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“Ideas worth spreading.” That’s the slogan of the amazing TED collection of talks, and when I was invited last October to give a lecture at TEDx at UIBE, I came up with a topic that I hoped could be challenging and inspiring: living in China can be a healthy, positive experience. I’ve lived and worked — and thrived — in China for more than seven years, but I always sense much more negative than positive vibes here concerning health matters. I’m very aware of all of our environmental issues, as I’ve blogged considerably about them. But I’m also sure that health involves much more than just our external environment; it involves our personal outlook, our lifestyle choices, and our reactions to what happens around us — wherever we live. We all have much more control over our health than many of us realize.
It was a great honor to contribute to the prestigious TED series, and I’m excited to share my health advice with a much wider community via this internet video and Chinese subtitles. You can watch it here on Youku, or click below. I apologize for the painful one minute of ads, as I have no control over Youku’s methods (nor do I get any royalties). The video quality is a bit off, especially the last two minutes, but the UIBE TEDx team did a great job with the bilingual subtitles. I would like to again thank the great students at UIBE for inviting me, and all of their support in getting this video prepared. (You can watch the other TEDxUIBE videos here, all in Chinese).
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Really enjoyed your talk! Great perspective – wonderful that you are spreading happiness
Thanks for the kind words. I hope more people can feel empowered here and live healthy lives.
For how long did you prepare for it?
Great talk.
Thanks. I spent a couple of weeks practicing in front of others and trimming down the slides. It’s quite difficult to get under 18 minutes! But the exercise of preparing for a TED talk is very healthy, I feel, and certainly forces the speaker to focus. Less is more…
Sure, I was quite impressed at the pace you kept from the start til the end. There was quite a lot of information there and you didn’t repeat yourself much. Congrats!
Hi! Great talk! Do you know where I can locate the WHO graph you displayed on your second slide?
Thanks!
Thanks! Just Google/search WHO Global Burden of Disease China and it will pop up…
Hi Doctor, I will try not to ask too many more questions about living in China. I just hold your opinions to a high regard, and also we are both from California lol. Anyways, I’ve narrowed my choices for moving to China to: Quingdao, Dalian, and Nanjing. Do you believe these cities
will be able to maintain and improve their air qualities? Thanks for your advice 🙂
I have no specific advice for you there, sorry, there’s just no way I can know about specific city plans. No city in China has air pollution levels under WHO recommendations, so your choice of where to live should involve so much more than just air pollution. As I’ve said many times, air pollution is not the #1 health issue for China, and general health is complex and is always involving multiple issues both physical, environmental and psychological.
Hi Doctor. I believe you said, Beijing’s air polliution is still getting worse? I just read an article that China’s air pollution levels are actually getting better. Here is the article:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ckgsb/2014/08/06/chinas-air-pollution-better-than-reports-indicate/
Very much enjoyed this presentation, putting all the areas of concern in perspective. Thank you.