Prior to the conference, the organizer mentioned a little about the back ground of a few of the attendees. I kept the information in my heart. When I met two of those I had been thinking about, my suspicions were confirmed.
We will talk about the one who came for the conference a second time. When I brought up reading difficulties and the different learning styles due to different dominant brain hemispheres, she was all ears. Sad to say, it is not common to come across such topics in the local Chinese mass media. Hence she was behind her English-educated sisters in the group of language challenged individuals.
Today, I met her ex-youth group leader. I shared my insight with her. After getting the terminologies right ( reading difficulties is "Yuet doo chunk ngai" and dyslexia is "chor yew boo fun". Pardon me that I am new to han yue pin yin as I was old enough to have learned the "po pour mo phor".), she caught my line of thoughts immediately. As long as the person concerned is happy with herself as she is, I would not waste time telling her things she does not need to know. But in this case, she has wondered about this all her life:
1. She knows she is not stupid.
2. But why is it so difficult for her to switch from Chinese to English?
3. Working as hard as she could, she has never seemed to make any headway learning the national language that uses roman letters.
4. When she is half listening to something, she seems to be able to catch more than if she pays full attention.
From what I know, that is entirely consistent with a pictorial gifted dyslexic. A dyslexic may have difficulties with a phonics based language like English. At the one and same time she may be very adept and quick in learning a pictorial symbol based language like Chinese. This ex-youth leader asked me if it is possible for such a person to get frustrated, disappointed, humiliated and shamed into being closed up, could it lead to schizophrenia? The answer is yes, I met with one, my former care group member's sister. When I visited her in the convalescent home within the state asylum, she was totally sane. The many times they discharged her each led to either she became raving mad or violently suicidal. Hence by mutual choice, she remains within the system. There she serves quietly in whatever capacity they allow her to. She has been sane and happy for about eight years then. That particular visit was ten years ago.
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