Each of the 36 participants was allowed 30 minutes plus use of an over-head projector to condense years of research into data and theories. Their content spilled over from 20 areas of Chinese behaviour, including reading, learning styles, psychopathology , social interaction, personality and modernisation. In 10 years, we won't be able to do this. It's a money thing,'' said William Gabrenya, of Florida Institute of Technology, who described himself as an illiterate gweilo who lacks fluency in Chinese. He said that 93 per cent of the non-Chinese authors in his field cannot read Chinese.
Chinese psychology is too Confucian, too neat.
He's been dead a long time. The academics came from Israel, Sweden, Taiwan, Singapore, United States, British Columbia and, of course, Hong Kong. One speaker, a sociologist from Illinois, even warned her colleagues that she would not give anyone enough time to digest the long, skinny columns of numbers. For half of the audience who are illiterate in Chinese, Professor Jimmy Chan of HKU examined each of the Chinese characters for ''intelligence''. Phrases such as ''a mind as fast as an arrow'' and connections between strokes for sun and the moon were made.