Beijing (Fides Service) - SARS, Severe Acute respiratory Syndrome, is having also psychological effects on people in China. Many Chinese people, especially younger ones, are beginning to take a critical look at their life style, relations with family, friends and work colleagues.
A student at Beijing University has made a public request for prayers for his parents, both doctors working in the hospital charged with treating SARS patients. The young man says he is discovering feelings he has never been able to show: love and great admiration for his parents.
Another young man in Beijing says: "I have never felt such a strong bond with my parents, I have never realised the importance of the family. I live on my own and go home only once a week mainly to eat a meal cooked by my mother. I have never really thanked her properly. Today I am ashamed of myself and I pop in every day to hug my parents and tell them I care about them. I have heard colleagues and friends say the same thing. We have suddenly realised what is important, we have become more mature".
Many web sites in China have carried a reflection by a famous ecologist Tang Xi yang who writes: "Humanity must be more humble, more prudent, we must have more self control. We must respect history, nature, reality, give the human person the proper place. The selfish dimension must become smaller". The professor says that men and women of today have one objective: profit which generates consumerism and materialism, reaching alteration of nature such as genetically modified food and human cloning. "Is this the prosperity we want?" He asks. The destruction of nature, wasting of resources and environment pollution, threaten the entire world, the professor affirms: "Today we pay a high price, our health is threatened and the future of our children is uncertain". (Fides Service 24/4/2003 EM lines 37 Words: 461)