林中斌 部落格 / Blog Chong-Pin Lin

Richard Haass，"What Mike Pompeo doesn’t understand about China, Richard Nixon and U.S. foreign policy" Washngton Post July 26, 2020

accessed July 30, 2020

My Relatives in Wuhan Survived. My Uncle in New York Did Not.

My father, a Chinese pulmonologist, believes his brother could have been saved.

By Yi Rao 饒毅是首都醫科大學校長、北京大學講席教授和北京腦科學與類腦研究中心主任。

繁體中文版請見後

Dr. Rao is a molecular neurobiologist in China.

(Yi Rao is the president of Capital Medical University, a chair professor at Peking University and the director of the Chinese Institute for Brain Research, in Beijing)

●But then 9/11 happened, and this axis of evil emerged: Dick Cheney (vice president); Paul Wolfowitz (deputy secretary of defense); David Addington (counsel to the vice president); John Yoo (Justice Department lawyer and author of the “Torture Memos”). These men were ready to do anything to advance their agenda, ...That period proved to me that America was not the democratic beacon many of us had thought it to be.

●For a long time, the United States seemed like the better place to live — for those lucky enough to have such a choice.This time that outcome doesn’t speak well of America.

New York Times July 22, 2020

https://www.nytimes.com/…/22/opin…/coronavirus-china-us.html accessed July 30, 2020

繁體中文版請見後

BEIJING — Eight is thought to be a lucky number in China because in Chinese it sounds like the word for “fortune”; 444 is a bad number because it rings like “death”; 520 sounds like “I love you.”

Having always disliked superstition, I was dismayed to receive a message by WeChat at 4:44 p.m. on May 20, Beijing time, informing me that my Uncle Eric, who lived in New York, had died from Covid-19. He was 74.

Uncle Eric was a pharmacist, so presumably he contracted the virus from a patient who had visited his shop in Queens. Infected in March, he was sick for more than two months. He was kept on a ventilator until his last 10 days: By then, he was deemed incurable and the ventilator was redirected to other patients who might be saved.

The medical trade runs in my family. I now preside over a medical university in Beijing with 19 affiliated hospitals. I studied medicine because my father was a doctor, a pulmonary physician. He decided to study medicine after losing his mother to a minor infection when he was 13. My father did not expect to lose a brother 15 years his junior to a disease in his own specialty: the respiratory system.

My father (Weihua) and Eric (Houhua) were first separated in 1947. My father, then 17, stayed behind in Nanchang, the capital of Jiangxi Province, in central-southern China, to finish his education, while Eric, age 2, and other brothers and a sister sailed to Taiwan with their parents. With the end of World War II, Taiwan had been returned to China after five decades of Japanese occupation, and there were job opportunities there.

The family did not anticipate what would happen in 1949: The Communist takeover of mainland China — and, for them, the beginning of another kind of, and very long, separation.

My father completed his medical education in Nanchang and had graduate training with one of the top respiratory physicians in Shanghai, but in the 1960s the Cultural Revolution then took him to a small town and after that to a village, where he was the sole doctor. He moved back to a major hospital in Nanchang in 1972.

In the mid-1970s, my grandfather sent him — by way of Fiji — a letter at a previous address, and miraculously it arrived.

Soon, Uncle Eric became their emissary.

Uncle Eric was the first member of my family to become an American citizen. He arrived in San Francisco in the late 1970s, drawn to an economic powerhouse of a country, so starkly different from what he had grown up with in Taiwan.

It was 35 years before the brothers met again, in 1982. My father was a visiting scholar for a year at the Cardiovascular Research Institute at the University of California, San Francisco, where he conducted research on pulmonary edema, and he received a few months of clinical training in the intensive care unit at what is now called the Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center.

In the early 1980s, the gap between China and the United States was gigantic. And my father has always been grateful for the education he received at U.C.S.F. and the kindness and generosity of the Americans he met.

He brought his American training back to Nanchang to establish the first I.C.U. in Jiangxi Province and one of the first I.C.U.s in China. He also established one of the first — if not the very first — institute of molecular medicine in China.

In 1985, I followed in his footsteps and in those of my uncles — Uncle Tim (Xinghua) had immigrated to California as well: I went to San Francisco to study for my Ph.D., also at U.C.S.F. My younger brother moved to the United States a few years later.

In the 1990s, with the collapse of the Soviet model, America seemed to be the only other exemplar left. Having studied in the United States and with plans to work and live there for the long haul, I applied for American citizenship and obtained it in 2000. My children were born in the United States.

But then 9/11 happened, and this axis of evil emerged: Dick Cheney (vice president); Paul Wolfowitz (deputy secretary of defense); David Addington (counsel to the vice president); John Yoo (Justice Department lawyer and author of the “Torture Memos”). These men were ready to do anything to advance their agenda, imposing their own law — meaning, really, no proper laws and no rule of law — in Iraq, at Guantánamo and elsewhere. And too many Americans went along. That period proved to me that America was not the democratic beacon many of us had thought it to be.

I first started looking into how to renounce my U.S. citizenship while I lived in Chicago and then again after moving back to China in 2007. I completed the process in 2011 — a decision that has been validated since by the advent of President Trump and Trumpism, which are a natural expansion of what was put in motion after 9/11.

Uncle Eric never returned to mainland China.

By the time my father retired in 2005, at 75, he had treated countless respiratory and I.C.U. patients in China. He had worked through the SARS epidemic in 2002-3, issuing dark predictions that the virus, or something like it, would come back. He and I debate whether the new coronavirus proves his prediction right.

As Covid-19 began to spread earlier this year, my father, now 90 and long retired, would send me advice about how to treat the disease so that I could relay it to other doctors, including the one leading response efforts in the city of Wuhan, the pandemic’s epicenter early on.

Our family has 12 members in Wuhan, mostly on my mother’s side, and six in New York, mostly on my father’s side. All my relatives in Wuhan are safe. Uncle Eric died in New York after the pandemic had moved to the United States — the world’s strongest country militarily, the richest economically and the most advanced medically.

The United States had two months or more to learn from China’s experience with this coronavirus, and it could have done much more to lower infection rates and fatalities. My father is struggling to accept his brother’s death partly, too, because he believes that he could have treated Uncle Eric — that in China Uncle Eric would have been saved.

As the pandemic rages on in the United States and throughout the world, with some smaller outbreaks in China, the United States and China are not collaborating, but competing, in the search for a successful vaccine for the virus and treatment measures for the disease.

My father’s family has been divided for most of his life, separated mostly by the decisions of political leaders.

For a long time, the United States seemed like the better place to live — for those lucky enough to have such a choice.

Now, my father and Uncle Eric have been separated once again. This time that outcome doesn’t speak well of America.

●

Yi Rao is the president of Capital Medical University, a chair professor at Peking University and the director of the Chinese Institute for Brain Research, in Beijing.

我在武漢的親人活了下來，但紐約的叔叔沒有

饒毅

紐約時報 2020年7月23日

https://cn.nytimes.com/…/2020…/coronavirus-china-us/zh-hant/ 下載2020.7.30

北京——在中國，數字8因發音似「發」而被視為幸運的數字、444似「死」為壞數字，520似「我愛你」。

向來討厭迷信的我，非常難過地於5月20日下午4時44分收到一條微信消息：我居住在紐約的叔叔厚華逝於新冠病毒，終年74歲。

叔叔厚華是一名藥劑師，很可能是被到他位於皇后區的店中取藥的病人傳染的。3月被感染後，他病了兩個多月。他曾使用呼吸機，直到最後十天被認為不可治癒後，呼吸機被轉移用於救助其他病人。

我家與醫藥關係不淺。我自己現在北京任職一家有19個附屬醫院的醫科大學。我學醫是因為我的父親是一名肺科醫生。父親學醫是因為他13歲時，他的母親因簡單的感染而去世。父親沒有預料到，比自己年輕15歲的弟弟會逝於自己專科的呼吸系統疾病。

父親緯華和叔叔厚華第一次分開是在1947年。父親那年17歲，留在中國中南部江西省省會南昌繼續學業，當時兩歲的厚華和其他弟弟及一個姐姐與他們的父母從上海渡船到台灣。二戰後，台灣在被日本佔領50年後回歸中國，有較多工作機會。

全家未能預見1949年會發生什麼：共產黨接管了中國大陸，而對他們來說，這意味著另一種長期分離的開始。

父親在南昌完成醫學教育、其後在上海師從最好的肺科醫生獲得研究生教育。但1960年代的文革使他下放到縣城、後來到一個只有他一名醫生的村莊。1972年，父親回到南昌一個主要醫院工作。

1970年代中期，祖父經由斐濟寄了一封信到父親以前的地址，這封信奇蹟般地到了父親手中。

很快，厚華成為他們之間的信使。

厚華是我家第一位美國公民，他於1970年代後期到舊金山，被美國的發達所吸引，那裡與他成長的台灣有天壤之別。

1982年，分離35年後的厚華與我父親兄弟倆重逢。父親當時在加州大學舊金山分校(University of California, San Francisco)醫學院心血管研究所進修，為期一年，做肺水腫研究，後在目前被稱為祖克柏舊金山綜合醫院和創傷中心(Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center)的醫院重症監護室臨床見習數月。

1980年代初期，中國和美國的差別巨大。父親一直非常感謝在加州大學舊金山分校接受的教育，以及美國人民對他的善良和慷慨。

自美國學成回南昌後，父親建立了全省第一個、也是全國較早的重症監護室之一。他還建立了分子醫學研究所，是中國最早的類似機構之一——如果不是首個的話。

1985年，我跟隨父親和叔叔們（那時叔叔興華也已移民加州）的腳步，到加州大學舊金山分校念研究生。幾年後我弟弟也赴美留學。

1990年代，蘇聯模式坍塌，美國似乎是唯一留存的模式。我在美國留學後計劃長期在美國生活和工作，所以申請了美國公民，並於2000年獲得。我的子女在美國出生。

但後來發生了9·11事件，美國出現了邪惡的軸線：副總統迪克·錢尼(Dick Cheney)、國防次長保羅·沃爾福威茨(Paul Wolfowitz)、副總統法律顧問戴維·阿丁頓(David Addington)，以及司法部律師、《酷刑備忘錄》作者柳約翰(John Yoo)。這些人為了自己的目的可以任意作為，將他們的法律（其實是不合適的法律、不符合法治）強加於伊拉克、關塔那摩和其他地方。而太多美國人也並不反對。那一時期對我來說證明美國不是很多人以前認為的民主燈塔。

在芝加哥時我開始查詢如何放棄美國國籍，2007年回中國之後再一次繼續，到2011年完成退籍。這一決定為其後的事件所驗證是對的——川普選總統和川普主義是9·11開始的變化之自然擴展。

厚華從未返回中國大陸。

至2005年父親於75歲退休前，他治療了很多呼吸病和重症監護病人。父親經歷了2002至2003年的SARS疫情，他預計SARS或類似的病毒還會發生。我和父親還在爭論此次新冠病毒算不算證明了他的預測。

新冠病毒流行後，已經90歲的父親經常給我治療建議，讓我轉給其他醫生，包括此次協調早期疫情中心武漢抗疫的醫學領袖。

我們家在武漢有12位親戚，大部分是母親家的；在紐約有六位親戚、大部分是父親家的。在武漢的親戚皆安然無恙，而紐約的厚華在疫情傳播到美國後去世——他去世於當今世界軍事上最強大、經濟上最富裕、醫學上最先進的國家。

美國有兩個月甚至更多時間可以汲取中國的新冠病毒流行經驗，本可以做更多努力降低感染率和病死率。父親很難接受弟弟去世的部分原因是認為自己就可以救助弟弟——厚華如果在中國也許就被治癒了。

當新冠在美國和一些國家繼續兇猛地流行、在中國偶有小發時，美國和中國並沒有合作，而是在競爭尋找疫苗和其他治療方式。

在父親一生的大部分時間裡，他的家庭因政治人物的決定而分離。在很長時間內，美國是更好的生活之地——如果有幸可以選擇的話。

現在，父親和叔叔再度分離。這一次的結果，不能說美國好。

饒毅是首都醫科大學校長、北京大學講席教授和北京腦科學與類腦研究中心主任。