Dementia and the Divided Personhood in China

This chapter examines two different constructions of the personhood of people with dementia in Shanghai, China. People with aggressive dementia (or wu, in Chinese) have violent tendency and consequently have lost their personhood; in contrast, people with amenable dementia (or wen) have preserved their personhood. This division generates different strategies to deal with dementia: aggressive ones are easy to institutionalize while amenable ones are well-protected by their family caregivers at home. The folk understandings of dementia suggest that personhood is dynamic and behaviorally contingent in Chinese culture, which has the potential to evolve and devolve into a moral state between person and non-person.