‘NOT AFRAID OF DEATH’: CHINA PROFESSOR COMFORTS STUDENTS WITH PHILOSOPHICAL APPROACH DESPITE ADVANCED CANCER
- Students hail tutor's honesty, bravery, people travel from afar to lectures
A cancer-stricken philosophy professor at a university in China is using his own life as an example to teach students lessons about illness and death.
Zhu Rui, professor at prestigious Renmin University, has insisted on teaching his spring-term class while suffering from late-stage colorectal cancer.
The 56-year-old researcher in neuro-philosophy appeared at the first lesson of his course titled Art and Brain, holding a trekking pole and wearing a woollen hat and gloves to cover up the side effects of chemotherapy.
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He told the students that he was a late-stage cancer patient who was receiving the treatment and that he needed to take a lot of pain relief medication to be able to attend the class.
"Illness is not something we worry about, but something we cope with," Zhu said. "Do not feel sad, even if I collapse in the classroom one day, because a philosopher is not afraid of death."
His honesty and open-mindedness about his illness stunned many students. After his story was widely reported by the mainland media, people would travel from other cities to listen to his lessons.
Zhu had been teaching in the United States for three decades before coming back to China to teach at Shenzhen University, and later Renmin University, in 2018.
He was diagnosed with cancer in the autumn of 2022, and doctors estimated he would probably live for another five years.
When the cancer moved to his liver, which began to swell and cause him huge pain whenever he moved, Zhu continued to view his condition from a philosopher's perspective.
"I am more aware of the existence of my body when the organs go wrong, and it means that I can no longer control my body subconsciously," he said.
On April 2, Zhu told his students he had stopped the chemotherapy, because "the disease is not curable".
Once again, he took a positive approach: "I can now teach you every week without being late for class," he said.
One of his students, Jin Ge, said she had never felt so close to death.
"The person standing in front of me might be gone forever tomorrow," she said.
Zhu had often used his own life experiences as material for his research, even more so after his diagnosis. He said the cancer had helped him with "thinking what I have been thinking all my life."
A person who had listened to his lessons this spring wrote on Xiaohongshu that, despite Zhu's physical weakness, he appeared "vigorous" and that he "made people forget he was ill" whenever he talked about philosophy.
"A noble action is worth a thousand words," one person said on Weibo.
"He will be forever free if he dies doing something he loves," said another.
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This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (www.scmp.com), the leading news media reporting on China and Asia.
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2024-06-28T06:19:39Z dg43tfdfdgfd
