During the Beiyang government period, the Tianjin Municipal Health Bureau often extended the time of the health campaign to 1-2 weeks, or even up to 1 month, because it "felt that the exercise of one or two days had little effect", and usually referred to the may and December exercises as spring health sports and winter health sports respectively.
As for the content and methods of the health campaign, although the duration of the health campaign has been held for different times, it is basically inseparable from the several ends of speeches, screening of sanitary films, cleaning, sanitary exhibitions and fly extermination exercises.
Compared with publicity activities, fly hunting is more deeply rooted in people's hearts.
More fly killing sports are held in Tianjin than in the summer every year, and the combination of publicity and competition is a common approach. Because flies have strong reproductive ability and great harm, fly control methods have become the focus of publicity.
In order to eradicate flies, the Health Bureau hopes that the public will regularly clean up places that are prone to breeding flies, such as garbage bins, toilets, cesspools, and livestock houses, which is the so-called "ex-origin". The methods of dealing with maggots and adult flies, from spraying boiling water and sprinkling lime to how to make flycatcher paper, are more detailed to the public.
Since the public may not be aware that flies are vectors for infectious diseases, the health authorities have also explained to them the scientific basis and necessity of fly control, and called on the public to work together to control flies. In addition to the dissemination of similar health knowledge through the power of the media, it is also printed into leaflets and distributed to various organs, groups, schools and the public, and famous doctors are invited to speak at various lecture centers in Tianjin, expand the propaganda of fly control, or hang propaganda slogans, pictures and flags in important streets to arouse the attention of the public to the anti-fly movement.
When Tianjin carried out the first fly control exercise, it resorted to the method of prize competition, and the rewards were silver shields, medals and luminous watches.
Tianjin primary school students are the leaders of the fly extermination movement, winning the top few, but there are also citizens other than primary school students who participate in the fly catching exercise in their own names and win awards, unfortunately the newspaper did not mention the identity of these people.
It is worth noting that the purpose of Tianjin Municipality's organization of the citizens' fly extermination campaign or conference is not only to "remind the public of the scourge of flies", but also to "inspire the citizens to implement their spirit of social service", and the citizens did not stand idly by for the activity.
However, according to the current information, it is difficult to judge whether the public participated in the fly extermination campaign because they really recognized the harm of flies or were tempted by prizes. Speaking of prizes, in order to stimulate people's enthusiasm for participation, the health authorities have solicited prizes from other institutions and groups. Under its call, the Education Bureau, the Public Works Bureau, the Finance Bureau, etc. have donated silver shields, hand towels, soap, tooth powder, toothbrushes and other items, and the Tianjin Chamber of Commerce has purchased 50 flytraps to give to the Social Bureau as prizes. This also confirms the widespread social mobilization of the health movement from one side.
This kind of public fly extermination conference held in the form of awards is sometimes considered to be "a headache cure, foot pain and foot pain, and great effect is difficult", so the municipal government also decided to change the usual practice, following the example of Beijing and other places, paying money to buy dead flies, in order to arouse the interest of citizens in catching flies. The specific method is that the public will collect a certain number of culled adult flies, pack them into small bags and send them to the designated place for sale, at a price of 1,000 dead flies for each large copper dollar. The purchase price of the following year was changed to one pack per hundred, and each package was given two copper dollars, and the dead flies were burned in a daily incinerator. However, perhaps because paying for dead flies would increase the financial burden after all, the data shows that the law was not used again in Tianjin in the following years.
Among primary school students, the municipal government organized a fly extermination drawing competition and a lecture competition. In addition to the prizes, the winners of the picture contest were also exhibited at the YMCA along with other outstanding drawings. Judging from the title, these paintings show the various understandings of flies among primary school students, such as "a fly, which produces 188,350,000 children and grandchildren every year, can kill people(s)," "flies are more harmful than airplane bombs," "robbers kill people to bleed, flies kill people without blood," and so on.
The speech competition is divided into five districts and held in the city's municipal primary schools, and the top two in the preliminary round will enter the final. In the finals, the presentations of the young contestants were basically based on the harm of flies and the methods of extinguishing flies. These competitions are an educational opportunity for participants, as well as spectators and observers.
In the fly-killing campaign, the Tianjin Municipal Health Administration not only played the role of mobilizer and organizer, but also practiced it, forming a fly-killing team to go to the public toilets in various police districts and the places where filthy and dirty flies and maggots are easy to inhabit and breed, and sprinkle lime potion. During the fly extermination campaign from May to August 1934, the municipal government identified a total of 15,346 manure pits, 2,393 filthy and wet places in the city, disinfected 1,700 times, and bought 947,600 flies.
Interestingly, the municipal government also made 5,000 flycatchers and gave them to the police districts (which in turn transferred them to the public), the Education Bureau (and then distributed them to schools), and shops such as fresh goods stores. Judging from the methods of fly control drawn up by the government, the government does not focus on extinguishing how many flies as a function, but hopes to eliminate the production of flies from the source, so it is stipulated that the kitchens of household shops should be cleaned up and should not accumulate dirt; toilets should be swept once a day, the manure bucket should be covered, and quicklime should be sprinkled in the bucket once a week; dirty water should not be spilled into the streets and alleys, and should be stored with covered dirty buckets, and so on. Sometimes the fly extermination campaign begins with the cleaning of the city's garbage accumulation sites and toilets. From this point of view, the fly extermination campaign in Tianjin has a scientific side, so that the public can more or less understand the relationship between filth and fly infestation through this sport, and establish civilized hygiene habits.
After liberation, the masses of the people truly participated in the public health campaign.
However, whether there has been a conflict between the health movement and the traditional lifestyle and health concepts of the people, how the people evaluate the movement, how to view the significance of physical health to individuals, the country and the nation, etc., still need to be discovered before further discussion.
It is necessary to add a short article of the nature of a social novel in the Tianjin local newspaper: In the summer evening, two policemen knocked on the door of the house of zhao Qiye, a citizen, and declared: "Our director, for the sake of public health, each family will send a fly shoot to extinguish the flies, so as to avoid the spread of the epidemic." After Zhao Qiye took the fly shot, the police asked him for a corner of the ocean. When Uncle Zhao expressed embarrassment, two policemen threatened Zhao Qiye to "sit in the bureau" on the grounds that he "dared to destroy public health" and forced him to hand over a dime of the ocean as the next day's living expenses. Although the text is similar to a novel, it reflects social reality. In the process of the infiltration of state power into the world where people live, public health has sometimes degenerated from "good governance" to "bad governance". The gains and losses of public health education activities in China's cities during the Republic of China period deserve attention.