Depression in Chinese History and Literature: Cultural Cause and Influence

Jiahao Han

In contemporary China, depression tends to be an increasing mental health problem. Issued by World Health Organization, research shows that more than 95 million (7% of the population) people in China suffer from depression and anxiety disorders[1]. The Chinese National Health Commission has taken the first step to increase people’s understanding of depression, to provide clinical treatment to those who suffer from mental conditions, and to give more medical resources into the treatment of melancholia[2]. However, those actions taken by the government often confront a great challenge: it is not usual for Chinese to talk with others about melancholy or depression in daily life. In most cases, it is hard for Chinese people to know the mental illness of their family members until suicide is committed, let alone for them to know the metal health problems of their friends. The extremely strange situation can be culturally explained because depression is rarely mentioned in Chinese culture as a mental problem which can easily strike people down, rather either regarded as a symbol of weakness embedded in Confucianism, or only as a combinatory emotion of grief and unsettledness, profoundly embodied in Chinese poetry. The so-called “depressed state” of Chinese people aligns perfectly with the progression of Chinese culture and history, and comparisons with Western concept of “melancholy” will also be revealed below.

Primarily, the reason why Chinese do not talk about depression very often lies in Confucian ideas which dominate over thousands of years in China. Confucius (551—479 B.C.E.) is a Chinese philosopher and politician from “The Spring and Autumn Period” (ca. 771—476 B.C.E.). He is regarded as the paragon of Chinese sages, and is internationally well-known nowadays. In The Analects of Confucius, he claims his political views[3], ethical[4] and moral thoughts[5], and educational principles[6] thoroughly. He illustrates how to be a good citizen or a good king, and how to achieve a good life, which is an undeniably unprecedented treasure for later generation. He is most famous for proposing the “Golden Rule” in China at his time[7]. Nonetheless, what is lacking in Confucian concept is the process of exploring one’s mental state and emotion, as well as how to approach depression. Confucius thinks that “Men stay alive through straightforward conduct. When the crooked stay alive it is simply a matter of escaping through luck”[8], which suggests that a good man bear integrity and virtue, he also says that the junzi (an ideal moral gentleman) is free and easy, the small man (the opposite kind of person to junzi) always careworn[9]. In this sense, Confucius believes a good man to be delightful, tolerant, and broad-minded, and it is unhealthy and weak that a person is indulged in melancholy (a better translation than depression in Confucius 7.37) and in thinking too much. Dante Alighieri, more than a thousand years later in the Renaissance, also pointed out the similar idea that depression is bad in his Inferno[10] as he sees depression as a metaphor for mental loss, but through the complete story he gives a whole process of the descent, and at the end shows how to avoid depression. On the contrary, the only place Confucius mentions the idea of depression is in chapter 7.37, but even in that chapter one can probably sense that there is a lack of specific guidance, for those who are already in the depressed state.

As Confucianism put much emphasis on the behavior of learning other’s good and avoiding other’s bad, Chinese people, strongly influenced by Confucianism in history, became more reserved in order to put their best foot forward; they tended not to show their disadvantage, including depression. This tendency of concealing depression was further enhanced when Confucianism was officially venerated in Western Han Dynasty (206 B.C.E.—A.D. 24) nearly three centuries after Confucius passed away. As a result, there were hardly any formal historical records on depression after that. On the other hand, the idea of depression is brought up at the very beginning by Western philosophers along with other guidance of morality and ethics. Tracing back to ancient Greek, Aristotle (384--322 B.C.E.), who lived almost in the same period (ca. a hundred years later) as Confucius, believes that any morality, disposition, and emotion has a “mean”, “an intermediate between excess and defect”[11], in which a man should stay in order to achieve the good life. Either exceeding or lacking will cause problems. As Aristotle gave his definition of depression in his treatise Problems,

“Why is it that all those who have become eminent in philosophy or politics or poetry or the arts are clearly of an atrabilious [melancholic] temperament, and some of them to such an extent as to be affected by diseases caused by black bile […]? If their melancholy habitus is quite undiluted they are too melancholy; but if it is somewhat tempered they are outstanding.”[12]

Clearly, Aristotle explained the dual character of depression: it can give people much inspiration, but it can also smash people into despair; so, it is important for people to stay in the middle so as not to lose control of this temperament. This way of considering depression as a temperament of bi-nature mainly ruled Western philosophy in history, whereas there was little cognition of the essence of depression in ancient China, because of the strong impact of Confucianism that depression is a weakness. This also contributed to intentional evasion of talking about depression and expressing depressed status in modern Chinese society. A research project from Harvard University in 2007 found out that “Many Chinese regard sadness, or at least a display of sadness, as shameful and a sign of weakness” because they saw depression as “a stigmatizing label”, and it is strange but interesting that “surveys using standard clinical interviews usually find an implausibly low rate of depression in China.”[13] This could lead to the conclusion that Chinese do not have much problem with depression; however, it is more likely, from the aspect of Chinese culture, that Chinese people have depression as well, they are just simply reluctant to show that they are in the depressed state. In terms of my own experience, one of my relatives committed suicide last year due to depression, but the truth of her death was suppressed to public by her family members; instead, all her friends were notified that she died on account of her physical disease. Although my experience was only a case-by-case situation, the rate of depression is presumably not able to reflect the real situation of the depressed state among Chinese people.

Interestingly, in contrast to Confucianism, Chinese poetry shows a wholly different perspective on depression, mainly in the Tang (618—907) and Song Dynasty (960-1279). Since most Chinese poets were willing to seek an official position in the royal court to make a living, they were forced to leave their hometown for most time in a year. Under common circumstances where most Chinese regard family as an inseparable part of life, homesickness became the main cause of depression after they depart from their family. The way Chinese poets resolved their depression is “to abandon themselves to nature” (寄情山水); they often travelled in nature, confronted their homesickness or political frustration, and noted down their inspiration as well as depression through poems. For instance, one of the famous poets from Tang Dynasty, Li Bai (701—762)[14], wrote that:

“Do you not see the Yellow River flows from the sky,

Rushing into the sea and ne’er come back?

Do you not see the mirrors bright in chambers high

Grieve o’er your snow-white hair though once it was silk-black?

(君不见, 黄河之水天上来, 奔流到海不复回。

君不见, 高堂明镜悲白发, 朝如青丝暮成雪。)[15]”

Li Bai used the color change of one’s hair as a metaphor for time flying, which is associated with depression embedded in the depiction of the Yellow River, which rapidly flows towards the sea and never comes back. These four lines from Li Bai’s poem perfectly reflect his depressed temperament through nature. This poetic idea got enhanced in Song Dynasty, when the royal court never unified the whole country geographically, and was later beaten down and driven south. The misfortune of the dynasty influenced individuals greatly and there were more poems (the so-called Song Iambic Verse) describing depression, mostly through nature. Li Yu (937—978), a poet who was once in charge of a kingdom, but who was later compelled to surrender his kingdom to Song Dynasty, put these lines in his iambic verse,

“If you ask me how much my sorrow has increased,

Just see the over brimming river flowing east!

(问君能有几多愁? 恰似一江春水向东流。)[16]”

Li Yu’s depiction of depression is similar to Li Bai’s image, using the flowing river to denote a sense of effluxion of time and the cause of grief.

It is worth noticing that the idea of “abandoning oneself to nature” (寄情山水) literally means “to abandon oneself to mountains and water”; poets can discover their inner depression as well when they wander in the mountains. There was a woman poet, Li Qingzhao (1084—1155), who lived between the alteration of the dynasty from Northern Song (960—1127) to Southern Song Dynasty (1127—1279). She saw the downfall of her country, and her husband died on the way south when both of them were fleeing from a war which triggered the alteration of the two dynasties. As she claimed that:

“On parasol-trees leaves a fine rain drizzles,

As twilight grizzles.

Oh! What can I do with a grief,

Beyond belief?

(梧桐更兼细雨, 到黄昏、点点滴滴。

这次第，怎一个愁字了得？)[17]”

Li Qingzhao expressed her huge depression by the symbol of the rain drops through leaves in the deep autumn, and one can also perceive that the fetters of deep grief on her are falling. This certain, individual depressed emotion in Chinese poetry has a strong relationship with the fate of poets themselves, and with the fortune of the dynasty in which they live. In Western psychology in the late nineteen century, Carl Jung expounded a similar idea that people should live according to the human nature inside. As he illustrated on the point of “shadow”: “if such a person wants to be cured it is necessary to find a way in which his conscious personality and his shadow can live together”[18], he recommended that one should “wrestle” with the darkness, confront it, and embrace it. He also proposed that the depressed person should “surround himself with beauty” of nature, because “in excessu affectus [in an excess of affect or passion] Nature reverses herself”[19], which is his suggestion of dealing with depression: to be within nature. However, while Jung gave specific reason for being in nature as a remedy for depression, the same problem of Confucianism is present in Chinese poetry: the poets in the Tang and Song Dynasty appreciated very much the beauty embedded in depressive poetry and reckoned that depression is associated with inspiration, but they did not realize the dual character of depression either. For example, the death of Li Qingzhao is said to be triggered by unresolved depression, but there is a lack of further existent evidences that can prove the real cause of her death. The lack of cognition of depression makes predecessors unconscious that they miss much important information on it, which makes it much more difficult for later generation to research and trace back on depression in China historically. Though Tang poems and Song iambic verses existed much earlier than Jung’s idea, they did not evolve into a broadly-accepted concept in the next few centuries, that the problem of depression should be seriously discussed in terms of finding solutions to it.

After globalization and the proposal of the reform and opening-up policy in late 1970s in contemporary China, pressure from modern society on people tremendously increased, and people started to gradually realize the harm that depression can bring about by learning Western psychological treatises. The new problem is: it still takes time for people to be accustomed to talking about depression in daily life and to realize that somebody around them is talking about depression; after all, most Chinese were taught to be reserved across thousands of years of time. Understandably it is not easy to make changes just in one or two generations. Who in China, in 1989 (only a decade after the proposal of the reform and opening-up policy), could detect the huge depression in this poem, which was written by Haizi just two months before his suicide on the railway?

“Give a warm name for every river and every mountain.

Strangers, I will also wish you happy.

May you have a brilliant future!

May you lovers eventually become spouses!

May you enjoy happiness in this earthly world!

I only wish to face the sea, with spring blossoms.[20]”

The beautiful last stanza is so reserved that superficially one can only detect his best wish for others to be happy. However, the truth is that he experienced great split of his self; as an idealist, he could not understand and tolerate the society in 1980s, in which most people were only fond of materialistic life. This poem is his signal for seeking help, but unfortunately no one at that time could understand his own way of expressing depression until he committed suicide: facing the sea – even with spring blossoms – is an image of dissolving. Nevertheless, the generations from the twenty-first century on have been receiving more education on psychic status and depressed temperament than previous generations. That poem by Haizi is now widely used already in primary schools, to teach children to understand the beauty of depression as well as to realize its fatal impact. And according to Healthy China targets, at least 80% of primary and secondary schools will be equipped with mental health personnel by 2022[21]. Nowadays most young people in China are experiencing the process of finding a suitable way for them to deal with depression; the only key element left is time.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Work Cited and Consulted

Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. translated by W.D.Rose. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.

______. Problems.

Confucius. Analects of Confucius. translated by Robert Eno. 2015 (Version 2.21)

_______. Analects of Confucius. translated by David Hinton.

Dante, Alighieri. Inferno. translated by Mark Musa. New York, NY: Penguin Books, 2003.

Haizi. Facing the Sea With Spring Blossoms, tr. Hua Zhang.

Harvard Mental Health Letter. “In Brief: Depression in China: Finding a translation”. May 2007.

https://www.health.harvard.edu/newsletter_article/In_Brief_Depression_in_China_Finding_a_translation

Jung, Carl. A letter by C.G.Jung on 9 March 1959, C.G. Jung, Letters, p. 492-493.

_______. "Answer to Job" (1952). In CW 11: Psychology and Religion: West and East. P.12.

Li, Bai. Invitation to Wine, tr. Yuanchong Xu.

Li, Yu. The Beautiful Lady Yu. tr. Yuanchong Xu.

Li, Qingzhao. Slow, Slow Tune. tr. Yuanchong Xu.

“WHO China Office Fact Sheet: Depression”. Updated: March 2017.

“WHO: Mental health in China”. https://www.who.int/china/health-topics/mental-health

Footnotes

[1] WHO: Mental health in China. https://www.who.int/china/health-topics/mental-health

[2] WHO China Office Fact Sheet: Depression. Updated: March 2017

[3] e.g., Confucius, II.1: “When one rules by means of virtue it is like the North Star – it dwells in its place and the other stars pay reverence to it.”

Robert Eno. 2015 (Version 2.21). Same translator for Confucius hereinafter if not specified.

[4] e.g., Confucius, IV.2: “Those who are not ren (people who have humanity and goodness) cannot long dwell in straitened circumstances, and cannot long dwell in joy. […]”

[5] e.g., Confucius, VII.3: “That I have not cultivated virtue, that I have learned but not explained, that I have heard what is right but failed to align with it, that what is not good in me I have been unable to change – these are my worries.”

[6] e.g., Confucius, I.1: “To study and at due times practice what one has studied, is this not a pleasure? […] To remain unsoured when his talents are unrecognized, is this not a junzi (an ideal moral gentleman)?”

[7] Zi Gong [a disciple] asked: "Is there any one word that could guide a person throughout life?"
The Master replied: "How about 'reciprocity'! Never impose on others what you would not choose for yourself." (Analects of Confucius, XV.24, tr. David Hinton)

[8] Confucius, VI.19

[9] Confucius, VII.37

[10] e.g., “Midway along the journey of our life / I woke to find myself in a dark wood, / for I had wandered off from the straight path.” (Dante, I. 1-3)

[11] Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics, II.6.

[12] Aristotle. Problems, XXX.1

[13] Harvard Mental Health Letter. “In Brief: Depression in China: Finding a translation”. May 2007.

https://www.health.harvard.edu/newsletter_article/In_Brief_Depression_in_China_Finding_a_translation

[14] Concerning names of ancient Chinese poets in this essay, the last name is always written before the first name. And full names need to be used hereafter in order to get rid of confusion.

[15] Li, Bai. Invitation to Wine, tr. Yuanchong Xu. All the poems (ancient and contemporary poem) referred to in this essay are excerpts.

[16] Li, Yu. The Beautiful Lady Yu. tr. Yuanchong Xu.

[17] Li, Qingzhao. Slow, Slow Tune. tr. Yuanchong Xu.

[18] Jung, Carl. "Answer to Job" (1952). In CW 11: Psychology and Religion: West and East. P.12

[19] Jung, Carl. A letter by C.G.Jung on 9 March 1959, C.G. Jung, Letters, p. 492-493

[20] Haizi. Facing the Sea With Spring Blossoms, tr. Hua Zhang.

[21] WHO: Mental health in China. https://www.who.int/china/health-topics/mental-health