The Chinese Internet is abuzz with “Runner Fan”(Fan Paopao, 范跑跑), aka Fan Meizhong (范美忠). This guy, in short, was a teacher and was supposed to save kids when the Sichuan earthquake struck — but chose to run outside and even had the nerve to blog about the event. In the blog entry, he went to great lengths to — well, dig himself into a deeper hole rhetoric-wise, by means of resorting to language such as “I’d rather save my daughter than my mother” (which does you no favors in China, where filial piety is high on the agenda — in fact, it makes you look really, really bad).
“Runner Fan”, in fact, has won himself very few friends and a whole host of — well, maybe not enemies, but in Chinese thinking, “people who have a lot to say about ‘Runner Fan’” (对“范跑跑”很有意见的人 in Chinese). China isn’t exactly a place to throw off heavy, fight-inciting language (especially if at 7 PM every day we are told that we live in a “harmonious society”), despite it coming out with Sun Zi’s The Art of War, but then again — how can you song the praises of someone who dumped their students just for self-preservation?
The 7 o’clock news and public newspapers of record are now talking about those brave men and women who have given in to save people from the quake area. This is quite the opposite of “Runner Fan”, who is now spared no bit of Web rhetoric.
Today is not the time to bridge the gap. Rather, it’s time to take a look at the gap from different angles — and see if you can agree on what angle you take. In no particular order, here are a myriad of different angles on the issue…
• “Runner Fan” did something illegal: Chinese law requires teachers to save kids first, and he didn’t.
• “Runner Fan” didn’t exactly sin on running out of the classroom, but to blog about this tripped “Runner Fan” over the line.
• “Runner Fan” apologized, but the damage has been done.
• It’s all about instincts. “Runner Fan” did no wrong. This is an earthquake. Lives are precious. (You only get one go in life…)
• Criticizing or even talking about “Runner Fan” actually advances the Chinese — this is a first for China, and China has to experience a lot of things in due time.
• This is about extremes — and “Runner Fan” took to this extreme that put the individual above all else.
• Remember, China is a 5,000+ civilization deeply rooted in what’s called “collectivism”. This is nothing new (a la since 1949). The group has always overshadowed the individual in importance long before Mao’s People’s Republic.
• “Runner Fan” did wrong? Well, only the individual can come to conclusions…
• Fan Meizhong — a Chinese failure, a person truly missing a brain. China has spent so much on him — only to raise a mere animal!
• Out of all those shameless people, I’ve yet to see one as shameless as “Runner Fan”.
What do you think of Fan Paopao?
I’ll take option number five:
• Criticizing or even talking about “Runner Fan” actually advances the Chinese — this is a first for China, and China has to experience a lot of things in due time.
Interesting you mention “collectivism”. You know collectivism could be deconstructed into a sort of super-individualism. Societal bonds all come to revolve around personal gain, as opposed to advancement of an underlying ideology or morality.
This ties in with evolutionary prerogatives; to be more protective of one’s offspring than parents, and of close family than eg. a second cousin. Of course a stranger wouldn’t even feature in this spectrum. The conventional stereotype of Chinese is that in society people only matter in relation to how much benefit they are to you. Whereas in “western” society, the extent to which people matter is a gradual continuum, in Chinese society there’s a very sudden drop-off beyond utilitarian or filial bonds.
“Collectivism” might just be a very special case of “individualism”.
What class was he teaching, and how many students in his class died?
If no one in his class died, it doesn’t really matter. But if some of his students died because of his actions, he may quickly come to the point of living to regret running, then trying to justify, his actions during the quake.
Fan only blogged about his reaction on his blog. He didn’ t do any physical harm to his class or students. His school was forced to fire him after one month. He is another example that people pay price for what they said in China. Very sad.
Fan teached at a private middle school, the principal refused to fire him at the very begining as he tought Fan is a very good teacher. However, the “one voice” critizism forced the school and the local edcuation department to deprive his certificate of teacher finally.
if there is a teacher that said what he said, i don’t think any students would want to be in his class. nor would parents want their children to be his class. besides, it’s not a matter of the “free speech” but the content of what is said that got him fired.
While I do understand Mr. Meizhong’s reaction as a selfish and senseless man, it is undeniably wrong as a ‘teacher’ and ‘civil servant’ to not at the very least warn his students to run for their lives too. As an analogy of the fundamentals of teaching, where the teacher does not provide answers to their students but rather the skills and resources to find the answers, a simple “run for your life!” may have sufficed to provide his students the ability to save themselves. It is not rocket science to anybody or at least a descent human-being that there is a certain level of social responsibility to being a ‘teacher’ / ‘civil servant’. I would imagine that this, at the very least is what Mr. Meizhong would expect from his daughter’s prospective teachers.