Beijing 2018 | The Last Breath

A few years ago, when I worked as a foreign correspondent in Beijing, I wrote a macabre little story about death in one of the world’s most peopled cities.

China’s capital is home to nearly 22 million residents, more than the entire state of Florida. Exactly how many people died here each day? Was there an overflow at hospitals and medical examiner’s offices? How did officials account for the mortal largesse?

For color, I went to the government’s main morgue, which was part of a bustling hospital complex. But I had a problem: my translator, a young woman in her 20s, was too afraid to go inside.

She was terrified of death, like some Bogey Man would suddenly leap upon her and refuse to let go.

She didn’t want to get too close.

We stood outside for several minutes as I tried to convince her that journalists often had to overcome their fears.

Finally, cautiously, like a cat in a dog pound, she crept inside.

Of all the cultural gulfs between China and the West, the attitude toward death is perhaps one of the widest.

China’s dominant faiths do not teach a fear of death. Confucius preached that a person shouldn’t be afraid of death, as long as they lived a moral life, but he never dealt with the idea of an afterlife. Taoists believe that life is an illusion and death is an awakening.

Yet despite these textbook teachings, in reality most Chinese believe that even talking about death will upset one’s inner harmony and must be avoided, well, like death itself.

When we met, my wife was afraid to even walk past a funeral home; she insisted on doing an end-around, even if it meant several blocks.

The slightest proximity to death, she said, was bad luck, bad feng shui.

But it’s not just the final chapter that gives Chinese pause; they are also squeamish about dealing with someone suffering from a fatal illness.

The question: Do you tell them?

In the West, most people believe that a patient has a right to know the status of their health, even if it’s not good news. Knowing that the end is near allows a person to wrap up the various cords of their lives, say their goodbyes, and so they are ready when the moment finally comes.

In America, there is the concept of the good death, which mainly involves being at home, not in any hospital, hooked up to machines, surrounded by friends and family whose love helps usher one into the beyond. The key is that everyone knows the end is near.

The Chinese will have none of this.

Many believe it’s the family’s duty to shield a loved one from a deadly knowledge that would rob their will to live. Nearly everyone I’ve met here has some story of someone who beat illnesses didn’t know they had. Had the sick person known the truth, they insist, they would have simply given up.

The question has hit home with my Chinese family.

Last year, Liu Ning, my brother-in-law’s girlfriend, died after a battle with stage-four breast cancer. She came to the U.S for treatment in the summer and doctors initially made progress with the original cancer. Then the disease spread to her spinal cord and brain.

Finally, doctors in Southern California told the family there was nothing more they could do. They advised that the family should take her home, so that’s what they did.

Yet they never told Liu Ning she was dying. She returned to China not knowing she had only months to live, at best. My brother-in-law, Liu Ning’s friends and family, all believed that they were doing her a favor by hiding the truth.

There was debate. I insisted that she would want to know. Maybe she would want to go home to Beijing and visit her mother, from whom she had been estranged in recent years.

But I was outnumbered.

Don’t break her spirit, was the argument. She finally died in Shanghai a few months after she returned to China. She never got to see her mother.

Since then, I have been troubled over how things played out — and I wasn’t alone. I have a sister who volunteers in a hospice center in Alaska, where she has relished some of the most meaningful relationships of her life. She called me the other day to say that she was still upset over how Liu Ning’s death was handled.

In the end, I told her, it came down to strictly-taught cultural beliefs. But I wonder about Liu Ning, what she would have chosen to do with the little time she had left, if her loved ones hadn’t decided for her.

Still, I wanted to ask my father-in-law about this. A former military officer, he’s very circumspect in all such matters.

We sat at the dining table and I chose what I thought was the right time to broach the subject. He is hard of hearing, which makes many conversations a trial.

For my wife, there is never a good time for any in-depth discussion she must dutifully translate. That morning, she had an errand to run and was anxious to get ready.

When she finally asked him, he paused in thought for several moments. He made a few qualifying statements, that it was up to the individual, of course, and everything depended on one’s age.

But I pressed him: Would he want to know?

He did not answer directly. He said most Chinese were peasants who spent their lives with backs bent at hard labor, eyes fixed on the ground. He quoted a Buddhist saying that people are put on the earth to suffer.

The he paused, collecting his thoughts, moving toward what I hoped would be a definitive answer.

“Back in feudal times,” he began.

My wife turned to me and hissed.

“See what I mean? We’re still haven’t gotten out of feudal times!”

She hurried off to get dressed.

I never learned my father-in-law’s views on the subject. But he is a learned considered man.

My guess is that he would want to know.