This Far I Came

Medical Ethics as a Clinical Technology

2007-07-11T07:10:00.001-07:00

A group of friends in Taiwan are now undertaking workshops transforming concepts of medical ethics into practical clinical technology. They are also hoping to train so-called 'clinical ethicists' in the hospital. It is still at the trail stage. But I appreciate their efforts. I was asked to design the poster for them.
This is the medical ethics centre in Oxford: http://www.ethox.org.uk/

God’s Miracle or Imperialist Propaganda?

2007-06-06T03:43:00.000-07:00

In the 1920s, Changhua Christian Hospital underwent a skin graft operation, which was later claimed to cure a schoolboy’s necrotising wound by God’s miracle. It was back in the Japanese colonial times, when Taiwanese people were still unaware of modern medical techniques and hygienic awareness. In the mean time, missionary medical professionals, mostly from Canada and the Britain, were actively introducing Western scientific ideas to the ‘barbaric’ island.

Changhua Christain Hospital commenced a rare and dangerous, as it declared, skin graft procedure on a schoolboy’s wound, which was originally a common abrasion, but later exacerbated by local herbal treatment. The surgeons took a skin graft from the lap of the chief doctor’s wife, applying it onto the necrotising lesion. The graft did not grow as it was expected because of the rejection. However, they decided to launch another operation, taking the boy’s own intact skin to cover his own injury, which was subsequently proved successful. Eventually, the boy became a pastor, and later a key figure in the establishment of Taiwanese Presbyterian Church.

For the past 80 years, the hospital has been using this story as an evidence of miracle in order to spread the Gospels. Nevertheless, putting it in the domain of medical history, it could argued as a typical example of the Imperialist propaganda masqueraded with the glamorous “God’s will”, which is worth further investigation.

As a Christian, and an old friend of Dr. David Landsborough IV, son of the surgeon, I feel awkward to comment this whole thing. But as a will-be historian, if I cannot distance myself from the matter itself without being sentimental, I will lose my posture, too. If I want to write more, the next chapter will be ‘A Clinician’s Belief or a Historian’s Stance?’ It certainly is a tangle I need to unravel in the future years.

The most wastful country

2007-04-29T14:50:00.000-07:00

So this is one scene in the cloak room at the British Library.

Being told that the Great Britain is the most wasteful country (more than USA, and particularly on food), I was not surprised by this 'extravaganza'. But I did feel sorry for these plastic bags, which can actually be recycled. In contrast, I don't mourn for their food anymore. Because most of the food are not healthful and they are kind of 'waste-worthy'!

The Rhapsody of Doctor Who

2007-04-11T11:14:00.000-07:00

Ten years ago, when I was preparing for the joint college entrance examination, my mother always told me, “Guess what kind of clothes keep you warm? It’s the doctor’s white coat!” At that young age, I was not only to succeed the family career, but also the occupational expectation of the ‘intellectualists’ determined by the unique historical context in Taiwan. Now I have left the hospital, hanging my white coat in the closet, studying abroad in England, where NHS budget shrinks day by day, and being a doctor does not grant you a ‘golden bowel’ any more.

I had little topics to talk over with my father. We were much more like colleagues rather than father and son. I did not dare to tell him that actually I did not want to be a doctor. Now I have stepped on the land where he stood for one year 25 years ago. Although I am not studying clinical medicine, I have the feeling of being ‘far away so close’. It surprises me that the dialogue between father and son is unlocked when I came this far. And one of the mediums is the British sci-fi TV series, Doctor Who.

Doctor Who was launched in the winter of 1963. It is about a ‘doctor’ travelling in the course of time, telling right from wrong. This doctor does not have a name, nor does he have a white coat or a stethoscope. Wearing a suit and a long coat, he lives in a blue police box, the renowned ‘tardis’. Over the past forty-five years, there have been over seven hundred episodes. The doctor’s body has also ‘regenerated’ for nine times. The ways of regeneration, the doctor’s capability to transform himself before he actually dies, various in the context of society, such as the spread of diseases, the awareness of accidents and so on.

The traditional image of this doctor does not change with the development of modern medicine. By this one can tell how obsessive and nostalgic British people are. However, this doctor has little to do with medicine. His role is to maintain the social order rather than dealing with diseases. Most of his enemies are aliens in the Space. And the themes are mostly about the Earth, or more precisely, the Great Britain, being invaded by the foreign creatures. The doctor then has to undertake time-travels in order to prevent the history (of the Great Britain) from being fiddled and distorted. One can see how anxious, and xenophobic, this empire is to uphold its purity, fearing of its being infected or contaminated by the unfamiliar pathogens. But whether Doctor Who is scientific or not, no doubt it has influenced British young people’s (and probably elder ones. I saw a granny and a boy discussing over Doctor Who on the tube today) career options of being a scientist.

The audience of Doctor Who absolutely have the potential to draw together and form a sub-cultural circle. However since the community absorbs a great number of people, covering so many age groups, this TV programme is already capable of symbolising the domain of British sci-fi. The doctor has already broken away from the sub-culture, putting the wild hopes and divine missions entrusted by his audience into practice. Ten years ago, the blue police box became the doctor’s official trademark. And the Metropolitan Police even had to give away its patent right. Nowadays, the gate policy of this country has turned London into a distributing centre of foreign cultures. People begin to ridicule the flaccidity of the public authority. And the doctor, criticised for being too violent in the 70s, now opportunistically becomes a hero, or a redeemer of the sense of the Great Britain’s inferiority. I guess it was not predicted when the first episode was made.

I tend to say that Doctor Who is an important cultural product of the late twentieth century British Empire, reflecting its altering social values and ideological subjects. But personally speaking, it is much more an image, representing to my father and myself, the two generations carrying out two dissimilar career options. When I first came upon this TV programme, my father felt so surprised at the fact that in twenty-five years after he left London, Doctor Who was still alive. Currently I am pursuing a degree of humanities rather than clinical science. Had my career choice been tolerated at all, I shall thank Doctor Who, who enriches this traditional occupation and entails more of its imagination and likelihood.

The Scent

2007-04-03T15:37:00.000-07:00

A poem written by one of my best friends, Bichhin Liu, who is also a scholar of Taiwanese novels. One year ago, I wrote the melody for this poem. This year in the commemoration activity of the 228 Incident at Holiday Inn in London, I performed this song.

The scent of cornflowers carries the tears of melancholy.
It was at the night when the moon disappeared
Rain dropped into my never-filling well of my loneliness.

The scent of orange flowers is mixed with sourness.
On the day when black drongos flew away,
I turned my head, looking back to the mountains in my hometown,
Biting my lips with the bitter promise of memory.

The scent of lily blossoms with breezes,
From mountains to the seashore, passing through thousands of miles;
I lift my head, yearning for the sunrise.

The scent of roses, smooth and tame, I dedicate to you;
No matter how stormy the sky is, or how long the night will be,
No matter how long the road of life becomes, love and peace will journey with us.

(English translation with the assistance of Dave)

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Be lonely, or become what you are.

2006-10-26T01:22:00.000-07:00

"Aren't you going to today's open seminar?" I asked J. "Prapably not," he said, "I am not Jungian group. I doubt those two hours are helpful for me."

In the middle of seminar, J eventually came. "Just because of the weather. It makes people gloomy." I was not surprised. I suffered last winter, too. And it was the first time I believe the existence of seasonal affective disorder. We did not concentrate on the seminar at all. J started to draw. "Bonbons?" I asked. It was my transference because I was already hungry. "No. They are baloons. Like my friends here leaving one by one." That's the fate of PhD student.

Before I came to the UK, lots of friends told me, "There are a lot of scholars already. What Taiwan actually needs are artists!" They'd rather to expect me as a political singer/ radical artist. I did not tell them that my journey to the UK is a sefisth journey of exploration. Abandoning the highly wedged job in the hospital, I did choose a road less traveled by. And i don't know what is ahead.

I know I am lonely. It's just like most of researchers and activists. But suddenly I heard the guy on stage quoting Otto Gross, "Be lonely, or become what you are."

Metamorphosis in London

2006-10-14T08:12:00.000-07:00

Still very worthwhile. Last time I it only took me £7 to watch Woyzeck. This time the Icelandic theatre company produces Metamorphosis by Kafka.

It is already a gigantic problem to convey the first scene in the novel: converting a human being into a cockroach. Of course it would be hilarious if the actor dresses up in a puppet. That’s the level I can only imagine. Guess what the director did? By simply changing the space setting, the man naturally becomes a creeping creature in the altered gravity field. No need for disguising. And then the ‘isolation’ issue is no more a metaphysical concept. Genius!

However, what makes me ponder is not the stage skills. A Czech novel, written nearly a century ago, is staged in 2006 London. Similar human situations, different time and places. Human nature and our freedom are deprived in various ways. And we still need to proceed our hypocritical daily rationality. What did Kafka tell us? And what on earth do we receive from the play?

Quayside refugee

2006-10-11T14:36:00.000-07:00

Went back to Colchester in late August. It's a fairwell party. When I went collecting letters from my old student hall at quayside, a man called me.

"Hey friend! How are you? My name is Frank..." They are from Lebanon. Around 60 people were relocated to quay flat. Where I used to live now becomes their new shelter.

I could tell the anxiety by just looking at their eyes. But children are different. It is just like a new world. They listened to me showing around their new environment. Yes, I only showed them directions to the supermarket and some useful shops.

What else can I do? What if I tell them that I am virtually doctor, but I am not practicing due to the restricted competency? What if I tell them that I am Christian, and I am really willing to help? It is such a disturbing experience, in which my altrism is just rubbish. What speak are the colliding cultures.

I told them where Tesco is. But I forgot to tell them the store selling halal meat. It's just behind it...

Best Memoir

2006-07-20T23:53:00.000-07:00

I love graveyards. When I travel I particularty like to visit those 'haunted' buildings, churches and graveyards. Van Gogh, Marc Chagall, Wilde, Chopin, MoliÃ¨re, Edith Piaf...Uncountablee now. Lots of them are in cemetery PÃ©re Lachaise. But I especially like Jim Morrison's. It's just different.

Everyone loves Jim Morrison, the lead singer of the legendary band, the Doors. He died young, remaining an abstruse mystery for us. As his biography was about to sell on amazon, people started to dispute over his being gay or not.

" He is gay, for he had a gay experience in St. Petersburg before enrolling at FSU. And it was witnessed. " " He is not gay. He had a girlfriend at FSU, and he brought her to parties. I know that improper behavior was because he was too drunk." "He can't be gay, for I had known him so well for years!"

Everyone loves Wilfred Owen as Well, the greatest English antiwar poet during World War I, or maybe the most successful" antiwar poets in the world. November 4th was the date when he died in 1918. For the past 77 years those letters written in the front line had been controlled by his family carefully. Some of them were published, but some destroyed.

No one knows if he did had "that kind" of relationship with Sassoon at Craiglackhart War Hospital in Edinburgh. It's the adorable caring relationship between soldiers. This young god can't be gay. If so, please make him a closet one. Of course his "not-successful" brother, Harold, envied him. But he also had the privilege to mould the figure of his celebrated brother. Of course this is another chapter.

Nothing is real. What really haunts is something in our manipulated memory. Our memory is the contested past. Well, reality is our best memoir.

Are they really Nostalgic?

2006-07-20T15:53:00.000-07:00

Just behind the new flat I moved in a month ago, there is an empty tube station, York Road Station. Well, as you might have noticed, York Road is already in the history.

The station was built in 1908. Sunday services were closed down in 1918. And then the station was disused in 1932. When I occasionally passed it by, I could see the light still on. They might use it for storage or garage. Who knows? This is not going to happen in my country. Everything new is adopted at this time, and then ditched right away when it is not sensational anymore. It's so much like fast-food!

Friends asked me if there are examples of converting old buildings into contemporary use. Oh yes I said there are a lot. Tate modern is a good instance. And I also looking forward to the rebirth of Battersea powerplant...maybe English people are good at restoring historical heritage. OR, it's just their nostalgia. They live in the past!

Anything Left

2006-06-03T09:44:00.000-07:00

It's said that my 25 years ago when my father was doing his registrar year in St. George's, he saw this store in Soho. And he bought lots of stuffs home because he thought that I was left-handed. He said he assumed my being left handed by watching pictures my mother mailed him. But when he went back to Taiwan, I was already corrected right-handed by grandmother.

Now besides writing and holding tennis raquet, I try to use my left hand as much as I can. Before this I found that my reaction speed a bit slower than others. I know it's already proved that most corrected right-handed people have got slower reaction and worse sense of direction. My effort in using left hand again seems to be an inferiority over-compensation.

A month ago, my playwright sister's graduation work was entitled 'Left'. In the play she argued about many core family issues. I wonder if it was affected by my corrected right hand complex. But it counts if it's believed that most of the deputies are autobiographical.

However, this store in Soho is already closed. Maybe the owner knows that a 'left mind' is far away behind the trends. 'Anything' goes left is impossible. Our youth and romantic dreams are only worth reminiscing. So is my childhood, and so is our time.