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Q: Chinese grieving process. Why is everyone so heartless?
My wife's best friend just had a miscarriage. A week ago, everything was fine. Now... that happened.
She's in so much pain and it's unbearable. All of her friends and family are telling her, "Don't think about it!", "It's in the past, there's nothing you can do!", "Don't think about it too much," "It's just a fetus," "The baby died, there is nothing you can do. There's no sense crying about it," "Why weren't you careful? It's all your fault!", etc. The majority of the replies sound absolutely fucking heartless and I want to rage-Hulksmash every single one of them.
Seriously, what the hell? Every time someone is grieving, this is the same kind of mentality that I run into. What gives?
Can some Chinese person help me to understand it? Maybe I just don't understand 5000 years of history............
When my wifes father was diagnosed with untreatable cancer, her mum (they'd been diveroced a while) said. "oh, things like this happen"
Recently when we where at the lady parts department at the hospital for a checkup for the wife, the woman seeing the doctor before us had just been told there was no heartbeat, she was several months into the pregnancy. The doctor literally finished saying this to the woman when she raised her voice and called us in, no pause.
I was at an eye clinic having a check, I don't have full view of what was going on as my vision was super blurred at the moment, but a woman in the doctors office started hysterical crying, she'd just been told she would go blind (diagnosis unknow to me)
There is no compassion, no information about how to deal with the situation.
It doesn't take a brain surgeon to guess that the killing of millions of people, starvation to death being everyday events numbs a peoples emotional response and it goes down to, just survival.
Those who feel this lack f compassion time and time are not very likely to show any towards others.
In China, people don't care about people
Scandinavian:
with a bit of thinking time I could probably remember more for the list; I've also censored a couple of things that cannot be revealed to to privacy concerns.
Actually, Chinese people DO care a lot... but only about family, anyone else not at all!
I know this from my own experience, when I had a severe flu. Almost all of my wife's family came to see me in the hospital and made a big fuss about me. Now I am fine again and most of them still phone me daily to inquire about my health; it is almost embarrassing.
dom87:
are you kidding me?
most kids or parents abandon their grandparents once they get ill. They just say let them die they are old and hospital is too expensive
wtf, so much about caring about their family. Once its about money they only care about themselves
DrMonkey:
Well, part of the problem might be that they pay the full cost of treatments, no serious state-run healthcare here. So your average cancer that have reasonable chance to be healed in some countries, will here just kill you because you're too poor to be cured. This kind of harsh realities might make people more fatalistic about sickness. Don't want to see a relative slowly dying of some terrible thing such as a cancer. Not an excuse, just an hypothesis of why this coldness exists.
Scandinavian:
@bayuvar139: Maybe they are hoping for your recovery because they hope you will provide for them when they are old.
PVG-YXE:
Yes, you are right... I'm Chinese, and I also think that a lot of Chinese people only care about their own family but not other people and I feel so bad about it, but I can't change anything...
I'm also sure that most Chinese people have realized this.
Sorry.
My be I could explain a little for you. I am Chinese, these are some of the ways that many chinese people to feel sorry about bad news. Some chinese people say " Don't think about it, there is nothing you can do" which means they want you don't feel bad any more. When you keep crying and worrying about something already happened, many chinese people think that it's not good for your own health. Sorry about my somehow confusing explanation. Here is an example: When I didn't get a good mark on a course, I talked to my friend. Most of my friends would say" You already done the exam, you can't go back and do it again, and the only thing that you can do is to work hard on the next exam." Does this make some sense to you?
so most of those replies like " don't think about it" really does't heartless, that's the way many people console others...
except for this one " It's all your fault!" That's not a suitable reaction. But somtimes my friend also say this to me. Sorry , it's so hard for me to explain...
Hope this helps a little bit...
Nessquick:
than, why my chinese wife many times cry for things happen 3years ago, when she has bad mood ? 
PVG-YXE:
@nessquick
Yes, my mom also cry for something happened many years ago....... Thank you for your comment, this one of the reason why many chinese people reply " don't think about it, you cann't change anything". Because many Chinese women are too difficult to forget a bad thing. Or she may seems already forgotten it. But once something reminded them of the bad thing, they will cry agian...
