PITTSBORO — Different cultures, different professions, same goal: How a small group of thoughtful, committed people can help Chatham County’s most vulnerable citizens during the pandemic.
This is the story behind a good news story in your newspaper: the donation of 1,500 surgical masks, 500 KN95 masks and 400 face shields to 17 of Chatham County’s nursing homes and assisted-living facilities.
We start in China, five years ago in Changchun, to be exact, the capital city of Jilin Province in northeastern China. It was during my adventure to teach at Jilin University that I met Zhang Siqi, who asked me to help arrange the donation of the masks and face shields to Chatham County.
Jilin Province is part of Manchuria. If you’re thinking of the movie “The Manchurian Candidate,” the real intrigue in the city of Changchun was captured in the film “The Last Emperor.”
There you can tour the museum situated on the former estate of Puyi, who was emperor of China three times in his life: first as a baby, then as an adult and lastly as the puppet of the Japanese who occupied the region from 1931 until the end of World War II in 1945.
Upon hearing Changchun, I’m sure many of you can sympathize with my wife, who asked, “How can you be going to a place as big as New York City and I never heard of it?”
Like me, Zhang Siqi is a journalism professor who studies cross-cultural understanding — and misunderstanding — so we enjoyed comparing notes on how to teach an introductory journalism course and news writing.
As I spend most of my spare time working with journalists and journalism professors in China and Russia, professor Zhang asked me to write an article for a Jilin University research journal that explores cultural differences.
My first lesson, however, was how to pronounce her name (something like “john-suh-chee”). Pronunciation in Northeast China can be as tricky as hearing a Boston accent (pahk-ya-cahr in Hah-vid yahd).
Yes, if learning Mandarin or English is not complicated enough, you need to account for accents in different parts of the country.
In Shanghai, where I spent most of my time in China over the last 10 years, the Shanghai accent is so difficult even some people in Shanghai can’t understand it.
Zhang Siqi, now as a visiting scholar at Duke University, reverses her name to the Western version of Siqi Zhang, which as a surname is as common as Smith or Jones in America.
In Limerick, Ireland, or so the legend goes, there were so many people named Ryan in the phone book that they were listed by their first names to differentiate.
That brings me to my little sister, Elaine Ryan, vice president of state advocacy and strategy integration at AARP. She is living in one of the hottest COVID-19 wards in Washington, D.C.
Why did the masks and face shields end up at Chatham County’s nursing homes and assisted-living facilities?
Personally, without her knowledge or involvement, I suggested the donations go there in her honor with all gratitude to the main organizer of the PPE initiative, the Chinese American Friendship Association of North Carolina (CAFA).
My first inkling that Elaine (@RoamtheDomes) was up to something came when the kindling on my Twitter feed was set on fire with an AARP red alert like this one:
“We need action NOW. AARP is urging state and federal lawmakers to protect the safety and well-being of nursing home residents and the staff who care for them. @RoamtheDomes shares our top priorities on this urgent issue,” April 21, 2020, adding a link to a video of my sister with captioning.
A week later, Elaine, who had been working from home, ventured back into the AARP studios to do 29 TV news interviews for stations across the country, including one in Raleigh (WRAZ) and for Spectrum News regionally for North Carolina.
“Here’s one from Denver,” she said in a family text after an international Zoom birthday salute to our niece, whose mother, our older sister, is in England. “My cadence is a bit slow. I think it was my 15th interview in a row!”
Soon Elaine was doing her own tweets, making this one personal about our parents:
“My Mom and Pop were in nursing homes at any given time and I can only imagine the strain families are under now.” Call the facility and insist on information. Lives depend on it,” May 1, 2020, linking to a TV interview.
“Since I did this interview last week, the number of nursing home residents who’ve died from COVID 19 has DOUBLED to 20,000. Please contact your Governor and members of Congress to urge action. Lives depend on it,” May 6, 2020, retweeting a news interview from pix11.com in New York City entitled, “AARP: What families need to know about nursing homes amid COVID-19.”
“Outrageous! One-Third of All U.S. Coronavirus Deaths Are Nursing Home Residents or Workers,” May 9, 2020, retweeting a New York Times story.
If you have a family member in a nursing home, Elaine says, here are six questions you should be asking.
Has anyone at the nursing home tested positive for COVID-19?
This includes residents as well as staff or other vendors who may have been in the nursing home.
What is the nursing home doing to prevent infections?
How are nursing home staff being screened for COVID-19? What precautions are in place for residents who are not in private rooms?
Does nursing home staff have personal protective equipment?
If not, what is the plan to obtain personal protective equipment?
What is the nursing home doing to help residents stay connected with their families or other loved ones?
Will the nursing home set up a regular schedule for you to speak with your loved one by phone or video call?
What is the plan for the nursing home to communicate important information to both residents and families on a regular basis?
Will the nursing home be contacting you by phone or email, and when?
Is the nursing home currently at full staffing levels for nurses, aides and other workers?
What is the plan to make sure the needs of nursing home residents are met if the nursing home has staffing shortages?
“If those nursing home facilities are not answering your questions, don’t stop there,” she says. “Every state has a long-term care ombudsman. You can go to nasop.org to be able to find the contact information for those ombudsmen. It’s their job to advocate for you and to help you get those questions answered, so don’t stop. Go to the next step to take action.”
Going the extra mile, whether to improve his newspaper or his health with bicycle rides, is standard operating procedure for Bill Horner III, the publisher and editor of this newspaper.
Siqi-Elaine-Bill formed the triangle of good will that led to the donations of masks and face shields.
The Chinese are always good for an appropriate expression like this one: “A single tree does not make a forest; a single string cannot make music.”
The heavy lifting on this good will project was done by Steve Newton, director of Chatham County Emergency Management, and the staff at the Chatham County Agriculture Conference Center in Pittsboro. They laid the wood and created the happy tune.
Not to be outdone by quotable quotes, I’ll add this one:
“The moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped.”
For you historians, that thought was expressed at the 1971 Hubert Humphrey Building dedication in Washington, D.C., by its namesake, the former vice president to the Great Society’s architect, President Lyndon Johnson.
If the pandemic has revealed one thing, it’s the limitations of the federal government to respond to a crisis.
What has always made America great, something Alexis de Tocqueville noted in “Democracy in America” (1835), is its associations that undergird civil society.
Whether it be from Siqi’s North Carolina Chinese Scholars Sino-US Exchange Association; or the Chinese American Friendship Association of North Carolina; or Elaine’s AARP, formerly known as the American Association of Retired Persons, or Bill’s North Carolina Press Association, help is on the way to Chatham County.
Government alone cannot save us from the pandemic. We the People, all races and creeds, must come to the rescue.
Or as cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead observed:
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”
About the author: Buck Ryan, a journalism professor at the University of Kentucky, is working on a case study of the Chatham News + Record, which he views as a model of success for community newspapers here and abroad.
In 2008 Ryan produced “Citizen Kentucky/Citizen China: Hope for a New Century,” a half-hour public television documentary exploring cultural connections between the U.S. and China as a preview to the Beijing Olympics. In 2010 he was the first UK journalism professor-in-residence at Shanghai University, launching teaching experiences at three other Chinese universities and an international high school in Hohhot, the capital of Inner Mongolia.