I couldn’t help but notice that these two items were listed right next to each other on the People’s Daily web site, in the Culture/Life section:

 600,000 Beijingers suffer depression
 Middle class on rise in China: survey

     I’ve had some experience with depression and mental health issues in my family, so I know that there is a bio-chemical aspect to the problem.  But I can’t help but wonder if part of what is going on here is the very rapid pace of social and cultural change in China.  What has happened, in the past decade especially, is a head-spinning acceleration of the kinds of social transformations that took 50 years to take hold in the US: the expansion of mass consumption, the sexual revolution, the rise of private car ownership and associated social mobility, the emergence of stark environmental problems, openness to global cultural flows, etc., etc.  Although the political system has remained stubbornly static, society and cultural life are in  rapid and confusing flux.  Anxiety and stress, which might contribute to depression, are certain to follow.  If you can’t keep up with the new society, you could feel left behind, or out of it, or socially disconnected, and so on and so forth. 

      This is by no means a new problem, but it may be heightened with the ever-growing pace of social change.  Chuang Tzu knew the problem:

Once we happen into the form of this body, we cannot forget it.  And so it is that we wait out the end.  Grappling and tangling with things, we rush headlong toward the end, and there’s no stopping it.  It’s sad isn’t it?  We slave our lives away and never get anywhere, work ourselves ragged and never find our way home.  How could it be anything but sorrow? (20).

     And maybe he has part of the answer:

A pilgrimage can’t compare to a good laugh, and a good laugh can’t compare to simply letting yourself go.  Once you’re at peace, letting yourself go and leaving change behind, then you enter the solitary mystery of heaven.  (97).

     But can you really just laugh and let yourself go in competitive, acquisitive post-modern China?