介绍:
Lincoln: Recently, a post about ten things that increase the risk of early death has gone viral. It is from a survey of 100 people and their daily habits. Wu You, maybe you can actually enlighten us a little bit here.
WY: Here is the list. First one: prolonged use of computers. I mean, on a daily basis, nowadays most people at their workplaces, right?
Michael: Yeah, I’d say it’s pretty hard to ignore prolonged use of computers.
WY: And the second one on the list is “go to sleep after 11pm”
Lincoln: Wu You, when do you go to sleep?
WY: I have to confess that I go to sleep every day at around midnight.
Lincoln: You don’t have to confess to that, you haven’t done anything wrong!
Michael: I would argue here, this says, all right, going to sleep after 11pm is bad. Now, presumably it’s bad because you’re not getting a lot of sleep, but it’s only bad if you’re also getting up early as well. You can only say that going to sleep after 11 o’clock if you’re also getting up at, maybe, five or six o’clock in the morning. If you’re getting up at seven or eight, I think going to sleep after 11 is perfectly acceptable.
WY: Next one: insufficient sleep, so that is connected with the last one.
Lincoln: This is a bit of a one-two here, I think they were starting to hedge their bets. Next one.
WY: Lack of exercise.
Lincoln: Now this one I can get behind. Obviously, we all know you have to live a healthy lifestyle.
Michael: The oldest woman in the world who was from France a few years ago, and she attributed her longevity to drinking brandy and smoking cigarettes, so it’s not an exact science, and what was the name of that guy in America in the 80s who used to run everywhere? You know, he really popularized jogging in America in the 70s and 80s, and then he actually died of cancer.
Lincoln: I have no idea. I was going to say Forrest Gump, but that’s a fictional character.
Michael: No, no, well, Forrest Gump is based on him.
WY: And number five: seldom go to see a doctor when sick.
Lincoln: Now this is something that I have to confess myself, I might be guilty of. Men of a certain age, they don’t want to go to the doctor. My father, he would very rarely go to the doctor, he would just tough it out, because if you go to the doctor then you’re not manly, or something like this.
WY: And then number six: prefer strong flavour – salty or spicy food.
Lincoln: OK.
WY: Think about the people who are living in Sichuan Province. In that province, most foods are spicy, so what about them?
Michael: Yeah. It’s probably hard to find food in Sichuan that’s not spicy, I would imagine, such is the predilection for spice and things of that nature.
Lincoln: Wu You, what’s the next one?
WY: And the next one is: Don’t wait until starving before you eat, and don’t wait until you’re exhausted before you rest, and don’t wait until you’re sleepy before you go to bed.
Lincoln: Now that’s quite an interesting one there, Michael.
Michael: So, that’s essentially just “do things in moderation”, isn’t it, if we round up the true meaning of that.
Lincoln: If I go to bed and I’m not necessarily very tired, I’ll always [think] maybe I’ll read this little article quickly before I go to bed, maybe watch that little clip of a cat falling off a roof, or something. And then in the end, I’m dog tired, it’s one o’clock, and then I don’t have enough sleep. So the next one is quite an interesting one. This is more, I suppose, about your emotional and your spiritual health – a lack of communication with your family.
Michael: I’ve noticed this about Chinese families, and Chinese boyfriends and girlfriends in particular. They do seem to call each other really very often.
WY: They love each other so much.
Michael: But I’m wondering, if you’re calling each other three or four times a day, what is there to talk about? I mean, are you just live-tweeting your lunch to them? I don’t understand.
WY: To keep everyone on the same page.
Michael: Yeah, sure, but, I mean, is it really necessary?
Lincoln: I don’t know if it’s necessary, but I can say I do the same thing. Not necessarily calling, but over text, just to be checking in on the minutiae of my everyday life. “Oh, I had a sandwich. Now I’m not having one.” So that’s kind of the idea, I think.
WY: And the next one is: spend too much time on the cellphone.
Lincoln: Wu You, is that one for you?
WY: Yeah, it is! Nowadays, I’m kind of bound with my cellphone. Every day, in the morning, the first thing I look at is my cellphone, and the last thing I look at at night is my cellphone as well.
Michael: Yeah, I have to confess, a cellphone is a large part of my daily life as well. Something which I’ve done, which I think is a little compromise, here, is if I’m struggling to get to sleep, I’ll go on YouTube or whatever, and I’ll look up relaxation and meditation exercises that people have put on YouTube and on the internet, and I’ll just listen to that for ten, 15 minutes or so.
WY: Does it work?
Michael: Well, yeah, I find it does. You often have some… (WY: Sounds of the water?) Yeah, some waterfalls, or some rainwater, and then there’s a soothing voice in the background saying: “You are calm, the waves gently lapping at your feet.”
Lincoln: And the last one that we see here is irregular diet or irregular meal times. Now, I’m not very guilty of this. I’m very, very strict in terms of my mealtimes. If I have a meal ten minutes after I was supposed to have it, I get very grumpy.
WY: I have to say that I didn’t achieve number seven. I only eat when I feel hungry, but I was always hungry at a specific time, because I always get hungry at about seven o’clock in the morning, and then 12 o’clock midday, and around five o’clock.
Michael: I wonder how you would apply number ten to somewhere like Spain, for example, where I used to live, and where the mealtimes are very different from how they are here in China. So, lunchtime – I mean, you wouldn’t really see anyone having lunch before about 1:30, I wouldn’t think, and then dinnertime is notoriously late. People eat dinner at maybe around nine or ten o’clock at night.
WY: But does it mean they get up late in the morning?
Michael: Well, in Spain, traditionally, or culturally, you have the notion of the siesta, so you’d go to bed in the afternoon.
WY: Don’t they need to work in the afternoon?
Michael: Well, it’s changing a little bit now. I mean, if you’re working for a big, multinational company, then yes, you have to do normal working hours, but – and this is true of little shops, as well – they’ll just shut for about three or four hours in the afternoon, especially in the height of the summer.
Lincoln: All right, fair enough.
Michael: I think this list is quite depressing, to be quite honest, to read all of this. Everything on this list is basically just saying, “do everything in moderation, don’t do anything to excess”.
Lincoln: Don’t pay too much attention to this list. Just have a healthy, reasonable lifestyle, and you should be fine.
