite course.
Yuan Changgeng was in class
In contrast, Yuan Changgeng's class was quite smooth. In 2016, after graduating with a Ph.D., he went to sustech to teach. At that time, the acceptance of death education in society was constantly improving, sustech, as a national higher education reform experimental school, encouraged teachers to innovate education, Yuan Changgeng did not encounter any obstacles when applying for the course "Understanding Death".
Don't be the one who gives the answer
When talking to students, Yuan Changgeng found that many people had a period of great fear of death in their childhood, but because the environment of death was not discussed, they would not tell their families about this fear. As we age, fear fades, but it remains deep in the heart—it seems to transform into a fear of failure, fear that one's life is meaningless, and fear of being left behind.
Yuan Changgeng also carried the pain left by death. At the age of seven, his mother died of leukemia. In math class, a strange man pushed open the door, "Is Yuan Changgeng in this class?" I'll pick him up and see. So Yuan Changgeng was led to the hospital, the mother on the bed was much thinner, doctors, nurses and a group of relatives gathered around her, Grandma sat on the side and kept crying, and the father ripped off the toilet paper and let Yuan Changgeng wipe the blood from the corners of his mouth for his mother.
At that time, Yuan Changgeng did not know what it meant that his mother was lying on the hospital bed. After his mother's death, no one discussed her death with him, and no one taught him how to deal with her death, and he was pulled like a puppet to participate in all the funeral ceremonies. In the days that followed, the family was silent about his mother's death, his father remarried, and Yuan Changgeng, like an adult, learned not to talk about his mother's death.
Too many emotions have not yet been expressed, and they are permanently sealed. His mother's death became a scar in Yuan Changgeng's heart. He later found that because of his avoidance of this matter at that time, he always had an avoidance psychology when facing some major nodes in his life later.
During his doctoral studies, Yuan Changgeng wrote an essay expressing his repressed emotions over the years and his longing for his mother. At the moment of writing the article, he felt that he had finally let go of some of his guilt and hatred for his mother's death. But such a remedy is always late, and it cannot make up for the lack of Yuan Changgeng's heart. Therefore, when designing the death class, Yuan Changgeng wanted to give more thought to the students. Liu Chan remembers that the content of the study includes the most basic theories, such as what is life and what is a good ending, do you think the soul is necessary? Coupled with Yuan Changgeng's own design and death-related topics, such as funerals, suicide, sacrifice, bereavement...
In Liu Chan's view, there are too many knowledge points in this course, and Lao Yuan is a doctor of philosophy in anthropology, and the lectures are full of anthropology, philosophy, and sociology knowledge. These theories are obscure to students who are just starting out in college.
But this does not hinder Liu Chan's love for this course. This was her first exposure to education about death, and in a science and engineering college, such a humanistic course was precious, and it was one of the few opportunities for Liu Chan to get a breather from her heavy and boring scientific research work.
One of the most popular among students is the lesson "Suicide". Yuan Changgeng stood on the podium and asked, "Is suicide a mistake?" Does a person have the right to commit suicide? He then cited Zhang Guorong's suicide and Gansu farmer Yang Gailan's suicide by killing five children first, asking students to think about why they chose to commit suicide. He then leads his students to try to understand it from a rational point of view through a philosophical perspective, but "reason is beyond life, life is part of reason, and if suicide cancels life, then reason ceases to exist." From this perspective, Yuan Changgeng denied that suicide can be discussed from a rational point of view. Then he asked, is suicide a moral issue?
Zhao Yuqing, a student of the class of 2020, thought that Lao Yuan would use philosophical methods to explain and tell students that they should not commit suicide, but in the end of the discussion, they found that suicide is not a rational problem nor a moral problem.
Yuan Changgeng will not be the one who gives the answer in class, he hopes to guide and inspire students to think, and the discussion between teachers and students will drive the process of the classroom. In the suicide class, he also hopes to be able to discuss suicide to build a context, let the students discuss the current mental state, and give them an outlet to express their distress.
The classroom atmosphere is usually silent. Yuan Changgeng could feel the thoughts and emotions rolling in his heart under the appearance of the students' silence. In 2021, after the class, a student suffering from depression and taking medicine for a long time wrote to Yuan Changgeng, saying that she had taken the knife to her hand many times, but thinking about the discussion and thinking in this class, she dismissed the idea of suicide.
Some of the students who were falling were held up.
It ends with a funeral
In addition to the difficult theory, Yuan Changgeng designed the curriculum to be as interesting as possible, hoping to use various innovations to make young students really feel death. At the beginning of the first semester of 2018, the final assignment was to let the students design a funeral.
Yuan Changgeng posted a poster of the final homework in the circle of friends, which attracted many people to watch. On that day, students who came to observe crowded into the hallway, where someone stood on a stool and peered through the open window to see what was happening in the classroom.
The classroom lights were turned off, and only candles were lit near the lectern. Each group enters in turn, showcasing the funerals they have designed. The students in the audience were silent, as if watching the scenes in the movie take place on the podium.
A Chinese funeral caught everyone's eye—paper money scattered from high places, members dressed in mourning clothes and holding candles, and cries from the crowd. Because the simulation was too realistic and attracted everyone's attention, Liu Chan sat under the podium, holding his breath, and then a classmate burned paper money on the ground. Liu Chen's group carefully prepared a Japanese funeral. One of the students in the group was interested in Japanese mythology, and the funeral was based on the Japanese mythology compiled by the classmate. They came from under the podium in black costumes bought online and hand-painted masks by Liu Chan. The deceased suddenly stood up after the end of the mourning, responding to the mourning of the living, "Thank you for coming to bid me farewell, I heard everything you said." The funeral culminated.
The "funeral scene" of Liu Chan's group
The sudden upturn of the deceased is a specially designed part of the session, "hoping to build this dialogue between life and death and give the living a comfort."
Such a bold classroom experiment attracted enough attention in a science and engineering college that when the scene pictures were disseminated to social networks, Yuan Changgeng received a call from the school leader in the early morning and criticized him. Since then, the homework of each semester has become an essay written according to the proposed theme.
Yuan Changgeng feels some regret - death is abstract, pure theoretical narration is difficult to really penetrate people's hearts, and through interaction, students can concretely perceive death.
He later realized that the phone call from the school leaders might be a cut in the tightening of the teaching atmosphere. The school leaders did not explicitly oppose the course, but in their attitude, Yuan Changgeng read out the question of "why do you have to talk about this?". He had envisioned taking students to funeral parlors or bringing in police, forensic doctors, and other people who had been exposed to death to teach the students. But without the support of the school, coupled with his limited ability, these ideas could not be realized.
In the later stages, Yuan Changgeng gradually became discouraged, and he realized that he could not fully control the course. Limited by his own knowledge reserves and life experiences, some issues are difficult to explore and communicate in depth, and cannot achieve a completely ideal effect.
Yuan Changgeng always tries to use scientific methods to build each link of the curriculum, he just throws out the problem, and through interaction and discussion with students, jointly outlines the context of the course. He does not want to be seen as a master of absolute truth. But this is contrary to the original intention of the vast majority of students - the latter chose the course because he hoped that Lao Yuan could answer some of his doubts and get some comfort from him, or just to express his support for Lao Yuan. These expectations are projected onto the death class, and the independence of the two sides is weakened, and the possibility of fuller and more open discussion is denied.
Yuan Changgeng was a little disappointed, in the course practice, he planted a seed, but the direction of plant growth is no longer completely controlled by him. In the last two years, the death class has become a decent elective.
Taboo topics
But the thinking about death continues.
With the growth of life experience, Yuan Changgeng has an extra layer of understanding of death and has also raised new questions. During the lecture, his grandfather died of cancer. Grandpa was deaf in both ears and had extremely difficulty communicating with his family. Yuan Changgeng believes that he left in the subjective mood atmosphere he had constructed. He told the students about his grandfather's death and threw out questions to provoke them to discuss.
"If in a society there is very little discussion of disease, aging, and death, and there is a lack of corresponding popularization of ideas, then when an individual or family encounters such a situation, must it be a good strategy to inform?" The students had no answers, and Yuan Changgeng himself had not found the answers.
After the MU5735 crash, Yuan Changgeng wrote his first will, and the sudden and major disaster made him realize the impermanence of life again. In his will, he detailed the distribution of his posthumous estate and the care of the elderly. He planned to renew his will every six months.
After realizing that death could happen at any time, Liu Chan also took the initiative to talk to his parents about their dying. The mother initially avoided talking about this topic with Liu Chan, but she could not stand Liu Chan's initiative more times, so she temporarily left the taboo on death.
During the conversation, Liu Chan learned that her mother did not want to be rescued with a tube in the last moment of her life, but wanted to return home and stay with her family. The mother also hopes that after her death, her daughter will keep all her photos and write an email to her friends on her behalf. Liu Chan plans to talk to his parents about this topic every few years, "People's views will definitely change, maybe in a few years they will face death and have different ideas." ”
After teaching death lessons for 22 years, 59-year-old Hu Yi'an is also constantly learning to live with death. As he grew older, he first had to learn to accept aging: Hu Yi'an's family lived on the 27th floor, and he used to climb the stairs every day to exercise, but was later warned by doctors that his knees could no longer climb when he was aging; his eyesight continued to decline; he began to be frequently called "grandpa".
He himself had near-death experiences. In 2007, he rode a bicycle and drove a computer host to repair a computer, the intersection was a red light, he turned left illegally, and was hit by a farm car and fell to the ground. A meter away, there was a pile of rocks for construction, and he judged that if he bumped into it, he would probably die. Fortunately, on that occasion, he only fixed the steel plate on his shoulder. Six months later, Hu Yi'an went to the hospital to get the steel plate, and because the anesthetic was not enough, he could clearly hear the sound of the doctor removing the screws—it was a sound similar to the sound of an electric drill hitting the wall when installing an air conditioner, followed by the sound of a scalpel cutting through the skin, and he clearly felt the piercing pain.
In class, he talked about his experiences over and over again. Recently, he has taken the initiative to bring the COVID-19 epidemic into the classroom. In his view, the epidemic is an introduction, which can make students feel the constantness and impermanence of life. Living and working step by step is the constantity of life; the death of a loved one, a sudden accident, or loss or breakup are all impermanences of life. People live most of the time in the constant, ignoring the impermanence of life.
When you don't know how to deal with impermanence, the order of life is broken. Hu Yi'an feels that the epidemic is to put the impermanent moments of life in front of people's eyes, so that everyone cannot avoid it, and then slowly learn to deal with it.
"Because of death, life is meaningful"
At the end of the spring semester of 2022, Yuan Changgeng will leave SUSTech. He reckoned that he would never have the chance to teach death classes again.
As an anthropologist, Yuan Changgeng feels that the fragility and disillusionment of the human meaning system has never been more obvious than in the past 20 years. Some students who perform very well in school and stand out in all aspects may be the most nihilistic students, "The generation of young people who have come out of the college entrance examination seem to have a lot of options, in fact, just those few options, the choices are the same, rebuilding their own lives is much more difficult than imagined." Everyone's life hangs in mid-air, without connection with the people around them. This is the disease of the times. ”
In his view, death education is not just about talking about death, he wants to guide students to think and find the value of life. The course is like a seed buried in the bottom of the student's heart, and as the student grows, the seed will slowly sprout.
Zhao Yuqing said that he was not sure if he had grown. After the end of the college entrance examination, her life lost its direction. Not long after entering college, she was diagnosed with depression. Every morning when she opened her eyes, the six big words "life has no meaning" pressed against her chest. She understood that many of the confusions had always existed, but they had been suppressed by the high load of study before the college entrance examination, and now these confusions had finally slipped out and crushed her.
After taking the course "Understanding Death", Zhao Yuqing felt that all she had to do and could do was to explore the meaning of life. In order to find the connection with people and the meaning of life, in her sophomore year, Zhao Yuqing chose to go to the United States to exchange and study anthropology - this is undoubtedly influenced by the old Yuan, "I always feel that people and people can not fully understand. This is the reason why Zhao Yuqing feels lonely and feels that life is meaningless, "but Old Yuan feels that people and people can understand each other." Zhao Yuqing wanted to find answers through anthropology.
Zhao Yuqing was exchanged at the University of Notre Dame, a Catholic "New Ivy League" school. On the campus where she attended, there was a large cemetery of religious members. When she first entered the school, when her anthropology tutor passed by the cemetery, she did not shy away from telling Zhao Yuqing that she would be buried in the cemetery after she died. The instructor's tone was as calm as when talking about the weather.
After that, when the mood is not good, Zhao Yuqing will go to this cemetery in a daze and think, which makes her calm. She thought of what Old Yuan said in the chapter on "Funeral": "Life and death are important nodes that human beings must pass through, and they are also an important doorway for collective acceptance of individuals. Imagine if a person dies and needs to be transported elsewhere for a funeral, then that person loses a strong connection to his place of birth." She also gradually understood what Old Yuan had said in class. When I saw the school cemetery, I came to a new conclusion, "Without the cemetery, you can't form a community."
"I feel like I've been revived." At the end of the course "Understanding Death", Liu Chan completed his own redemption.
Group photo of Liu Chan
Today, Liu Chen is pursuing graduate studies in environmental health in the United States. For the past four years, she has constantly asked herself, "Who am I," "What am I what I am," and "What am I going to do?" In this questioning, she slowly explored her own direction. Initially, because she did not want to engage in scientific research anymore, she changed majors to the only liberal arts major at Southern University of Science and Technology - finance. On the eve of graduation, she saw that her heart still wanted to work related to the natural environment and human health, so she went to the United States to continue her studies.
In different cultural contexts, Liu Chan's values have been impacted. The per capita medical resources in the United States are about ten times that of The country, and the process of seeking medical treatment makes her feel "luxurious". And because of the abundant medical resources, they also have the courage not to do strict epidemic prevention and control, in the face of the epidemic, they pay more attention to secondary disasters.
Many of the things that Old Yuan said in class also popped into his head from time to time.
"Because of death, life is meaningful", is Liu Chan's most impressive sentence. "Life is limited, so talent needs to create value in a limited life." After all these years of thinking and practice, Liu Chan interpreted it this way.
When asked if he was satisfied with his current state, Liu Chan replied, "People can never be satisfied with themselves." ”
"What about before?"
"Then I'm definitely getting better and better." She answered firmly.
Four years ago, the girl who felt that life was empty finally understood what Lao Yuan said in the first class, "If people can live forever, it will be a terrible thing."