Vegetarianism

Buddhism in Action
Winter 2012
Vegetarianism
For Your Health
For Your Spirit
For the Earth
ECHO OF THE HEART
Learning From the East
“V
Hannah Freud (left) and Wieke van der Heiden
have been close friends since childhood.
Text and photo by Liu King-pong
ows beget strength. Trust that you will
reach your goal of cheering up Dutch
patients by faithfully keeping your commitment in your hearts.” This was the advice that
Master Cheng Yen gave to Hannah Freud and
Wieke van der Heiden, two Dutch women who
traveled from Holland to visit the Master.
Freud and her good friend van der Heiden
established a charity foundation named Brilliant,
which aims at recruiting volunteers with special
talents, such as singing and acting, who can
serve as “sense artists” to cheer up patients in
Dutch hospitals.
Last year, Wu Fen-shu (吳芬淑), a Tzu Chi
volunteer in the Netherlands, gave them a DVD
of A Thousand Hands, a documentary about Jarl
Eschauzier, a Dutch medical student doing his
internship at the Hualien Tzu Chi Medical Center
in 2007. Freud and van der Heiden were deeply
impressed with the center’s human-oriented
managerial doctrine that Eschauzier presented in
the documentary. It was exactly what they’d been
hoping to adopt for their own organization. With
their interest in Tzu Chi piqued, they set out to
learn more about it.
They decided to visit Taiwan in May 2012.
Under the guidance of Wu Fen-shu and Dr. Haley
Kang, (康惠晴, another Tzu Chi volunteer in
Holland), they saw first-hand the practices at the
Hualien Tzu Chi Medical Center, Xindian Tzu
Chi Hospital, Tzu Chi Medical School, several
recycling stations, and other Tzu Chi points of
interest. In addition, they met with Master Cheng
Yen at the Jing Si Abode.
About cheering up patients, Freud said that
we must understand that each patient is unique,
with a mind and a soul as well as a body. “Other
than this,” she stressed, “a comfortable atmosphere and a cozy environment in a hospital
play an important role in healing the sick.”
Freud pointed out that both the atmosphere
and environment in each of the Tzu Chi hospitals
are superb. People stepping into the main
entrance are warmly welcomed by volunteers.
Music performed in the hall by other volunteers
fills the air. There is a table where calligraphers
demonstrate their art, and there is a beautiful
bookstore and an attached coffee shop where
patients and visitors can take a break and enjoy
some refreshment. It’s truly interesting to see
doctors of Chinese herbal medicine working
alongside doctors of Western medicine. Monitors
located at easily visible places indicate when outpatients can see their doctors. There is even a gift
shop where one can buy products made of recycled materials, such as T-shirts made from plastic
bottles. “All of this demonstrates a sort of warm
serenity and efficiency,” Freud remarked.
“Escalators in the hospitals… What a brilliant
idea!” added van der Heiden. She explained that
elevators used in Dutch hospitals could sometimes be smelly and unhygienic. “I especially
like the beautiful gardens with ponds, and the
nice pergolas that are open and easily accessible
for visitors. They are not only places where you
can relax and appreciate nature, but also private
places for difficult conversations between doctors and patients.”
All of this is what the two Dutch women
hope to accomplish in their own foundation.
“Tzu Chi has completed a blueprint for our
future projects,” said Freud jubilantly. “If any
of our fellow Dutch citizens should criticize us
for being too unrealistic or idealistic, we can
simply tell them to go to Tzu Chi hospitals and
see for themselves.”
She explained that a lot of Dutch healthcare
organizations and hospitals are searching for
ways to improve themselves, but she admitted
that the idea of “learning from the East” had
never occurred to her before. “There are a lot of
controversies and uncertainties nowadays in the
field of health care in Holland,” Freud remarked.
“Whenever we are puzzled and have questions,
we normally go to the West, or the U.S. to be more
precise, to find solutions. Nobody thought of
going to the East. I believe going to the East and
learning from Tzu Chi is the right thing to do.”
Tzu Chi members in Holland and the volunteers in Brilliant can learn a lot from each other,
and their cooperation will be fruitful for both
groups. I recall that Master Cheng Yen once said
to her disciples, “If you can mindfully carry out
Tzu Chi humanitarianism today, many people
will come to you from abroad for inspiration in
the future.” That is indeed true.
Winter 2012
1
Tzu Chi
Quarterly
Buddhism in Action
Winter 2012
Vol. 19 No. 4 Winter 2012
Vegetarianism
For Your Health
For Your Spirit
For the Earth
16
32
42
The Tzu Chi Quarterly welcomes contrib­utions
of personal experiences or reports of Tzu Chi
activities. We also welcome letters to the editor containing personal comments or opinions
on matters of interest in the Tzu Chi world. We
reserve the right to edit the letters for purposes of space, time or clarity. Letters should
include the writer's name, address and telephone number.
Address: No. 2, Lide Road, Taipei 11259,
Taiwan.
Telephone: 886-2-2898-9000 ext 8046
Fax: 886-2-2898-9977
E-mail: [email protected]
Tzu Chi Quarterly
4
1 learning from the east
Dutch charity workers discover
that they can learn a lot from Tzu
Chi about how to run a charity
organization.
4 a better village, a better
life
Tzu Chi helps farmers in Guizhou,
China, to break out of a cycle of
poverty and misery.
27
16 a Better Education, a Better chance
If the children of the poor farmers
in Guizhou can get a good education, they’ll be able to break out of
their poverty.
42 warm encounters after
hurricane sandy
Tzu Chi volunteers delivered hot
food, cash cards and blankets to
victims of Hurricane Sandy just
when they were feeling powerless.
27 a good night’s sleep
It is so nice to sleep soundly at
night without fear of typhoons or
mudslides.
53 faith in the dharma
We must learn from the Dharma in
order to uncover our pure innate
nature and grow in wisdom.
32 thicker than blood
Residents at the Wuhan Children
Welfare House seem closer to each
other than blood relatives.
58 vegetarianism
A diet based on plants is good for
our personal health and spirit and
for the whole earth.
58
72 when two great medical
traditions meet
The technology of Western medicine and the wisdom of traditional
Chinese medicine can collaborate
with each other to bring real benefits to the ill.
80 the cries of a fish
When a little boy sees the suffering of a young fish, he comes to
hope that all creatures on earth
can live in peace and freedom.
72
85 walking the bodhisattva
path together
Three men whose paths crossed in
Tzu Chi support one another as
recycling volunteers.
90 the illustrated jing si
aphorisms
We grow up in this world, but our
spirits can transcend it.
91 tzu chi events around the
world
Tzu Chi briefs from everywhere.
President and Publisher
Shih Cheng Yen
Managing Editor
Wu Hsiao-ting
Staff
Teresa Chang
Lin Sen-shou
Liu King-pong
Douglas Shaw
Evelyn Yi-chih Sung
Tang Yau-yang
Steven Turner
Tzu Chi Quarterly is owned and published
quarterly by the Buddhist Compassion Relief
Tzu Chi Foundation, No. 1, Lane 88, Jingshe
St., Kanglo Village, Shinchen Hsiang, Hualien
County 97150, Taiwan.
Shih Cheng Yen, Chairman.
Copyright © 2012 Tzu Chi Foundation.
All rights reserved. Printed in Taiwan.
For a free copy of the Tzu Chi Quarterly,
please contact your nearest Tzu Chi branch
office (see inside back cover).
中華郵政台北誌字第910號執照登記為雜誌交寄
2
Tzu Chi Quarterly
Winter 2012
3
The karst topology in the mountains of Guizhou, China, makes it
difficult for farmers to eke out a
decent living. The irregular landscape is characterized by an
abundance of limestone outcroppings, fissures, caves and underground streams. Arable land is
scarce and fragmented.
There used to be only a few winding and sometimes treacherous
roads, making the remote mountain villages in the area that
much more isolated. Inaccessibility stifled trade, and the lack
of exchange with people outside
the region left generations of villagers struggling to achieve a
self-sufficient living.
A Better
Village,
A Better
Life
To help break this cycle of poverty, Tzu Chi has
helped some villagers relocate to more hospitable home
sites. In addition, the construction of better roads promises
improved access and the possibility of prosperity that often
comes with commerce.
In their new homes in a Tzu Chi village, residents no longer worry about leaky
roofs. Some of them are even having good luck with money-making ventures.
They are doing better—as evidenced by newly purchased motorcycles, electric
rice cookers and refrigerators—than in the days when they struggled just to put
food on the table in their old homes in the mountains.
4
Tzu Chi Quarterly
Winter 2012
5
By Qiu Ru-lian
Translated by Tang Yau-yang
Photos by Lin Yan-huang
A
s soon as we stepped out of our airplane at
Guiyang Longdongbao Inter­n ational
Airport, we saw “Guizhou, Cool and
Comfortable” written on a huge billboard opposite
the airport terminal. At 1,100 meters (3,600 feet)
above sea level, the area is cool even in summer.
The airport serves Guiyang, the capital city
of Guizhou Province. It’s also an important airline hub in southwestern China. We arrived in
the midst of an expansion that will more than
triple the capacity of the airport.
The picturesque and widely prevalent karst
landscape in Guizhou, though unproductive for
agriculture, might provide fertile ground for
tourism. Officials hope the natural scenery, coupled with the mystique of the area’s indigenous
inhabitants, will draw tourists.
Whether or not that grand scheme will come
to pass remains to be seen, but the current reality
of people in Luodian County, southern Guizhou,
where we were visiting, is a bit less glamorous.
Most people in the county earn a meager living
the same way their forefathers did: farming the
poor land in the mountains.
Luodian is 86 percent mountainous. There
used to be only a few winding and sometimes
treacherous roads that linked the locals to the
outside world. Riders often needed to hold on
tightly so as not to bump their heads as their cars
lurched along on the rocky roads. It was not
uncommon for sharp gravel to puncture tires.
Those hazardous scenes became things of the
past after the roads were paved. However, the
roads twist about as much as ever. Even the nicknames of local landmarks—such as “Seven Bends”
and “Thirteen Twists”—reflect the situation.
The trip from Guiyang to Luodian on those
winding roads took us almost five hours. The
Luodian government official who met us at the
airport was quick to point out: “In five years a
highway will connect Luodian with Guiyang,
and then your trip from the airport to Luodian
will take only about an hour.”
With easy accessibility comes the possibility
of prosperity. Perhaps the people in Luodian
have something to look forward to.
6
Tzu Chi Quarterly
Li Ming’an
Even though it was a summer morning, it was
a bit on the cool side in Pingyan, a township in
Luodian, when we visited Li Ming’an (李明安),
the head of Gaolan Tzu Chi Village. The village is
one of the Tzu Chi-sponsored relocation projects
in Guizhou, which, in an effort to improve people’s lives, uprooted some people from their
homes up in the mountains and resettled them in
lower and more accessible locations.
Li was taking inventory in his little grocery
store when we arrived. His store was the only
one in the village. He noticed that many items
were running low, so he would have to go to his
suppliers to restock later in the day.
While Li was busy with the inventory, his
daughter, Li Tianqian (李天倩), took a bucket
and washed her own dress, hung it up to dry,
and then tended the store. Tianqian was just five
years old.
The youngster does not know enough arithmetic to handle the money, so she trusts the
customers to tell her how much change to give
back. Li said that there had never been any
problems with this system. Many villagers are
relatives of one degree or another, and their
honest nature was not affected by the move
from their old homes in the mountains to the
new ones in the Tzu Chi village. The relocation,
however, did impact the lives of many of them
in other ways.
Before the move, life in the mountains had
been hard. For as long as people could remember, it had always been hard to earn a living from
the poor land. Li recalled, “My parents started
out before daybreak and worked all day in the
field. After laboring all day, all they got to eat
when they returned home at night was a bowl of
thin corn porridge. It was tough.”
After getting married, Li and his wife remained
in the mountains to farm. Li’s entire extended
family—his parents, his own family, and the families of his four brothers—relied on the crop that
their land produced once each year. When the
harvest was good, they had a happier year. When
it wasn’t, they had to tighten their belts.
As the children grew, so too did the household
expenses. Farming was unable to sustain the family, so Li journeyed to Dongguan, Guangdong
Province, and worked as a security guard. He
made only a thousand renminbi (US$160) a
month. He was hard pressed to save any meaningful amount of money, and he knew that he
could never make more. “Growing up, we didn’t
bother with school,” Li said. “We were told that if
we planted our land, we’d have food to eat. It
wasn’t until I was an adult and competed against
others for a job that I found out the hard way how
unprepared I really was.”
Seeing no future as a security guard, he quit
and returned home. It just so happened that at
the same time Tzu Chi was preparing to build a
new community in Gaolan to relocate families
from three indigenous Miao villages in the
mountains, including his own.
Li Mingan and his daughter, Tianqian, popsicle in
hand, are pictured in the family grocery store. It is
the only such shop in the 84-family Gaolan Tzu
Chi Village. Tianqian sometimes tends the store
when her parents are busy.
Li was thrilled at the prospect of moving. He
had heard long before that Tzu Chi was building
new communities in Luodian County. He had
seen one such community, Wanxin Tzu Chi
Village in Pingyan. The homes there were sturdy,
comfortable, and attractive. He wanted to be
part of the Gaolan relocation.
Li got involved with the project. He was
assigned to explain and promote the relocation
plan to the residents of the three Miao villages,
but he encountered quite a bit of resistance. The
people were reluctant to uproot their lives, to
change. “Some older folks didn’t want to leave
behind their lifelong homes, and others were
afraid that they wouldn’t be able to make a living outside of farming,” he observed.
Right before the 2011 Lunar New Year, 84
families moved into Gaolan Tzu Chi Village. Li
and his family started that new year in their new
house, and later they opened a little grocery
store on the first floor.
A thoroughfare runs right by the village,
making it easier for people to get to places. From
his old village it took Li 40 minutes to walk to
downtown Pingyan, but now it takes just five
Winter 2012
7
minutes on a scooter. Easy transportation like
this enables him to conveniently keep his store
stocked and going.
As the head of Gaolan Tzu Chi Village, Li
takes his responsibilities seriously. With the goal
of raising household income for his fellow villagers, he did some research on plants that would
likely grow well in the mountain weather and
that would produce valuable crops. He found
two economic crops: walnuts and tobacco.
Walnut trees begin to fruit five years after
planting. Top-grade walnuts command as much
as US$4.50 per pound. Tobacco, on the other
hand, can be harvested between 11 and 15 weeks
after it is planted. Li chose to cultivate both walnut seedlings and tobacco on the family land in
the old village. Under his influence many villagers likewise planted both crops, and they have
already seen their incomes rise considerably.
“Before, farming could hardly put enough
food on the table, let alone provide for other
things, such as purchasing vehicles,” Li commented. Now, only 18 months after the relocation, most if not all households in the village
have improved their finances sufficiently to purchase scooters, refrigerators, electric rice cookers, and induction cookers.
Li is thankful for having a house that is not
leaky, glad that he no longer needs to make a
fire to cook, and grateful that he has enough
money to send his daughter, Tianqian, to school.
He and his wife take turns escorting her to and
from school.
“She’s much luckier than I was when I was a
child,” Li said. “All the children in the village go
to school now. I’m not aware of any family that
can’t afford to do so.” He was all smiles, content
with the stability of their lives.
His tobacco field, walnut trees, and grocery
shop keep him busy every day. Even so, he still
swings by the old house often to see his parents
and drop off some nutritious food for them. They
are so attached to their old family home that they
stayed put while their children moved away.
Mi Zhenghong
The serenity and contentment that Li emanated was also apparent in the family of Mi
Zhenghong (米正洪), 31.
When Mi was 19, he left Pingyan for Guiyang
and apprenticed at a bakery. Later he got mar-
8
Tzu Chi Quarterly
ried, took out a loan, and leased a shop to open
his own bakery.
He and another baker started working at six
o’clock every morning. Two other employees
helped with packaging and selling. Mi was so
busy on good days that he could not go to bed
until midnight. Even so, he was just barely breaking even. “The cost of living was high in Guiyang.
The store rent, personnel costs, and our living
expenses added up to a lot,” he said as he recalled
his days of struggling to make a living.
The issue came to a head when his older son
started elementary school. Though the Mis were
living in Guiyang, their family remained legally
registered in their native mountain village
because an agricultural household could not
move at will.
Because Mi was not a registered resident of
Guiyang, his son was ineligible to attend public
school there. His only option was to send his son
to a private school, but the private schools
ranked below the public schools. In other words,
his son’s education would come at a higher cost
without any corresponding higher quality to
show for the extra expense.
For the sake of the family finances and the
education of both the sons, the family pulled up
roots again and moved back to Pingyan, where
the children would have an established path into
the public schools.
At the same time his children started in a new
school, Mi decided to start a new career. Baking
had not provided well for him and his family, so
he wanted to try something new. But what
should he do?
Pingyan sorely needed to build up its basic
infrastructure. Its water supply, electricity, and
transportation sectors needed improvement.
Even Mi’s children, accustomed to the modern
conveniences in Guiyang, noticed the backward
living conditions in Pingyan.
Mi saw the potential for substantial growth
in construction in the area. It inspired him to
learn from an engineering firm such skills as
how to plant trees, erect utility poles, carve terraces on mountainsides, and build cisterns.
In 2011, the family moved into Gaolan Tzu
Chi Village. At that time, he raised the necessary
capital, registered, and launched his own engineering company. Now he is doing well. His latest project is putting up utility poles in his native
Mi Zhenghong (left) and his family pose in their new home at
Gaolan Tzu Chi Village. Mi has
successfully switched from his
work as a baker to the owner of
an engineering company.
Winter 2012
9
After decades of weathering the elements, many
homes in the old Gaolan village are dilapidated.
However, villagers often cannot afford to build new
homes. Sometimes a house takes several generations to finish.
Miao village. Once the poles are in place, electricity and street lights will follow. Better lit
roads are safer roads.
Mi hires young men from Gaolan Tzu Chi
Village and nearby villages who are otherwise
idle between farming tasks. He pays each of them
60 renminbi (US$9.50) a day and offers them
lunch. It’s not a bad income by local standards.
It was a rainy day when we visited Mi. The
wet, slippery ground made it difficult to work, so
Mi had sent his workers home. He took the opportunity of a day off to stop by his parents’ house.
Mi and his five siblings have implored the old
couple, both pushing 70 years of age, to live with
them down the mountain, but they insist on staying in the old family house, in which the six siblings grew up. Their father, Mi Guoxue (米國學),
continues to provide medical care to villagers who
did not relocate to Gaolan.
New villages, new lives
The families of Li Ming’an and Mi Zhenghong
are but two examples of those that are making a
better living in Gaolan Tzu Chi Village. It heartens Tzu Chi volunteers to see the villagers doing
10
Tzu Chi Quarterly
better in a community that was not even there
just a few years ago.
The karst landscape in Guizhou leaves the
province with a dearth of tillable land, and it has
always been extremely difficult for its residents
to earn a living in agriculture. The province’s
share of the poor is disproportionately high:
Although only 2.6 percent of the country’s population lives in this province, it contains 20 percent of the nation’s poor.
Because of the pervasive poverty, it has always
been a monumental struggle for the average family here to build a home. Doing so might take years,
decades, or even generations, according to Tzu Chi
volunteer Gao Ming-shan (高明善). “People typically left their hometown for jobs elsewhere. They
used the money they saved to build their homes.
One year they might buy cement, and the next
year they could put up a brick wall.”
It’s not difficult to envision how equally hard
other aspects of their lives were. Usually, the
only thing one generation could pass down to
the next was its poverty. There seemed to be no
realistic reason for expecting this vicious cycle to
end anytime soon.
Then a glimmer of hope dawned. In 1997,
Panxian and Xingyi Counties in Guizhou were
hit by floods and hail. The local food supply,
already low, was wiped out by the disasters. Tzu
Chi stepped in and supplied the needy with
winter clothing, comforters, and a three-month
supply of rice. Though this measure helped tide
some victims over, their tough livelihoods
remained the same.
Master Cheng Yen, the founder of Tzu Chi,
wanted to find a way to radically improve their
lives and to help extricate them from the grip of
their unending poverty. Yan Mingfu (閻明復),
then CEO of the China Charity Federation, suggested to Wang Tuan-cheng (王端正), a deputy
CEO of Tzu Chi, to consider relocating poor
people from their homes in the mountains to
lower lands where making a living could be
easier.
Tzu Chi volunteers went to Luosha Township
in Luodian County to assess the situation. There
they saw for themselves the impoverished living
conditions of the local people, just as Yan had
described them. Villagers lived in rudimentary,
dilapidated, ramshackle dwellings. Their clothes
were filled with patches or holes. Some people
even lived with their livestock, whose excrement
accounted for the stench that filled those houses.
Tzu Chi decided to build new communities to
house families that wanted to relocate. The foundation completed nine new villages between
2000 and 2012 in Luodian and Ziyun Counties
and the Huaxi District. All told, 401 families now
live in these nine new communities. Six of the
nine villages are located in Luodian County
because the support of the local officials was
stronger there, according to Wang.
With the support of the officials, Tzu Chi has
been able to build housing projects and carry out
relocation, assist the needy, and provide tuition
aid in Luodian for 13 years. County leaders took
the relocation seriously. “When they were promoted to other posts, Tzu Chi’s relocation of the
needy was on the list of important to-do items
that they passed to their successors as part of the
handover,” Wang remarked.
Tzu Chi volunteers
Numerous Tzu Chi volunteers have been to Luodian
many times in the last 13 years
to work on housing construction, carry out annual winter
distributions, award tuition
Li Ming’an returns to the old family house in the mountains where
he grew up. It provides a sharp
contrast to his new home in the
new Gaolan village.
aid, or visit the needy. They went there, Wang
said, “hoping to help the needy and to give
them a chance to escape from the vicious cycle
of poverty.”
Wang added that at first they did not know
how far they would go. But the chemistry
between Luodian and the foundation is such that
a long and fruitful kinship has been sustained.
Perhaps fate has had something to do with it, but
more likely the compassion of the volunteers has
helped foster this beneficial association.
The relationship has not been without some
physical pains on the part of the volunteers,
most of whom are middle-aged or older. They
may have done well in business or perhaps they
are grandparents. Whatever their background,
few, if any, were prepared for the terrain they
encountered in Luodian. They huffed and
puffed and sweated as they wound up the
mountain paths, and they likely got sore in
more places than one.
Likewise, few were prepared for the tough,
rudimentary roads on which they had to travel
to reach the mountain villages. “The roads were
atrocious,” said Wang Tianwei (王天維), a volunteer from Guangdong. “To avoid knocking our
heads on the car ceiling or the windows, we
often had to hang on to the grips so tight that the
skin of our hands was scraped off.”
Despite the hardships of the journeys, Wang
remembered that his fatigue disappeared when
he saw local people who were about his age but
who looked so much older than he was. Deep
lines were etched on their faces and calluses covered their palms. He, a city dweller, could not
imagine how a person could become so coarse
and look so much older than his age.
Volunteer Gao Ming-shan, from Taiwan, has
been involved with the construction of all nine
villages. All of these projects, beginning with
Shangwengjing Tzu Chi New Village, were built
according to his designs. Master Cheng Yen had
In front of her new home in Gaolan Tzu
Chi Village, Li Ermei (黎二妹), 72 years
old, sorts soy that was just harvested.
The house is in every way more robust
than her old house up in the mountains.
It is also brighter, with light flooding
through the large windows.
lin ying-qin
advised him to build for villagers what he would
build for his own family. He thus designed houses to last at least two generations. In a sharp
departure from local building practices, he
employed reinforced concrete for the walls and
thickened the walls from six to eight inches.
Many times he has visited each of the nine
new housing complexes and the old villages they
replaced. He has gotten to know the people there
and their struggles very well. He has become so
emotionally entangled with the residents that he
feels that they are his relatives living far away.
He clearly remembers each family that he has
visited: for example, the father and his son who
lived with their old cow, and the household that
was headed by an orphan. Sometimes he wakes
up in his home in Taiwan in the middle of the
night, worrying about some unfinished tasks
that he still has to do for the villagers.
It is much tougher for Gao to navigate around
the mountains now than when he first started
working in this area over a decade ago. The terrain remains the same, but he has gotten older. It
used to take him little effort, but it is now something of a struggle for him. Nevertheless, his concern for the local people is the same today as it
always has been.
Gao is the quintessential volunteer. Once he
was in a discussion with Luodian government
leaders about village relocation when Xu Wen-
14
Tzu Chi Quarterly
Largely with their bare hands, villagers move a part of a boulder
to help prepare the site for the
building of Zheren Tzu Chi New
Village, one of the first villages
that Tzu Chi built in Guizhou.
long (許文龍), a fellow volunteer, informed him of the death
of his mother. “It would have
taken me two days to go back
to Taiwan. Since Mom was
already gone, my presence
back home wouldn’t really
have helped anything, so I
decided to stay and finish what
I had to do.”
As sad as he was at the passing of his own mother, Gao
knew that his brothers and
many Tzu Chi volunteers back
home, with or without him, would take good
care of the final arrangements for her. He knew
that the villagers in Guizhou needed him more.
While Gao’s mother was still alive, he and his
brothers regularly went for walks with her day
after day to help maintain her health. Since her
death, Gao has often returned to that path to
reminisce. “I feel quite lonesome walking without Mom,” he told Master Cheng Yen. She
advised him to repay his mother’s love by “walking the right path to love and help people.”
The poor people that Tzu Chi volunteers
have helped in the nine new villages would
have faced a future of hardship if they had not
relocated. With Gao’s help and that of many
others, the lives of those who have relocated
are getting better.
With improved finances at home, more parents are able to break from their tradition of
keeping their children out of school so they can
help work the family farm. With education
comes greater possibilities for the children to
escape from the grip of life-long poverty—
something that generations of their ancestors
have failed to achieve.
In the Tzu Chi villages, people get on with
their lives. They attend school, they work, then
they get married and have children. We are glad
to see the vicious cycle of poverty beginning to
show signs of breaking.
In the Gaolan Tzu Chi Village square, local students
rehearse a traditional dance used to celebrate bumper
harvests. They are practicing for an upcoming ethnic
minorities dance competition.
Winter 2012
15
A Better Education,
A Better Chance
By Qiu Ru-lian
Translated by Tang Yau-yang
Photos by Lin Yan-huang
Li Xinghua is familiar with sadness. Though only 18, she has troubles that many girls her age
cannot begin to imagine.
She has had enough of poverty, and she desperately hopes her life will be more than just an endless struggle to satisfy her family’s most basic living needs. She’s seen her two older sisters take
that path. They both married young, and they have been forced to leave their children behind at
home so they can work out of town to make a living. It was how they themselves were raised by
their mother. But that doesn’t mean Xinghua is resigned to accept it as her fate too.
Without something that can set her on a better course, Xinghua’s life will likely mirror the lives
of her sisters and their mother. That is not an appealing prospect, especially to an 18-year-old girl.
She wants to make sure her life turns out differently. “I want to go to school,” she said. “It’s my
only ticket to a better future. Life should be more full of color.”
S
oon after we left the bustling city of
Guiyang, Guizhou Province, the karst
landscape appeared before us stretching as
far as our eyes could see. For tourists, the landscape is beautiful to behold. But local farmers
see the landscape quite differently because the
rugged terrain, however breathtaking, makes it
very difficult to earn a living. In a good year, a
farm family may harvest enough to feed itself,
with some extra left over for sale. With the cash,
they can cover the school tuition for their children. But in a bad year, the family may go hungry, and there is nothing left over to sell. In those
years, the children aren’t able to attend school
at all.
It was the rainy season when we visited
Luodian County in July. The recent storms and
drizzles had left the narrow mountain paths
very muddy and more treacherous than normal.
Students were horsing around when we
arrived at Central School in Pingyan, a township in Luodian. They had just picked up their
report cards and were about to start summer
vacation. Then we heard a series of gongs,
which puzzled us. Li Xinghua (黎興花), 18,
explained that the gongs were inviting neighbors to come and eat lunch.
At the sound, many children rushed to take
their seats. The uninitiated might very well have
mistaken it for a joyous celebration, but it was
something quite different. It turned out that
there was a family in the community that had
recently experienced a death. Relatives and
friends gave the family food, a Miao custom of
sending condolences. In return, the bereaved
invited everyone to eat.
Xinghua’s younger siblings joined the other
children in the reception, thrilled to have a nice
meal for a change. But Xinghua returned to her
home, a simple cinder block building. Openings
in the walls originally intended for windows
had been boarded up with wooden planks
instead. Rain was seeping into the house, and it
felt damp and stuffy inside.
“My dad had to sell land and borrow money
from all over the place to build our house,” she
said. “And we still owe the builder.” Her parents were working in Guangdong Province in
hopes of saving enough money to repay that
debt.
There are nine people in Xinghua’s family.
Her two older sisters married when they were
14 and moved away. With her parents away,
Xinghua is in charge of her two younger brothers and two younger sisters. She does the washing and cooking, grows vegetables for food, and
takes care of her siblings.
She doesn’t always have enough money to
buy even the basics, like oil and salt, so she has
managed to make do without them by using generous amounts of hot pepper for flavor. But that
doesn’t bother her as much as her fear of illness.
If she or any of her younger siblings becomes
sick, she resorts to homemade remedies. Her
mother taught her that some herbs can cure
fevers and garlic can dull stomachaches, but
such herbal remedies only go so far. “Only after
all the tricks have failed would we go to the doctor,” she said.
Her parents do not make much, so she and
her siblings are able to attend school only when
there is money left after buying food. That
means they’ve gone to school on and off over the
years. Xinghua is 18, but she has just graduated
from junior high. Her youngest sister, Li Xingyan
(黎興豔), 10, is still in the first grade.
Winter 2012
17
Li Xinghua, 18, takes care of her younger siblings
while their parents work in Guangdong Province.
She has done a good job, all things considered,
though she has had moments of frustration with
her brothers and sisters, particularly when they
fight with each other or do not listen to her. She is
about to leave home for high school, and it will be
up to her 14-year-old brother, Xingfa, to take care of
the three younger ones. She worries about them.
Xinghua was downcast the whole time she
was with us. Although she had been informed of
her acceptance into Minzu High School, she had
been instructed to report to school on August 1
with 800 renminbi (US$128). She called her parents to ask if they had the money, but they could
only sigh and say that they could not afford it.
Her desire and resolve to attend school were
there, but the money was not.
It was dark in their home, with one small
light bulb serving as the only source of illumination. Its rays, weak and flickering, seemed to
symbolize Xinghua’s uncertain future.
Yu Hong
There are few non-farm jobs in the area
where Xinghua lives. Residents who wish to
earn more money than they can get from farming have to seek employment out of town.
Without an education, the unsophisticated people from the back country of Guizhou cannot
compete for good-paying jobs in the cities. Most
of them end up working menial jobs in cities on
the coast of China.
Most of these people, like Xinghua’s parents,
leave their young children behind at home, where
they are cared for by either their grandparents or
their own older siblings, who are themselves still
children. In 2011 the China Development Research
Foundation pegged the number of such children
who were five years old or younger at more than
a million, just in Guizhou.
Yu Hong (余洪) is also a native of Luodian.
His father works in Hangzhou, in the coastal
province of Zhejiang. Hong’s situation is similar
to Xinghua’s, but he is older and is now studying civil engineering at Guizhou Normal
University. His future seems more promising
and certain than hers.
Hong decided to work this summer at a construction site. Through the sweat and dust, his
sunbaked face radiated confidence. It was a far
cry from how he used to look.
When Hong started high school, his father
had to borrow 300 renminbi (US$48) from loan
sharks for the tuition. Unfortunately, the interest
rate was so high on the principal that his father
had to work odd jobs and eat only one meal a
day in order to pay back the debt. When it was
all said and done, that 300 renminbi loan ended
up costing Hong’s father 1,000 renminbi.
When Hong was 16 and a junior in high
school, his mother passed away after a prolonged illness. Hong quit school at that time
because he could not bear to see his father work
so hard for the family. He went with his aunt to
Guangdong to work in a factory.
The thunderous noise and the sight of workers operating big machinery in the factory startled Hong. He realized then and there that
school—not a factory—would be his only salvation. He turned around and told his aunt that he
wanted to go home and go back to school. If he
stayed in the factory, he knew his life would be
much the same as his father’s. Without an education, few people escape the destiny of lifelong
menial work and struggle with poverty.
When Hong returned to Minzu High School,
his homeroom teacher applied for tuition aid from
Tzu Chi on his behalf. The financial assistance
relieved the economic pressure on his family.
Hong lived on campus. “On weekends, all
my classmates would go home, and I would
stay in the dorm alone. I had no family to return
to anyway.” Sometimes his city-dwelling classmates invited him to spend a weekend at their
homes, but more often than not he stayed in the
dorm and studied. “When I felt lonesome, I just
buried myself in books, and I forgot about being
alone.”
All that time spent studying paid off: When
he graduated, he was accepted into Guizhou
Normal University. He applied for and got a
government student loan that took care of his
tuition, six thousand renminbi (US$960) a semester. His father supplied part of his living expenses, and he worked part-time to cover the rest.
His work included selling daily necessities
from five to ten in the evening in front of the
main gate of his school. He also worked for
hotels as a busboy or custodian during summer
and winter breaks.
Winter 2012
19
Hong did not go home for the Chinese New
Year holiday at the beginning of 2010. Instead,
he stayed in Guiyang and worked at a hotel.
Probably because of the unhygienic living quarters and meager diet, he developed tuberculosis.
As a result, he was placed in quarantine in a hospital. Needless to say he lost his job, and he was
not even able to return to school.
“I couldn’t let my dad know what had happened—I didn’t want him to worry about me. At
that time, I felt particularly lonely and helpless.”
Hong felt a strong need to talk it over with someone in order to let out his stress, so he called
Chen Xiu-jun (陳秀君), a Tzu Chi volunteer
whom he had met in the summer of 2009, barely
six months before.
Hong told her that he was depressed because
his illness prevented him from returning to
school or work. She urged him to stay on the
medication for a good six months to cure the disease, and implored him not to lose heart.
Talking to her made him feel better, for a while
anyway. “When I began to feel overwhelmed
again, I called her. She was always there to listen
to me and encourage me,” Hong said. “I hadn’t
experienced that kind of tender warmth since my
mom passed away. It was heartening.”
After staying in medical isolation for 20
days, he was allowed back to school. Many of
his friends loaned him money so he wouldn’t
have to worry about his living expenses. Their
support did more than tide him over; it also
made him see that many people cared about
him. “I used to feel inferior, but with care from
so many people, I stopped feeling that way. I
became more confident,” he said. His newfound self-assurance brightened him up and
made him more cheerful.
As the young man found his confidence, he
also became more certain of what he wanted in
life. As he walked with surer steps toward his
future, he kept firmly in mind a wish that his
father had made.
Whenever his father rode the train from his
home to his workplace in Hangzhou, he always
bought tickets without assigned seats. This saved
money on the fare, but standing for the two days
of the journey made his legs badly swollen. When
Hong went to visit him in Hangzhou in the summer of 2011, the old man said to him, “In the
future, when you’ve become successful, I don’t
20
Tzu Chi Quarterly
expect anything from you except this: Buy me a
plane ticket and take me home!”
Even though Hong’s dad was working his fingers to the bone to support his family, he had only
this small wish. It broke Hong’s heart. He knew
that his father was getting old, but this wish made
him realize more than ever before it was time that
he should start taking care of his father.
This realization drove Hong to diligently
study civil engineering at school and work at construction sites when he could. He worked to put
money away and to learn skills from the pros.
“Those of us from indigent mountain areas
must have faith in ourselves,” Hong remarked.
“If we persevere in our efforts, we’ll have hope
for a better future. I look forward to making it
in life. I’ll definitely share my progress with
Sister Xiu-jun.”
With this resolute statement, he put on his
hard hat and walked with assurance to his job
and towards his life’s goal.
Mo Chunhan
Hong is not alone. Many other young people
in similar circumstances are working towards
their goals in life.
When Mo Chunhan (莫春含) was in elementary school in Bazong Township, Luodian
County, her parents took turns working out of
town; but when she started junior high, they
both went to work for a toy factory in Zhejiang
Province. She was left to live with her grandmother in their small wooden house.
Chunhan’s parents were often absent even
on lunar New Year’s Eve, an important time for
Chinese families to gather together for reunion
meals. The girl felt that the New Year’s Eve dinner was tasteless without their company. The
thought of her loneliness back then still chokes
her up today.
When she was in sixth grade, an aunt took
her to watch a student performance in the county seat, 20 kilometers (12 miles) away. That short
distance might as well have been an ocean for
the girl, so insulated was her little world. She
had never seen many of the things she saw that
day in the city. Her eyes were filled with wonder
when she saw kindergarten students sing and
dance. Though she often hummed her Buyi tribal songs, she had never taken a music lesson. She
had never even seen a piano until then.
College junior Yu Hong (above,
second from right) works at a construction site in summer to make
money and to learn skills. Physical
work under the hot sun has made
him stronger in body and mind.
To cope with the demanding work
at the construction site, Yu Hong
needs to eat a large bowl of food
at every meal for energy.
Winter 2012
21
The trip and the show opened her eyes. She
quietly vowed that she would become a music
teacher and bring music into her village.
Chunhan’s parents used to tell her to go for
as much education as she could manage, but as
she got older and became more aware of worldly
matters, she understood how heavily school
costs would weigh on her family’s finances. At
that time, she was attending junior high school
with the help of a Tzu Chi tuition aid program.
She knew that her family needed the financial
assistance, so she was determined to work hard
Mo Chunhan waits for the bus to Zhejiang, where
her parents work. She cherishes every moment
she can spend with her parents, who have worked
out of town since she was very young. She hopes
that when she graduates from university and gets
a job, she can support her parents so that they
won’t have to go so far away to work.
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Tzu Chi Quarterly
to win admission into a senior high school where
Tzu Chi stipends would also be available.
She first met Tzu Chi volunteers when they
came to Luodian for the distribution of tuition aid.
That was the first time she had met people from
outside Luodian, so she was very excited. The volunteers encouraged her and the other students to
study extra hard in order to have a chance for a
bright future. Their words became a driving force
that has since propelled her forward.
Her hard work helped her gain admission
into Minzu High School, where she once again
was put on the Tzu Chi tuition aid program.
“Tzu Chi volunteers would visit us every three
months to express their care for us. That always
made us feel warm at heart,” said Chunhan.
During her freshman year, she took part in an
arts contest dressed in a traditional Buyi tribal
dress that her mother had made for her. She sang
a Buyi song that put her in the top ten.
At the suggestion of her homeroom teacher,
she joined the after-school music training program. She worked harder than the others. “When
my friends went out shopping or having fun on
holidays, I stayed at school and practiced singing,” Chunhan said. She understood that she
was in no position to engage in the luxury of
taking it easy. Her contemporaries had had better preparation or upbringing, so she had to take
advantage of every moment of practice.
The program held its training sessions in a hall
on campus. Though a far cry from a professional
studio, that was where Chunhan initiated her
music training. She learned vocals and music theory, and refined her posture for singing. It was
also in that hall that she and a few like-minded
friends held their morning singing practice.
In May 2011, despite her teachers’ continual
reminders to be careful about her diet, she accidentally ate a hot pepper that caused her tonsils
to swell. She couldn’t sing a note afterwards.
This was just one month before the all-important
college entrance examination.
“I went to the hospital seven days in a row
for IV drips in an attempt to restore my voice.
My teachers were quite upset about my carelessness,” recalled Chunhan of her terrifying, potentially dream-ending incident.
She feared that she was about to join many of
her classmates who would go into the workforce
directly upon graduation. They had no choice.
She was more fortunate to have a chance at college, but she was on the brink of botching that.
Fortunately, she got her voice back just in
time and took the three-day entrance exams in
June 2011. Then she waited and waited for the
outcome. July came and went, and still she heard
nothing. She was quite depressed as she braced
herself for disappointment, but still no word
came.
Thinking that she had failed, she decided to
join her parents and work with them on a production line in the toy factory in Zhejiang. She felt
very bad about disappointing her parents and the
Tzu Chi volunteers who had helped her.
At the factory, because they were paid piece
rates, her parents refrained from taking breaks.
They worked 14-hour days, from eight in the
morning to ten at night. They sweated badly in
the muggy factory, and standing for so long
made their legs ache badly. “Only then did I
truly understand that every cent of my expenses
at school had come from their sweat,” Chunhan
said. “I thought since I had come so far [in my
preparation and study], I couldn’t be so tame as
to quit.” She decided then and there that she
would apply for a vocational school if she did
not get into a college.
However, no sooner had she made up her
mind on that than her uncle called from home
and told her that she had been admitted to study
music at the Guiding campus of Qiannan
Normal College for Nationalities. She was
ambivalent about the news: She was glad that
she could study music, but she was disappointed she had not gotten into the school that she
had always wanted. Furthermore, she was not
certain whether she could get financial assistance from Tzu Chi at the new school.
Chunhan went to the new school alone on the
first day. She was at once anxious and excited.
She saw many students arriving in family automobiles and their parents helping them move in,
carrying their bags and comforters. She envied
the other students, but she also thought of what
her parents had taught her: “You’ve grown up,
so you need to do things yourself. We can’t
always be by your side to help you.” Her parents
had trained her since childhood to be independent; she was quite capable of taking care of herself. Though sometimes she felt lonely, she knew
that being independent and not giving her parents more trouble was the best thing that she
could do for them in this stage of her life. So she
settled down in her new school.
In May 2012, she received notification from
her hometown that Tzu Chi was awarding
tuition aid to graduates of Minzu High School
who were attending colleges in Guizhou. She
was on the list. She was overjoyed at the news.
The tuition aid from Tzu Chi was awarded
four times a year. Recipients gathered on May
27, 2012, at a commercial college in Guiyang and
received their awards.
When the time came for them to say goodbye, Chunhan stepped forward, gave Tzu Chi
volunteer Chen Xiu-jun a big hug, and thanked
her. It was a late thank-you: Chen had accompanied Chunhan since she was in seventh grade.
For seven years, Chunhan had always been too
shy to express her gratitude to Tzu Chi volunteers when they visited the local region to award
Winter 2012
23
planning to work over the summer and save up
some money for school.
Though Chunhan’s life is by no means easy,
she cherishes and appreciates it. She knows that
if she stays on course, she is on track for a better
life than the one her parents have.
“If I had only thought about my dreams, I
would not have reached where I am now,”
Chunhan said. “Only through action can a
dream come true.” She looks forward to the day
when she will bring music into her hometown.
Mo Chunhan goes back to her rural hometown for
a visit. She realized how big the world really is
after she left her home and went to the city to
study music at college. When she graduates, she
intends to bring music and the outside world to
her hometown.
the tuition aid. On this occasion, however, her
pent-up emotions escaped her like a flood overrunning its riverbanks, and she cried with gratitude. She was glad to finally express her appreciation to Chen in person for all she had done for
her over the past seven years.
In that time, Chen and the other volunteers
had become like family to Chunhan. They were
like her surrogate parents while her birth parents worked out of town. Though she didn’t
know all the volunteers by name, she felt secure
24
Tzu Chi Quarterly
when they were around. “The thought of the
kind volunteers gave me strength to study harder,” Chunhan concluded. “With their support, I
believed that all adversity, however daunting,
would eventually pass.”
In July 2012, Chunhan took a bus back home.
It was her first trip home since she had started
school about ten months earlier. She hurried up
the hill to her home as soon as she stepped off
the bus. Her grandmother was so happy to see
her. She made tofu with soybeans that she had
harvested from her own field, and she prepared
several other special dishes for Chunhan. She
knew that her granddaughter would love some
real home cooking after eating out for so long.
Grandma wasted no time pampering Chunhan,
because the girl would be leaving again in a few
days to join her parents in Zhejiang. She was
Care from Tzu Chi
Tzu Chi volunteers first went to Guizhou after
floods ravaged Panxian and Xingyi Counties in
1997. Their hearts went out to the local people
when they saw the poverty there, but they were
at the same time heartened by the can-do spirit of
local teachers and students. In spite of the dilapidated classrooms with leaky roofs and cracked
walls, students earnestly read their books out
loud at their teachers’ directions. They were so
focused on their studies they seemed to be completely oblivious to the cold wind that was seeping through the cracks in the walls.
The local residents understood the vital importance of education for the future of their children,
but that was the best they could do for the schools.
Some could not even afford to send their children
to school. To help improve the situation, Tzu Chi
started offering financial aid in 1998 to students
in many elementary and secondary schools in
Danzhai, Luodian, Huaxi, and Ziyun. Tzu Chi
also funded the construction of facilities for five
schools in Danzhai and Luodian.
Four times a year, Tzu Chi volunteers travel
from Shanghai or Guangdong to Guizhou to
award financial aid and to express their care for
the students.
Volunteer Chen Xiu-jun remembers the emptiness and confusion in the children’s eyes on
her earliest visits to Luodian. The sparkle of liveliness and curiosity that is typical of most children was absent in those eyes. Perhaps it was
because they were too isolated from the outside
world. Chen said, “We decided to do whatever it
would take to bring the outside world into the
mountain villages.”
In a visit not long after, volunteers backpacked a projector and a screen up the hills to a
local school. A picture was worth a thousand
words, and the videos quickly opened up a new
horizon in front of the children. They saw what
the lives of children elsewhere were like, and
they were captivated. They stared at the screen
in awe, their eyes shining.
“Since then, each time we’ve gone there
we’ve offered the children activities that help
them get to know the outside world better,”
Chen continued. “We want to instill in the children a belief that there are unlimited possibilities for their future.” The volunteer team racks
their brains in designing their sessions with the
children. Like any parent, they want to give the
children the best.
“We had an activity in which children practiced giving and receiving blessings,” Chen said.
It was called “Blessing Butterflies.”
Tzu Chi volunteers asked students at the
Guangzhou University of Chinese Medicine,
where Tzu Chi also gives out tuition aid, to write
good wishes on two paper butterflies. One wish
was for him- or herself, and the other was to be
sent to a child in a mountainous area in Heping
County, Guangdong Province, where a Tzu Chi
financial assistance program was also going on.
The children receiving the butterflies in turn
wrote good wishes on two butterflies and sent
one of the butterflies to children in Guizhou.
“When the children in Guizhou received the
blessings from faraway Heping County, they all
showed unimaginable surprise and delight,”
Chen remarked. They, in turn, wrote out their
blessings on new butterflies to be sent to the
medical university in Guangzhou. They knew in
their hearts that as long as they worked hard,
they could also become college students in the
future, like those medical students who would
receive their butterflies.
Chen Xiu-jun had been a Tzu Chi volunteer
for many years before she moved from Taiwan
to Guangdong with her husband, whose work
took them there in 2004. She sought opportunities to resume her Tzu Chi work there, but she
encountered difficulties and felt uneasy about
the tasks ahead. She needed courage or
encouragement.
Then, in 2005, the Tzu Chi volunteers in
Guangdong assumed the responsibility for providing tuition aid to students in Luodian County,
Guizhou. Chen traveled with a delegation of
volunteers to that area to assess the needs.
Winter 2012
25
“I’d seen the living conditions of needy people in Guizhou on Tzu Chi Da Ai TV, so I had a
fairly good idea of how hard their lives were,”
Chen said. “But when I saw firsthand their resilience in the face of adversity, I was deeply
moved.” All of a sudden, a sense of courage arose
in her and she no longer felt so uneasy about carrying out Tzu Chi work in China.
She has since taken it upon herself to take
good care of children in Guizhou. “We cherish
the karmic affinities that brought us into
Guizhou, and we regard it as our responsibility
to help children go to school and have a shot at
breaking out of the grip of poverty.”
At the same time that they help the children,
they also teach them to be responsible. “It’s our
ultimate hope that the children whom we’ve
aided learn to appreciate the help they’ve
received and in turn give their love back to their
home village,” said Chen. “When that day comes,
our biggest wish will be fulfilled.”
As with many things in life, receiving a helping hand often requires a stroke of luck.
On this day, 18-year-old Xinghua—featured
at the beginning of this article—went to Central
School to practice a monkey drum dance with
other girls for an upcoming ethnic minorities
dance competition. She put aside her worries
about whether or not she could continue to go
to school, and she lost herself in the swaying
and swirling.
During the practice, Tzu Chi volunteers at
the scene learned about her plight and decided
to help. They talked with the principal of Minzu
High School, where Xinghua had gained admission. The principal agreed to let the girl attend
the school first without paying anything, and
Tzu Chi would pay the 800 renminbi registration
fee for her later and provide her with further
financial assistance. Now she would not be out
of school.
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Tzu Chi Quarterly
hsiao yiu-hwa
In November 2005, Tzu Chi volunteers from
Guangdong distributed school supplies to students in Dongjia Township in Luodian County.
Between 1998 and March 2012, volunteers distributed almost 55,000 scholarships, as well as
school supplies, in Danzhai, Huaxi, Luodian, and
Ziyun, all in Guizhou Province.
Later that day, the volunteers visited
Xinghua’s home again. They brought the children eggs, noodles, vegetables, and some dragon fruit.
For a long time, Xinghua and her siblings had
been on a simple, predictable diet of rice (distributed by Tzu Chi) and boiled squash leaves,
which they dipped in hot-peppered water for
flavor. But on this day the children had a hearty
meal of eggs, radishes, and other kinds of vegetables—quite a feast for them.
When Xinghua saw the dragon fruit, she
asked the volunteers what it was. This fruit has
been widely cultivated in Luodian in recent
years, so the volunteers were surprised that the
girl and her siblings had never seen, not to mention eaten, this fruit. That realization hurt, so
they urged the children to eat more of it. They
wished silently in their hearts that since Xinghua
could now go to high school, she would, like Yu
Hong and Mo Chunhan, attend a university in
the future and get a better chance at escaping a
life dominated by poverty.
A Good Night’s Sleep
By Yang Mei-ye, Chen Mei-lian, and Chen Lu-yun
Translated by Eugenia Yun
Photos by Dai Dun-ren
Manzhou Township is located in the far south of Taiwan. Villages in this area have had
their share of misfortune at the hand of Mother Nature. Seven years ago, Super Typhoon
Haitang displaced some of the residents of Gangzai Village in Manzhou; they were moved
into a deserted school. Four years ago, Typhoon Morakot hit. After that some residents of
Fenshuiling, an aboriginal tribal settlement in Changle Village, also in Manzhou Township,
suffered from the problem of shifting ground that resulted from the typhoon’s fury.
This summer, Tzu Chi completed 18 permanent housing units for people from these two
areas. The residents are now enjoying the privacy of their new homes, sleeping soundly at
night, and living free from fear when winds and rain hit.
Winter 2012
27
I
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Tzu Chi Quarterly
A seven-year wait
Gangzai Village in Manzhou Township is
located in Taiwan’s southernmost county,
Pingdong. To its east is the Pacific Ocean. It is
bordered on the south by Jiupeng Village and
on the west by Mudan Township. When
Typhoon Haitang hit Taiwan, heavy rains resulted in landslides in this mountain village. Homes
in the path of the mudslides stood no chance.
They were crushed and buried under tons of
mud and debris.
The Yao clan had lived in the region for five
generations. Yao Cai-yuan (姚財源), over 60,
recalled what happened on that fateful day
seven years ago: “I returned home at around
11:30 in the morning of July 19, 2005. Before I
entered the house, I went to check on my backyard. When small pieces of rock began falling on
my head, I suddenly realized that the mountain
was about to collapse. I rushed inside my house,
told my wife to stop cooking and yelled for
everyone in the house to run!”
It was like an ocean outside the house. The
flood waters were already up to their knees and
the rain kept coming down. “I carried my elderly mother in my arms and proceeded cautiously
on the familiar roads with my family in tow. The
sound of falling rocks behind us hurried us
along. The local policemen came out and led us
all into the police station.”
Cai-yuan pointed at where his old house
used to stand. “We had barely set foot in the station when we heard a thunderous noise and saw
a mudslide heading directly towards us.
Everyone ran out of the police station to escape
to higher ground. In the blink of an eye, the nine
houses owned by our Yao clan were swallowed
by the mudslide. Half of the first floor of the
police station was also buried in mud.”
They had fled carrying nothing with them.
After they moved into Jiupeng Elementary
School, they lived on daily necessities donated
by others. They even made use of the old pots
and pans and water buckets left behind in the
deserted school. Neighbors and relatives continued to provide them with supplies until construction of the permanent housing began.
“Staying at the school was very inconvenient,” Cai-yuan said. “When we first moved
in, we were so bothered by the buzzing sounds
of mosquitoes—which were as loud as bombers—that we had trouble falling asleep. The
township administration sent some guys to
install window screens for us, which improved
the condition. But it still got very cold during
the night in winter.”
Over the years, quite a few charity groups
came to express concern over their housing
problem. However, no long-term housing solutions came up. “I never dreamed that Tzu Chi
would build permanent housing for us. I felt so
blessed that people still remembered us,” Caiyuan said with a smile on his face and tears in
his eyes.
Jiupeng Village. The old classrooms were torn
down in November 2011, and construction of 18
permanent housing units and an activity center
began in mid-December. The move-in signing
ceremony was held on September 18 this year,
and the inauguration ceremony on the 23rd.
Rubble and rocks from the demolished classrooms were crushed and incorporated into the
foundations for the new houses. Architect Ou
Xin-tong (歐新通) pointed out that the decision
to make use of on-site materials killed two birds
with one stone. The strategy saved money on
New houses
The tribal settlement of
Fenshuiling has long been vulnerable to shifting ground,
causing houses to tilt, floors to
sag, or walls to crack. Local residents were on tenterhooks.
Yang Yue-xiang (楊月香) said
she would patch her walls up
when cracks appeared in her
home, only to have them crack
again. Even the floors of her
house had become uneven.
“When it rained cats and dogs
outside, it also rained inside,”
said Yue-xiang. “The winds
would often blow so hard that I
got scared. Sometimes I worried I’d wake up in the Pacific
Ocean.” Six families from her
community, including her own,
decided to move into the
Manzhou Tzu Chi Great Love
Community, along with ten
households from Gangzai
Village.
The Manzhou Tzu Chi Great
Love Community was built at
the site of the abandoned
Jiupeng Elementary School in
tang shao-fan
n July 2005, Super Typhoon Haitang made
landfall in Taiwan. At the time, 75-year-old
Yao Jin-yuan (姚進源) was living in Gangzai
Village in Manzhou Township, Pingdong
County. However, it wasn’t long before the torrential rains and devastating winds forced Jinyuan out of his home and into a local police station for refuge. Standing in front of the station,
he watched helplessly as the house he had lived
in for nearly 70 years was buried by a mudslide.
He was rendered homeless within just a few
seconds. He felt like crying, but there were no
tears. “Fortunately, the typhoon hit in broad
daylight,” he reflected. “If it had hit in the middle of the night, in the darkness, when no one
could see the mudslide happening, we all could
have died.”
After the typhoon, Jin-yuan and other survivors who had lost their homes were moved into
a closed elementary school, Jiupeng Elementary.
Jin-yuan said that although the living quarters
were spacious, it was very inconvenient because
there were no shower rooms. They lived there
for the next seven years.
In 2009, Typhoon Morakot hit Taiwan. In its
aftermath, part of the tribal settlement of Fen­
shuiling, in Changle Village, Manzhou Town­
ship, was assessed and classified as “unsafe for
living.” To relocate people from the settlement,
as well as those who were living in Jiupeng
Elementary School, the Pingdong County government decided to provide land for Tzu Chi to
build permanent housing for the villagers.
Jin-yuan moved into his new home in the
Manzhou Tzu Chi Great Love Community at the
end of September 2012, on the eve of the Moon
Festival. His children helped him move in, and
he had a good first night’s sleep in his new bed.
The next morning, the old man cheerfully
stood outside of his new house, leaning on his
walking stick. He was already looking four
months ahead to the Lunar New Year holiday,
eagerly anticipating the lively conversations and
the cheerful sounds of laughter that would fill
his new home when his children and grandchildren visited for the celebration.
He exclaimed with joy in his voice, “Such a
nice house! I don’t have to go outside to a toilet
any more. An ancient proverb says that it is best
to have a nest. Now when all my children and
grandchildren come back for the Lunar New
Year holiday, they will have a place to stay.”
Typhoon Haitang hit in 2005,
devastating Gangzai Village in
Manzhou Township. A number
of houses were buried under
mudslides. The red-and-white
three-story building is the local
police station, which remained
standing after the disaster.
Winter 2012
29
Yao Cai-yuan, his wife, Fan Yu-zhen (范玉貞),
along with his parents, both in their 80s, also
moved into the Great Love Community. Yu-zhen
said, “I won’t feel terrified if typhoons come or
heavy rain hits, because the kitchen and showers
are all inside the house now.”
When you enter Fenshuiling, you encounter a
6-mile-long road, all uphill. After that, there is a
path that zigzags 3 miles downhill to Jiupeng
Village. These sections of roads are among bicycle
enthusiasts’ favorite challenges. Before Tzu Chi
built the houses at the site of Jiupeng Elementary
Televisions, refrigerators, comforters, and tableware were among the house-warming gifts Tzu
Chi gave to people who moved into the Manzhou
Tzu Chi Great Love Community.
Construction for the Manzhou Tzu Chi Great
Love Community started at the end of 2011. The
completed new houses were inaugurated in
September 2012. Greening efforts are presently
continuing.
clearing out and transporting the demolition
waste as well as on purchasing soil for backfilling the foundations.
The houses are reinforced to stand up against
wind and earthquake. They come in sizes of
1,280, 1,140, and 500 square feet. The larger units
consist of two-story duplex townhouses, with a
room on the ground floor designed especially
for the use of elderly people. The smaller units
are single-story duplex townhouses. Tzu Chi
also prepared televisions, refrigerators and tableware as house-warming gifts.
A stable new life
Yao Si-gui (姚四貴) and his wife, Xie Xiu-ye
(謝秀葉), live next to the community activity
center. Their new house was packed with guests
on this day. Their youngest daughter, Yao Yinqiu (姚印秋), had traveled with her two daughters from Kaohsiung, two hours away, to attend
30
Tzu Chi Quarterly
School, these cyclists, whether they were headed
north or south, liked to rest at the school. Frugal
travelers would even spend their nights in the
classrooms along with the villagers who had been
displaced by Typhoon Haitang. Some of the
cyclists were returning visitors and had become
friends with the villagers. When they were taking
their leave, they’d say things like: “I hope when I
visit this area next year, you’ll have moved out of
the classrooms,” or “I hope you’ll soon have a
new home to live in.”
Now, when these bicyclists pass through
Jiupeng Village, they will not only get to enjoy
the fresh air and beautiful natural scenery, they
will also be glad to see their villager friends
enjoying the stability of life in the Tzu Chi Great
Love Community.
the key presentation ceremony in the new Tzu
Chi Great Love Community. She was very glad
that her parents had finally settled into a sturdy, beautiful house.
When Si-gui retired, he spent his retirement
pension and savings on the construction of a
3,560-square-foot house, planning to enjoy his
golden years in it with his wife. Sadly, only five
years after they moved into the new house,
Typhoon Haitang destroyed it and wiped out all
their belongings in a matter of a few seconds. “My
dad’s labor of a lifetime was buried in debris,”
Yin-qiu recalled with tearful eyes. “He was devastated and didn’t speak a single word for three
years. He wouldn’t talk to anyone. He couldn’t
figure out why such misfortune would happen to
him and why he’d lose everything.”
Yin-qiu tried her best to comfort and console
her dad. Eventually, the old man emerged from
the shadow of the unfortunate event. After they
moved into the new home Tzu Chi had built for
them, Xiu-ye, feeling the warmth of all the people who had contributed to their new housing
complex, decided to become a Tzu Chi donating
member. She said, “This is within my means. I’m
glad to give back to society.”
Winter 2012
31
Thicker Than Blood
In the last 80 years, the Wuhan Children Welfare House has been home to countless children, some without parents and others with disabilities.
Though their birth parents cannot care for them, other loving people fill the gap.
Residents here are not biologically related, but they nonetheless seem closer to
each other than blood relatives. Learning and growing together in this wholesome
environment, many have become upright and loving citizens of society.
By Huang Xiu-hua
Translated by Tang Yau-yang
Photos by Hsiao Yiu-hwa
32
Tzu Chi Quarterly
orphans in Hubei Province. Located in
Huayuanshan in Wuchang, south of the Yangtze
River, the institute was founded in 1928 as a
nursery for infants by Bishop Sylvester Joseph
Espelage, O.F.M. of the Roman Catholic Diocese
of Wuchang. The government of Wuhan took it
over in 1951 and made it an orphanage. In 1993,
it was combined with some other welfare organizations and was given its current name.
Yao’s father died of kidney disease when she
was five years old, and a few years later her
mother drowned in a flood. Yao and her two
older sisters went to live with their maternal
grandmother, who was already quite old. The
grandmother had neither the stamina nor the
means to care for the three youngsters. She
ended up keeping the oldest one with her and
sending the two younger sisters to the institute.
Yao was nine years old that year.
I
t was a Friday afternoon, and the sounds of a
guzheng, a traditional Chinese plucked-string
musical instrument, filled the air around the
Wuhan Children Welfare House in Wuhan, Hubei
Province, China. Min Yun (民云) was inside teaching the instrument to six teenage girls.
Min is a graduate of the Professional Arts
Institute of Hubei. She is a skilled guzheng
teacher who normally charges by the hour, but
she gives free lessons at the welfare house.
Although she doesn’t charge anything for teaching there, the students receive the same careful
instruction and patient guidance as those who
pay for lessons.
At the same time that Min was conducting
her lesson with the six girls, Yao Na (姚娜), 25,
was working at the Wuhan Tianhe International
Airport. She was gentle, polite, smiling, and
graceful as she helped passengers with their
34
Tzu Chi Quarterly
Her situation was strikingly similar to that of
twin sisters Li Zhu and Li Di (李竹, 李笛), now
25 years old. Disease had taken away their parents one after another, and they and their younger brother had only their grandmother to turn
to. Unable to provide for three young kids, the
old woman kept the boy with her and sent the
twins to the institute.
“At first I tried to run away every day, but I
was stopped at the front door every time,” Li Di
admitted. Terribly homesick, she cried every
day. After all, she was only eight years old then.
In December 1994, the Wuhan house established a performing troupe to identify and train
residents with untapped artistic potential in such
areas as dancing, singing, and musical instruWith friendliness and enthusiasm, Yao Na helps
airport passengers.
Min Yun, a former resident of the Wuhan Children
Welfare House, repays the institute by teaching
guzheng there for free.
needs. Her elegance was unmistakable evidence
of her years of classical training.
When they were children, both Min and Yao
were members of an arts troupe at the Wuhan
Children Welfare House. Min has played guzheng
for more than a decade. Yao trained in dancing;
years of stretching and focusing on her body
movements have contributed to the elegance with
which she conducts herself now. Both of the
women have carried what they learned at the
institute into their lives and their careers.
This is home
The Wuhan Children Welfare House is the
largest organization for abandoned children and
Winter 2012
35
ments. The training gave the children confidence, and collaboration in the group fostered a
sense of camaraderie. Many of the children in
the troupe were transformed. Li Di said that
dancing with the troupe enriched her life
and enlarged her circle of friends. With this,
and with the constant encouragement of
troupe director Peng Hongyan (彭紅艷),
she finally overcame her homesickness.
When Min Yun, who never knew
her parents, was nine years old, Qin
Yaoshun (秦耀舜), then deputy head
of the institute, referred her to the
guzheng class in the troupe. She has played the
instrument ever since—from junior high,
through senior high, and then through her years
in an arts college as a guzheng major. She still
plays to this day. With that sort of dedication
comes mastery and excellence.
These four young women, all close to the
same age, lived at the Wuhan house at the same
time. While they shared the misfortune of a
childhood bereft of the love of parents, they also
shared the good fortune of living at the institute,
of being loved by many people, and of honing
their artistic and cultural skills together.
An aging home
By the early 90s, the austerely furnished institute was clearly showing its age. Even the floors
squeaked in the old buildings. There wasn’t
enough space for all the residents, so the caregivers made do with what they had, cramming
two children into a single bed. Fortunately, such
deficiencies did not stop the teachers from lovingly teaching the children, nor did it stop the
children from learning diligently.
“Our quarters were a little tight—we didn’t
have enough beds, and we didn’t have dining
tables. But we trained and performed together,
and we got along really well,” commented Shen
Xueping (沈雪萍), who came to the institute at age
seven. She added that there were no dedicated
dance classrooms in the early days of the troupe,
nor was there air conditioning in the classrooms
or bedrooms. When it got hot in summer, the residents opted to sleep on mats on the classroom
floors, cooled by big electric fans. Those were
uncomfortable but unforgettable times.
In 1994 Tzu Chi volunteers went to Guangdong
and Guangxi Provinces to survey flood damage.
Yan Mingfu (閻明復), then deputy minister of the
Ministry of Civil Affairs, suggested to the volunteers that they visit the Wuhan Children Welfare
36
Tzu Chi Quarterly
needs. All we needed to do was study and learn
new skills. Learning dancing, drawing, piano, or
guzheng outside on our own would have cost
several thousand yuan a month!”
Some of these skills might eventually lead a
child to a livelihood when he or she grew up. If
such opportunities did not materialize, the institute staff helped the children take another path.
Li Di and her twin sister, Li Zhu, both studied
dancing at the institute, but they were not tall
enough to enter an arts junior high school, which
ended their artistic careers. They had to attend a
regular school, but the institute supported them
all the same.
Students at the
house dance to welcome the arrival of Tzu Chi
volunteers in 2001. PHOTO BY JIN JIN-QING
House. They did, and they were impressed as
much by the abundance of love there as by the
inadequacy of the facilities.
After their evaluation, they decided to fund
the construction of a new multipurpose building
which would house residential space, classrooms, and facilities for medical care and rehabilitation. The building was completed in
October 1997.
When the new building was inaugurated, the
house opened an elementary school and accepted children not only from within the institute,
but also from outside. These day students injected new levels of liveliness to the institute, but
they also showed the resident children the contrast between them.
“We really had it good here at the house, to
the point of attracting envy,” Yao Na commented. “The food was good, and our quarters were
spacious and comfortable—even with eight to
twelve people to a room in bunk beds. We had
air conditioning and electric fans in the summers. Children living outside didn’t have what
we had at the house.”
The children at the institute knew they were
fortunate in this way, and so they took extra care
of their surroundings. They cleaned, mopped,
wiped, and polished. “Our teachers taught us
how to clean window glass,” Yao Na said. “First
wet a rag in water, scrub the glass with the rag,
and follow with a good wipe with newspaper
[for a sparkling, lint-free finish].”
Li Di echoed Yao’s sentiments: “We didn’t
have to worry about our meals or other worldly
Grown and working
These girls are now grown, and each of them
is working in her own field.
Li Di and Li Zhu both majored in nursing at
the Wuhan Railway Vocational College of
Technology. Li Zhu now works in the
supply room of the Hubei Provincial
People’s Hospital, and Li Di is a nurse
at a clinic in Jianghan District, in the
heart of Wuhan City.
Shen Xueping, Min Yun, and Yao
Na all attended arts schools for their
secondary education; their paths began
to diverge in college. Shen even traveled all the way to the Republic of
Kazakhstan to study the Russian language. She now works at an optic fiber
technology company in Wuhan. Min
teaches guzheng, and Yao works at an
airport. All five women are grateful to
the institute for raising them and putting them through school.
They particularly miss Qin Yaoshun,
then the deputy head of the institute,
for his tireless help. “Mr. Qin was very
nice to us,” Li Di said. After their scores
on the college entrance exams had been
announced, Qin helped scout out
schools for which the girls might be eligible, weighing such factors as their
interests and job prospects. “He visited
campuses and talked with school
authorities [before he helped us pick
our schools]. He was like our father. He
really cared about us.”
Yao Na had broken her ankle dancing, so she
couldn’t attend the admission auditions for the
arts colleges. She was afraid she’d be unable to get
into any college when Qin by chance saw a news
announcement that Wuhan Polytechnic was
accepting students to train as airline personnel.
He hurriedly took her to sign up. He then accompanied her for the two-day tests, and she got in.
“The arts schools that we attended cost a lot,
about 7,000 renminbi [US$1,100] a year for
tuition,” Shen Xueping said as she told another
aspect of the story. “We were able to complete
our studies only because Mr. Qin lined up sponsors for us.”
Qin treated them so well that it’s no wonder
that they all visited him on his sickbed when he
fell ill. Even Shen Xueping made the long journey from the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous
Region, in distant northwestern China, where
she was working as an editor, to see him.
Shen Xueping visited Tzu Chi in Taiwan
when she was younger. Impressed, she
is now training to be a certified volunteer.
Winter 2012
37
Li Di tends a patient at the
clinic where she works.
Qin had difficulty swallowing because of
esophageal cancer, and he could only be fed
intravenously. It was painful to see a person so
dear to them in this condition. “He used to be a
bit on the heavy side, but the illness melted the
pounds off him. It hurt to see him so scrawny,”
mourned Li Di, the nurse. “He was just in his
60s, an age when most people are still robust.
His premature passing was the worst thing that
could happen to such a good man.”
Loving Grandmas for the disabled
Fewer healthy babies are being abandoned in
China now that people are becoming more wellto-do. The number of healthy orphans at the
Wuhan Children Welfare House has therefore
dwindled to about 30. In contrast, the other part
38
Tzu Chi Quarterly
of the resident population—
orphans with disabilities—
has seen a sizeable increase,
from 500 to more than 700.
The institute has made
adjustments in its operations
to respond to these and other
changes. The elementary
school has been terminated,
and the performing troupe
has shrunk in its scope. The
healthy children, many in
junior high schools, focus
their energy on their regular
studies instead of their artistic endeavors.
The large number of disabled children has strained
the limited staff, so they’ve
called upon women in the
community to help. These
women, called “Loving
Grandmas” at the institute,
are each given a thousand
renminbi (US$160) a month
for their service.
When we visited the
house, we saw several of
these women working in an
activity room for babies. The
women live in Hongshan
District, Wuchang, about an
hour away. One of them, Yao
Chongchun (姚重春), 52, has
been a Loving Grandma for five years. “My children are grown. I would rather be here taking
care of these children than sitting around at
home,” she said as she held Wu Jifang (武季芳)
in her arms. She takes pleasure in seeing the
growth and development of the little lives that
she takes care of every day.
Jifang, a premature baby, had been sent to the
institute even before she was one month old,
weighing barely two kilograms (4.4 lbs). Now
she was 15 months old and—because of the good
care she had received—rather chubby. Everyone
called her Zhuzhu, “pearl.”
Yao said that Zhuzhu was in good health,
with the exception of her trachea. She coughed
and wheezed quite often. She had been sent to
foster families a few times, but had been returned
each time precisely because of that health problem. However, Yao said that Zhuzhu was getting
better—she could now finish a bowlful of rice
and drink up to 200 milliliters (7 oz) of milk.
The only concern that Yao had for Zhuzhu
was her speech. She had uttered “mama” and
“nainai” (granny) before, but nothing else.
“Zhuzhu is the tallest child here,” Yao added.
“She’ll soon be adopted by a family in the United
States. I’m really going to miss her.”
When we talked to Li Cuiqun (李翠群),
another Loving Grandma at the institute, she
was holding Wu Chabao (武茶寶, “tea treasure”)
in her arms. The baby girl got this name because
she was abandoned with tea leaves bundled up
with her in her blankets. Like all the other
unnamed babies at the institute, she was given
the surname Wu because she belongs to the family of the Wuhan Children Welfare House.
Chabao was just two months old when she
arrived at the house. She is blind. “Because she
can’t see, I talk to her a lot to hone her cognitive
sensitivity to language and emotions,” Li said.
She added that the baby’s impaired optic nerves
must have affected the development of her
motor skills. At 14 months, Chabao could sit up
but could not turn over, so she was somewhat
behind in development for her age. “I hope to
double the training to make up for her deficiency,” Li remarked.
Gao Xue’e (高學娥), 62, is in charge of training
the Loving Grandmas. She pointed out that the
children at the institute suffer from a variety of
conditions, including congenital heart disease,
cerebral palsy, Down’s syndrome, and physical
deformities. They have to be treated with extreme
care. Thankfully, the Loving Grandmas are all
mindful, caring, and patient. They jot down notes
about their interactions with the children every
day, and they touch, hug, and kiss the children.
They treasure the children like their own.
Gao had worked at the house for a long time
before she first retired five years ago. But her
heart was still at the institute with the children,
so she returned to help care for them. “These are
special children. They don’t have parents, and
they are sick. Some of their illnesses are lifethreatening. I’ll stay here and do what I can to
help them.”
Foster families
While there is plenty of love to go around at
the house, living there is not exactly the same
thing as living with a family. That’s why, starting
in 2000, the institute initiated a trial run of placing children in foster families. The program began
by placing some of the institute’s healthier children with families in the community. Two years
later, the house formally began the foster family
program, giving participating families a nominal
stipend for providing care for the children.
Another program has been in place for three
years now. Instead of one child being placed in
one family, a group of children, usually four, are
put in the care of one family. For each such family, the institute rents an apartment nearby. The
apartment typically has three bedrooms and a
living room. There are currently ten such families in the program.
Wu Jiaxia (武嘉夏) is a foster child in one of
these families. He is 12 years old, the oldest of
the foursome in this family. He is blind, while
the other three children have clubfoot, epilepsy,
and Downs syndrome. Jiaxia attends a school for
the blind, and he studies piano with a teacher
that the institute arranged for him. His life path
is almost a replica of Li Feng’s.
Li Feng, 27, an alumna of the Wuhan house,
is also blind. She studied piano while growing
up at the institute. She became very skilled at it,
but she eventually chose to study naprapathy (a
derivative of osteopathy and chiropractic) at college for better work opportunities. She works
now as a masseuse.
Jiaxia has passed the test for level-10 piano
proficiency, surpassing her level 9, but he plays
down his achievements. “Honestly, though I’ve
reached a higher level than Li, she plays better
than I do,” he humbly admits.
Jiaxia admires Li for being able to get into
college and land a good job. For her part, Li
thinks highly of him, too. She returns to the
house every summer. They play piano, and she
shares her experiences with him.
Jiaxia loves listening to stories, and Li has
given him many audio books. “My favorite one
is about a yellow dog on a search for something,”
Jiaxia said. “In the process it met many animals
including a sheep, a cow, and a mouse. Finally it
came across a cat that uttered sounds that it
loved the most.” Being blind, Jiaxia seems to
have a special affection for sounds.
Li Ling (李玲), a teacher at the institute who
accompanied us on our visit to Jiaxia, told us
more about the boy: “Besides the piano, Jiaxia
also does vocal music and xiangsheng [a traditional Chinese comedic performance featuring a
dialogue between two performers]. His xiangshWinter 2012
39
eng performance even won a prize in a Hubei
Province talent show.” The boy flushed at the
praise from the teacher.
That piqued everyone’s interest, and we
enthusiastically requested a performance. He
sang: “Let’s row our oars and make the boat cut
through the waves….” His voice was crisp and
pleasing. As soon as he had finished, his foster
father burst into applause and called, “Bravo!”
He was obviously proud of his son.
Jiaxia’s foster mother is equally proud of him.
“Jiaxia takes very good care of his siblings.” She
then told us that Wu Qianqian (武前錢), Jiaxia’s
youngest foster brother, cries a lot. When he
does, Jiaxia always holds him and coos to him to
help him stop crying.
The couple’s biological daughter is married,
so they have no further child-rearing responsibilities. They took on the care of these four children purely out of love. Though the institute
gives them 450 renminbi (US$70) per child per
month, they use every last bit of it on the children. They get no monetary gain, and they lose
their holidays to boot because this childcare
responsibility is a full-time job, all the more so
with four disabled children. But they never complain. “They actually get busier on holidays,
while we institute employees get time off work,”
Li Ling said.
The couple does not have it much easier on
weekdays, either. Jiaxia lives on the campus of
the school for the blind, but the other three children live at home. Each day
the couple walks the three
children to the Wuhan institute for their special classes.
Then the mother walks home
to prepare lunch. After that
she walks to the institute
again to take the children
home. The two round trips
take her 40 minutes each
school day. The commute
becomes quite a bit harder
on rainy days. And that is
only a small part of their
responsibility of caring for
the children.
Upright grownups
The children at the
Wuhan Children Welfare
House start out their lives
disadvantaged. But the faculty, medical staff, caregivers, Loving Grandmas, and
foster parents give them sincere love that helps improve
their chances of growing up
to be well-adjusted and successful persons.
“The best quality that the
house gave me was the ability to adapt to any situation,”
said Shen Xueping. When
she went to college in
At the institute, a Loving
Grandma bonds with a baby
with special needs.
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Wu Jiaxia is very talented, and he is loving to his
siblings. His foster parents are very proud of him.
Kazakhstan, the institute paid her tuition. She
earned her living expenses herself working at
restaurants. It was hard work, and it was very,
very cold up in Kazakhstan. She said that the
collective love from the institute supported her
through the tough times.
“We were very much loved at the house, and
we had access to so many resources,” Li Zhu
chimed in. “Other than that our parents died
early, we’re no worse off than others.” At the hospital where she works, she never tries to hide her
upbringing. Yet, though she appreciates others’
care for her when they learn of her background,
she wants no preferential treatment.
“It’s true that we didn’t have a biological
family to fend for us,” Yao Na said, “but we
lived happily with the teachers and other residents at the house. We were and are still a family.
The people I stay in touch with the most these
days are the girls in our bunch. We went back a
long way, and we lived through many challenges together. We’re tight.”
“And we even went to Taiwan together to
visit Tzu Chi and Master Cheng Yen,” Li Di told
us.
That brought back Yao Na’s memory of a
2006 trip for the 40th anniversary of the foundation. She gave a solo dance performance at one
of the celebration gatherings. “When the music
‘I Wish’ came on, I couldn’t hold back my tears.
It was a touching occasion,” Yao Na confided.
Those threads of contact with Tzu Chi remain
strong today. Shen Xueping, Yao Na, and Li Di
are all training to become certified Tzu Chi volunteers. They hope to help others in need. “It’s
all because Tzu Chi built that new building for
us that we could enjoy such nice space and facilities. Now that we’re grown, it’s time that we
pay back,” the young women said.
As they pay back, they move from being
helped to helping others and truly set in motion
the cycle of good begetting good. These young
women’s lives are just about to shine!
Winter 2012
41
Warm
Encounters
After
Hurricane
Sandy
On October 29, 2012, Hurricane Sandy made landfall near
Atlantic City, New Jersey. The storm brought unprecedented
destruction. After it had passed, the region was left to pick
up the pieces in the cold and dark. Eight million households
lost power, and at the worst time—the beginning of winter.
Tzu Chi volunteers delivered hot food, cash cards, and
blankets to victims, hoping to bring love and warmth to
soothe their hearts just when they were feeling powerless.
By US Tzu Chi documenting volunteers
Translated by Tang Yau-yang
Photos by Lin Jin-cheng
A recipient warmly greeted a volunteer at a Tzu
Chi distribution held November 10 in Broad
Channel, New York. After receiving the distribution, he told the volunteer, “You’re the first to
arrive with aid. I’ll always remember you guys.”
Seven days earlier, Tzu Chi volunteers had stood
in front of his seriously damaged house and
asked him, “What help do you need?” He told the
volunteer, “I need a house.” At the time, he didn’t
believe Tzu Chi would deliver aid to him, so he
was visibly moved when he received the cash
card and relief goods.
AFTER THE SUPERSTORM
Hurricane Sandy swept across the eastern coast of the United States in late October, 2012, causing
tens of billions of dollars in damage and killing more than 120 people. Over 8 million households suffered power outages caused by the superstorm. In Broad Channel, a yacht was washed ashore and
left standing on a street (left). Even though many houses on Staten Island were too damaged to be
occupied (right), residents have shown remarkable resilience. Words spray-painted on the side of one
house express the residents’ defiance and hope.
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Winter 2012
45
Reporting by Fan Ting, Su Xiao-yun, Li Zhi-xin, Liu Jia-tian,
Zhang Huan-jun, Kang Ni-er, Xu Ci-yang, Huang Ci Mian,
Lin Wan-yi, Lin Yu-cui, Wang Wei-ling, and Liu Han-qing
I
t had been just two days since Hurricane
Sandy had hit, and lower Manhattan was
still shrouded in darkness, left without electricity in the aftermath of the most powerful
storm to hit the area in a generation. Most people had never seen the city like this, devoid of its
bright lights and its usual hustle and bustle.
Against this dark backdrop, a few dim, flickering lights could be seen glowing in the Chinatown
Tzu Chi Office. Volunteers there were cooking in
near total darkness. They worked under improvised illumination from safety helmet lights or
flashlights held by other volunteers.
The conditions were far from ideal in which
to prepare food for the disaster, but they had no
choice. They could not stop or slow down. In
fact, they felt the need to speed up so that they
could deliver the food as quickly as possible to
hurricane victims. And so, with nothing more
than flashlights to illuminate their efforts, they
worked tirelessly to wash, chop, cook, and pack
food. When they were done, they had at least
500 meal boxes to distribute.
With food in tow, they rushed out onto streets
without traffic lights, amidst the confused and
halting traffic. Fortunately, they did not need to go
far. They made their way to Seward Park High
School, where nearly a thousand people were taking shelter. Many people there had not had hot
food for two days. The hot meals prepared by Tzu
Chi volunteers brought smiles to their faces.
Hurricane Sandy disrupted the lives of millions of people. For some, the road back to normalcy will be long and daunting. Many people,
including Tzu Chi volunteers, have given them
a hand and warmed their hearts.
Wide-spread damage
In advance of the superstorm, New Jersey
Governor Chris Christie ordered emergency evacuations in many areas in the state. New Jersey,
located front and center in the path of the storm,
bore much of Hurricane Sandy’s wrath. Roadways
became waterways. Falling trees landed on housVolunteers cook in Chinatown, Manhattan, for an
emergency distribution. Some hands hold spatulas to stir food, other hands, less visible, hold
flashlights to provide at least a little illumination
in the darkness of a power outage.
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Winter 2012
47
es and snapped power lines on their way down.
Traffic lights and gas stations were rendered out
of service. Widespread power outages made mundane tasks like washing, cooking, and keeping
warm impossible for many people.
New York City was a mess as well. Explosions
on October 29 disabled a power substation, adding to power restoration tasks that were already
piling up high. More than a million households
lost power. The New York Stock Exchange closed
for two days. All three major airports in the
metro area were shut down, which had the ripple effect of disrupting air transportation across
the country. Even the New York subway system
was flooded, something that no one could have
ever imagined. New York City Metro
Transportation Authority Chairman Joseph J.
Lhota released a statement on October 30, declaring Hurricane Sandy the most devastating disaster in the subway’s 108-year history.
Staten Island was also badly damaged. On
Central Avenue, Tzu Chi volunteers saw
destroyed homes, immersed cars, and fallen trees.
The water even pushed some houses 20 meters
(66 feet) from their original locations. Some victims felt as if they had survived a tsunami.
“We moved stuff to higher places as much as
we could, and we thought that would be enough,”
said Wudrey Dwyer of Long Island. “But now my
house is gone, as is almost everything else I
owned. These clothes on my back were picked up
at the shelter. This is worse than 9/11.”
Lindenhurst is a community located on the
South Shore of Long Island. The people there
had seen flooding before, but nothing like the
destruction that was delivered by Hurricane
Sandy. Some houses were washed out into the
Atlantic Ocean; some went up in flames in huge
fires caused by snapped electrical wires.
Thinking of that fateful night brought the horror
back to survivors. “We should have evacuated
that night, but we didn’t. Water quickly came
into the house and rose… Sorry, I can’t finish…,”
Maria Huggins said, choked up with sobs.
In the United States, Hurricane Sandy killed
121 people and caused damage in excess of 50
billion dollars. Only Hurricane Katrina had done
more damage. Adding insult to injury was a cold
front that moved through the region in the aftermath of the disaster. Folks trying to get back on
their feet without homes and without electricity
or natural gas for cooking and heating now had
to deal with the cold too.
Cold winds, hot soup
Tzu Chi volunteers began providing hot food
in New York City the day after the superstorm
blew through. They also visited disaster areas to
survey the damage. Their surveys indicated that
damage was more severe closer to the coast, so
they decided to start giving out blankets, hot
soup, and hot drinks to those who needed them
first. In early November, they set up a hot food
station in Broad Channel, a neighborhood in the
borough of Queens.
In the community, donated goods piled up
near the beach and people just took what they
needed. As night fell, workers from other charities left for the day. Tzu Chi volunteers set up
lights powered by generators to provide
illumination.
A sign was put up that said: “Tzu Chi provides hot soup, hot coffee, and hot tea here
every day from 4:00 to 6:00 p.m.” In this small
way, Tzu Chi was able to provide something
with which residents could warm their bodies
when they took a breather from their clean-up
efforts. As volunteers ladled and handed out
soup, they received very warm feedback from
local people.
zhu ze-ren
On a cold night, residents of Rockaway Beach (left) dig through disorderly piles of
donated goods, looking for suitable clothes to wear. After media reports, outside
resources poured into the town.
A Hamilton Beach resident (above) goes home with a smile on his face after receiving relief goods, including a cash card, distributed by Tzu Chi.
Winter 2012
49
“This is the best soup I’ve ever tasted in my
life,” a resident said. “Hot soup is just what I
need now. God bless you.”
A young mother said to her child, “We have
soup to eat only because of these good folks.
What do you need to say to them?” “Thank you,
thank you,” the child said to the volunteers.
When volunteers were distributing the hot
soup, they came across a man by the name of
David. He told the volunteers that his truck,
loaded with goods, was parked on a nearby
street. “Please tell people to come over and pick
up what they need.” He had driven 24 hours
from Missouri to return to his birthplace to help.
He said he would stay and do what he could to
help his fellow townspeople.
On November 5, volunteers went to three
religious organizations and a senior center to
deliver blankets. They were welcome items on
A Broad Channel resident hugs a Tzu Chi volunteer during a distribution.
such cold days. Many people told the volunteers,
“We’re doing fine. The only thing that bothers us
is the cold weather.” Some recipients kept asking, “Are you coming back?”
Larger distributions
Hurricane Sandy set many New Yorkers back,
in many ways to quite primitive conditions. There
was no electricity, no cell phones, and no computers. Subway service was curtailed and available
only in limited areas. Even gasoline was being
rationed, available only on certain days determined by a vehicle’s license plate number. Gas
stations were mired in long waiting lines. Just one
of these inconveniences would have caused a
major wave of complaints on a normal day, but
now residents were enduring them all at once.
On November 7, the first snow of the season
fell in New York. The already difficult living
conditions were made even messier.
After several days of damage assessment,
Tzu Chi volunteers decided to hold large-scale
distributions beginning on November 10 in areas
including Lindenhurst, Hamilton Beach, Broad
Channel and Staten Island, all in New York, and
also South Toms River, Atlantic City, and
Keansburg in New Jersey.
On November 8, a couple of days before the
large-scale distributions kicked off, a 53-foot
freight container arrived at the New Jersey Tzu
Chi branch office. The branch office in Dallas,
Texas had sent 6,800 blankets. Unloading the 600
boxes from the container proved a bit strenuous
for some senior volunteers, but they did the best
they could. If one pair of hands was not enough
to move a box, then they used two.
Volunteers wore scarves and worked in
unheated rooms to pack the blankets. The blankets were too big for one person to handle efficiently, so volunteers worked in pairs to fold and
put them into blue Tzu Chi backpacks for distribution. Some volunteers brought their children
along to help—schools had closed because of the
power outages. Some volunteers had come from
out of town, braving severe weather conditions.
Five volunteers arrived after driving five hours
in heavy snow from Atlantic City, one of the
worst hit places. All worked together to help
bring warmth to the victims.
Other Tzu Chi facilities in the United States
and Taiwan also sent items to be included in the
distributions. Love poured in abundantly. Items
to be distributed included blankets, scarves,
instant rice, daily kits, and 600-dollar cash cards.
Timely help
Two weeks after the disaster, 370,000 people
in New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut had
signed up for federal emergency assistance. The
Federal Emergency Management Agency had
disbursed 455 million dollars to disaster areas,
but the needs of so many victims spread over
such a large region dwarfed that sum.
Many locales saw none of that money. In fact,
some areas had not received any kind of aid,
even up to two weeks after the disaster. Thirteen
days after the storm passed, no outside help had
reached the town of Lindenhurst, Long Island.
What’s more, insurance companies were dragging their feet on damage claims. It was at this
time under such circumstances that Tzu Chi volunteers came into town.
“At first, many people didn’t want to come
to the distribution because they didn’t believe
that cash would really be given out,” said police
officer Mark Sberry. “But the people who did
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come got the word out.” Eventually, more and
more people came and saw this group of helpers for themselves.
At the distribution site, located at an unused
elementary school, a volunteer read out a condolence letter from Master Cheng Yen. Many victims’ eyes welled up. Volunteers handed out
cash cards and relief supplies and hugged the
survivors. In addition to the material aid, they
wanted to convey their care to the victims. “At
first, we weren’t sure if the victims really needed
our help,” said Tzu Chi volunteer Su Yu-sheng
(蘇煜昇), his eyes also red. “Now we know they
really do.”
Staten Island has a population of 470,000.
More than 6,000 families there were affected by
Hurricane Sandy. One Tzu Chi distribution was
held at St. Charles Church. Victims arrived early
at this distribution to get a place in line. “I’m
number one, and I got here at 1:15 a.m.,” said
Cassie Arizmendy, the first person in line. The
next person said, “I’m number two. Also one fifteen.” That they and others had waited for hours
in bitter cold for the distribution was indicative
of how badly they needed help.
Cassie, wrapped in a comforter, said, “I have
no winter clothes left. This comforter is all I’ve
got. The flood reached the ceiling in my apartment, so I have no home now. These keys are
my only possessions, and now I have nowhere
to go.”
Despite the hardships she faced, Cassie was
sunny and cheerful. But that changed when she
received the $600 cash card distributed by Tzu
Chi. At that point, she burst into tears. “I really
can’t believe this. We’re strangers, but you don’t
hesitate to help those who really need it,” she
said. “You’re more than a charitable group.
You’re more like guardian angels.”
Another distribution was conducted in
Keansburg, New Jersey. Tzu Chi volunteers
have visited the borough every fall since 2009 to
clean up a local beach. During the hurricane,
seawater rushed inland, destroying houses
along the shore and causing widespread power
and water outages. When Tzu Chi volunteers
learned about the devastation in the area, they
brought help to town.
Their help was a rare bright spot in the
gloomy life of a local woman named Jessica.
Floodwater had risen to the second floor of her
house, forcing the three people in the family to
flee upwards. They ended up in their dark attic.
While her car was literally underwater, her car
Winter 2012
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tang wei-zhi
Faith in the Dharma
By Dharma Master Cheng Yen
Translated by Teresa Chang
E
loan was figuratively underwater too—she was
still stuck with the loan for a now worthless car.
As if that was not bad enough, her house caught
on fire from the candles that she was using for
light. Fortunately no personal injuries resulted.
During the distribution, her tears kept flowing.
The volunteers sincerely hoped that the cash
card and relief goods could lift her spirits a little
and get her through the hard times ahead.
Joseph Makhandal Champagne is the mayor
of South Toms River, New Jersey, one of the areas
Tzu Chi brought aid to. He volunteered at several Tzu Chi distributions for victims of
Hurricane Sandy. At a distribution held on
November 18 in Berkeley Township, New Jersey,
Mayor Champagne and his two daughters
appeared to be leaving around noon, after helping out in the morning. Chen Lu Rong (陳慮瑢),
CEO of the New Jersey Tzu Chi branch, thanked
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them for their participation and reminded them
to take off the volunteer vests that they had been
wearing. Mayor Champagne said to her, “This
vest is the most important thing to me at this
moment. It gives me pride, and I don’t want to
take it off.” He went on to explain that he was
just going to fetch his wife, and that they would
all be coming back to help.
Chen suggested that they consider taking
training courses to become regular volunteers,
who wear gray uniforms, not vests. That invitation delighted the mayor who said that he would
do that.
“Your master tops my list of most respected
people. I hope to take my whole family to Taiwan
next year to thank her. I hope Tzu Chi volunteers
can bring the Master’s teachings to South Toms
River to benefit the people there.”
From October 29 to November 22, 2012, volunteers brought aid to over 20 locales in New
York and New Jersey. They provided more than
8,000 servings of hot food and distributed cash
cards to over 12,000 families. These events provided disaster victims with more than material
goods—they also gave the recipients a sense of
comfort in the knowledge they had not been
forgotten.
This article is excerpted from a series of sermons delivered
by Master Cheng Yen from September 4 to 18, 2012.
what he felt, or what his environment was like?
It is impossible to know for sure. However, when
we open our heart to his teaching, when we ponder it and put it into practice, then we can come
close to a full realization of the Dharma.
The Buddha expounded the Dharma for 49
years. What he hoped to pass on to people was
an unsurpassable, wonderful law—an enduring
truth. The truth has existed forever. It’s like the
sky above, still and unmoving, eternal and
unchanging. It’s just because the earth continually rotates on its axis and revolves around the
sun that the sky appears different to our eyes
from one moment to the next.
Having been exposed to the
Dharma, we must have faith in
it and do our best to learn from
it and fully absorb the teachings.
Only then will we be able to
gain profound insight into the
Buddha’s wisdom, uncover our
pure innate nature, and help
ourselves grow in wisdom.
Chen You-peng
Mayor Joseph Makhandal Champagne of South
Toms River, New Jersey, helped pack goods to be
given out to victims of Hurricane Sandy at a Tzu
Chi distribution held in Union Beach, New Jersey,
on November 17.
very day, before the break of dawn, I walk
out of my study. The world is quiet and
tranquil at that time. Gazing at the sky far
above, I feel the difference between today and
yesterday. The sky was a pale patch of white at
this time yesterday, but it is dimmer today. This is
the time when summer gives way to autumn.
How alive our earth is! How wonderful that
the four seasons change! My heart is always filled
with immense gratitude when I feel the laws of
nature working like this. I thank heaven and earth
for nurturing all our lives. I thank the immeasurable, wondrous Dharma that everything in the
universe teaches us.
Every day, our Six Roots—
our eyes, ears, nose, tongue,
body, and mind—sense the outside world and form our perceptions of external phenomena.
The visual consciousness arises
when the eyes see an image. The
auditory consciousness arises
when the ears hear a sound. The
olfactory consciousness arises
when the nose smells a scent.
The gustatory consciousness
arises when the tongue tastes a
flavor, and the tactile consciousness arises when the body
touches an object. Last but not
least, the mental consciousness arises when the
mind perceives a thought.
We can fully experience this world through
our Six Roots. For example, every day I hear birds
sing; sometimes they sing in chorus, and sometimes they sing solo. There is no way to know
what the birds are thinking or how they feel, but
we can still feel and appreciate their beauty if we
mindfully listen to and look at them.
Similarly, can we ever know exactly the
thoughts of the Buddha from 2,500 years ago?
Can we know exactly the words he spoke, or
Hold true to your faith
The following story appears
in the Suratapariprccha Sutra:
When the Buddha preached
in Sravasti, a practitioner named
Surata listened to him mindfully and devoutly took his teachings to heart.
Although Surata was poor, he believed what the
Buddha said: “You do not need to have wealth or
power to walk the Bodhisattva Path. All you
need is love and a willingness to help others.”
Surata had a heart full of love. His heart
ached when he saw people suffering from hunger, poverty, illness, or cold. He tried all ways to
find work, and he used all the money he earned
to help the needy.
One day, Sakra Devanam Indra, ruler of
Trayastrimsa Heaven, was surprised to discover
that though Surata was penniless, he was able
to take care of so many poor and sick people,
orphans and widows. Many people had even
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hsiao yiu-hwa
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Tzu Chi Quarterly
ings, be relieved from suffering, and do good deeds to benefit others. There is nothing
more I want than this.”
Sakra was impressed. “With
your level of cultivation, you
have already transcended the
Six Realms of reincarnation
[heaven, human, Asura, animal, hungry ghost, hell]. You
are already a bodhisattva.” With those words of
praise, Sakra disappeared.
When the Buddha heard about this, he told
his disciples, “Surata diligently cultivated his
spirituality in his past lives. That’s why, even
though he is destitute in this life, he doesn’t suffer from it. In fact, his poverty only helps him
along on the path of spiritual practice.”
This story from the Suratapariprccha Sutra
points out that those who aspire to enhance
their spirituality must hold true to their resolve
to cultivate themselves so that no outside circumstances can sway or influence them. When
they firmly believe in the Dharma, steadfastly
uphold it, and put it into practice in daily life,
they are truly embracing the Buddhist spirit.
To learn the Bodhisattva Way, we must go
amongst people instead of shunning them.
Everyone is like a sutra from whom we can
learn. In fact, everything in the world expounds
the Dharma to us. If we are mindful, we will
recognize the Dharma everywhere and gain
wisdom that will enable us to penetrate the
truth of all things.
which ghosts and spirits come out from the lower
realm and roam the earth. The seventh month is
thus looked upon as the most inauspicious time
of the year. People often suspend important
activities, such as weddings or business deals,
during this time. They make lavish offerings of
food and burn spirit money (the “currency” of
the underworld) to appease the dead, ease their
suffering, and pray for blessings.
Yet, when we understand the origins of this
tradition, we find that the seventh lunar month
is actually a favorable month, as well as a month
of filial piety when we are reminded to show
gratitude to our parents.
Back in the Buddha’s time, it was hot and
humid in India during the summertime. It was
also the rainy season when insects abounded.
Because of this, the Buddha asked his disciples to
remain in one place during this period instead of
going out every day to beg for alms. During the
three months from the 15th day of the fourth
lunar month to the 15th day of the seventh
month, the disciples concentrated on spiritual
cultivation and meditation. Many monks thus
achieved enlightenment, which delighted the
Buddha. That is why, to Buddhists, the seventh
lunar month is a month of joy and gratitude.
Maudgalyayana was one of the Buddha’s
closest disciples. One time, he thought of his
deceased mother. She had been greedy, mean
and immoral during her lifetime, so it was likely
that she would have been reborn in a lower
realm of reincarnation. Maudgalyayana was
anxious to know where she was, and through
his supernatural powers he found her suffering
in the realm of the hungry ghosts. He asked the
Buddha for help. The Buddha told him that saving her would require gathering together the
virtues and blessings of all the spiritual practitioners who had cultivated themselves devoutly
during the three-month retreat. The Enlightened
One instructed him to offer food to the monks
on the last day of the retreat and ask them to
pray for his mother. Maudgalyayana did as
instructed and so, on that day, the entire community prayed for Maud­galyayana’s mother
and saved her from her suffering. This eventually evolved into the practice of holding worship
ceremonies during the seventh lunar month.
During this time, we should remember the story
During the seventh lunar month this year, Tzu Chi held prayer events at Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall in
Taipei to celebrate and promote the month as an auspicious time and an occasion to practice filial piety.
xu yao-ming
begun attending the Buddha’s sermons under
Surata’s influence. Seeing the power Surata was
accumulating, Sakra grew scared. “He is amassing so much spiritual merit. Is he thinking of
usurping my place in the future?”
To impede Surata’s spiritual progress, Sakra
transformed himself into a group of people and
went to Surata’s shack. They shouted and cursed
outside, hoping to disturb the practitioner’s
peace so that he couldn’t quietly meditate. But
Surata remained unperturbed. Next, the group
burst into the shack and threatened to beat him
or even kill him. Despite all that, Surata remained
composed and serene.
A man broke from the group and said to
Surata, “These people do not understand you at
all. I know that you love to help and give to others.” He then offered Surata gold, silver and
other treasures, and he told him that he could
sell the treasures and use the money to aid those
in need. Surata smiled at the man’s incredible
offer… and then turned him down. “I can’t take
any money I didn’t earn myself. It’s not the right
thing to do.”
Seeing that the offer of wealth could not
tempt Surata, Sakra tried to entice him with a
beautiful woman. But that failed too. In fact, all
these temptations only made Surata grow more
committed to his spiritual practice.
At his wits’ end, Sakra appeared in person
before Surata and asked, “Why are you so diligently cultivating your spirituality? What are
you seeking?”
Surata replied, “I’m not seeking anything. I
just hope that everyone in the world can be safe
and well, that they can grasp the Buddha’s teach-
Master Cheng Yen teaches that
everything in the world expounds the Dharma to us. If we
are mindful, we will recognize
the Dharma everywhere and
gain wisdom that will enable us
to see the truth of all things.
Embrace right beliefs
The teachings of the Buddha are timeless.
Although we live in a different age from that of
the Buddha, the truth he preached is good for all
time. We can still follow in his footsteps and use
his teachings to inspire people and to transform
and purify their minds. But how can this be
done? It requires our joint effort, a strong sense
of commitment, and constant mindfulness.
In Chinese tradition, the seventh lunar month
is popularly believed to be the “ghost month,” in
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ly affect others and bring harm to ourselves.
That’s why every one of us must take good care
of our minds and watch our every thought as we
deal with people and things in daily life. We
must think carefully about what we do, learn
mindfully, and harbor pure, upright thoughts so
that we can stay on the right path.
Open your heart
In April this year, a girl was brought to
Fuding Hospital in Fujian Province, China.
Medical workers at the hospital found that she
was suffering from a severe lung abscess and
needed emergency treatment. They immediately
gave her first aid. The person who had brought
her to the hospital had disappeared, so hospital
personnel also notified the police of the case.
Despite being physically weak, the girl was
hostile to everyone who approached her. The
police visited her time and again to ask for her
personal information, but she refused to divulge
it. Consequently, they had no way of reaching
her family.
Tzu Chi volunteers visited her during her
hospitalization and cared for her like mothers
would care for their daughters. They cut and
washed her hair and tenderly administered to
her needs. The hospital staff also looked after
her with great care. With time, she slowly
opened up and revealed her aunt’s address.
Through her aunt, the hospital was finally able
to reach her father.
It turned out that the girl was from the countryside of Guangxi Province. Her parents had
divorced when she was three years old, and she
had been brought up by her blind paternal
grandmother. When she was 13, she ran away
from home and went to a city, where she became
addicted to drugs. Her father had been looking
for her for more than two years by the time she
ended up in the hospital. When he learned that
she was very ill, relatives helped pay his way to
Fuding so he could visit her. He stayed with his
daughter until the end of July when the girl had
recovered enough to be discharged from the
hospital.
Because the girl had run up a huge medical
bill during her three months of hospitalization,
hospital personnel and Tzu Chi volunteers
raised money to help her pay it. Feeling the love
from so many people, the 17-year-old girl finally
let go of her coldness and unfriendliness and
expressed her gratitude to everyone. “Now I
know I’m loved by many people. I’ll change my
behavior and begin giving of myself and contributing to society.”
Everyone is born with an innate good nature.
It’s just that as people grow up, they may be
exposed to bad influences and thus allow ignorance and delusion to taint their innate purity.
Thanks to the love of the medical staff at Fuding
Hospital and our volunteers, the girl not only
regained her health but learned to pay back and
live a life of value.
If we close ourselves off and refuse to take
in good influences, our hearts will be plunged
into darkness. Therefore, we should open our
hearts and let the sunshine of goodness flood in
so that our hearts can be filled with light. In
addition, we must hold on to that goodness and
put the love in our hearts into action so that we
can live a life free of afflictions. When we can
constantly act out our love and sow blessings
for ourselves by helping others, we are leading
a most blessed life.
End suffering
After the Buddha attained enlightenment
2,500 years ago, he returned to Deer Park to find
his five former companions. Although the five
monks had at first stayed close to him, thinking
that he would attain enlightenment, they later
lost faith in him and left him. When the Buddha
found the five men in Deer Park, he expounded
to them the Four Noble Truths—Suffering, the
Cause of Suffering, the Cessation of Suffering,
and the Path leading to this emancipation—in
hopes of leading them to enlightenment.
After the five monks listened to the Buddha
analyze the various afflictions in the world and
the root of suffering, their doubt turned into
faith. Yet although they all listened to the
Buddha’s sermon at the same time, they were
awakened at different times.
Kaundinya was the first to really understand
the Buddha’s teachings. From what the
Enlightened One taught, Kaundinya realized that
suffering was caused by greed, anger, delusion,
arrogance, doubt, and other spiritual impurities.
To gain liberation, he had to work to remove
those impurities from his mind.
The other four monks were slower to comprehend the Buddha’s teachings. They could not
understand why all suffering originated from the
mind. So the Buddha further explained his teach-
ings and talked about how to practice the Four
Noble Truths. Then he elucidated what he himself
had achieved: He had understood suffering; he
had abandoned all desire, which is the cause of
suffering; he had experienced nirvana; and he had
followed the Path to its conclusion. By imparting
all this to them, the Buddha hoped to help relieve
them from the pain of endless reincarnation in the
Six Realms. Only after the five monks had thoroughly understood the Four Noble Truths did the
Buddha take them on as his disciples.
To help people get rid of the delusions in
their minds, the Buddha tirelessly expounded
his teachings to help them realize that to be
freed from suffering they had to understand the
source of suffering, and that the way to eradicate suffering was by diligently cultivating
themselves and eliminating all spiritual impurities from their minds.
As spiritual practitioners, we must not seek
only our own liberation. When we have found
the right path to follow, we must tap into our
compassion and help guide others onto that path
as well. No matter what circumstances we find
ourselves in, let us mindfully take in what the
Buddha taught, practice his way, and realize
what he realized. I sincerely hope that we will
all allow our faith to take deep root, hold firm to
our commitments, and diligently do good deeds
to benefit others.
tzu chi archives
of Maudgalyayana, learn from his filial piety,
and be especially grateful to our parents.
In an effort to break the superstitions surrounding the “ghost month,” Tzu Chi volunteers
around the world hold prayer events in their
respective communities during the seventh
lunar month. Instead of fearing this month, they
celebrate and promote it as an auspicious time
and an occasion to practice filial piety. They
encourage people to observe vegetarianism
instead of killing lives to serve as offerings to the
dead. They also ask people not to burn spirit
money in order to diminish air pollution. By
doing all this, they hope to inspire people to get
rid of misguided beliefs and to embrace right
beliefs and right thinking.
Wu Jin-bao (吳金寶) used to sell spirit money
for people to burn as offerings. This year, she
came to a Tzu Chi prayer event in Wanhua,
Taipei, where she told the attendants: “If burning spirit money could really help us gain blessings, then I wouldn’t have sold a single piece of
spirit money. Instead I would have just burned
all I had and made myself the richest person in
the world!”
Wu was diagnosed with ampullary cancer in
2007, and she experienced the pain brought
about by surgery and other treatment. She held
a lot of resentment in her heart. “I devoutly
worship deities every day and pray for their
blessing,” she said bitterly. “Why don’t they
bless me?”
Last year, at her mother-in-law’s funeral Wu
met some Tzu Chi volunteers who were there
chanting sutras to bring peace and comfort to
the deceased and her family. The volunteers
invited Wu to a study group organized to study
my commentary on the Compassionate Samadhi
Water Repentance. Wu went and took in the teachings mindfully. There she learned that everything we experience is due to the karmic law of
cause and effect, that everything we did in our
previous lives results in what we go through in
this life. She thus realized that we cannot expect
to receive blessings merely by praying—blessings only come to us if we have sown them.
Therefore, instead of burning spirit money and
praying to deities for blessings, she decided to
join our recycling work and adopt a vegetarian
diet to accumulate spiritual merits and blessings
for herself.
When our minds are deluded and confused,
we lose our way. Our thinking and actions can
become misguided, and as a result can negative-
We should all mindfully take in what the Buddha
taught and practice his way.
Winter 2012
57
Vegetarianism
for
Health,
Spirit,
the Earth
By Lin Chin-lon
Compiled and translated by Tang Yau-yang
Photos by Huang Shi-ze
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Tzu Chi Quarterly
Vegetarianism is good for your health,
your spirit and the earth. Dr. Lin Chin-lon
(林俊龍), a practicing cardiologist and
CEO of the Tzu Chi Medical Mission,
shows you how to be a vegetarian the
right way.
MASTER CHENG YEN, THE FOUNDER OF TZU CHI, SAID, “ALL
DISASTERS COME FROM HUMAN HEARTS.” HUMAN GLUTTONY
AND AVARICE ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR SO MANY NATURAL
DISASTERS.
In a 2006 report titled Livestock’s Long Shadow:
Environmental Issues and Options, the Food and
Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
pointed out that livestock production is a key
source of carbon emissions on earth, responsible for discharging 7.5 billion tons of carbon
dioxide into the atmosphere each year. That figure represents 18 percent of the global greenhouse gas emissions.
That revelation, as bad as it seems, was in fact
a gross understatement, according to Robert
Goodland and Jeff Anhang. In an article titled
“Livestock and Climate Change,” published in
the November/December 2009 issue of World
Watch magazine, these two world environmentalists attributed 51 percent of the global greenhouse gas emissions to the raising of livestock
and the production of meat, milk, and related
products. This represents 32.6 billion tons of carbon released into the atmosphere. They asked,
“What if the key actors in climate change are…
cows, pigs, and chickens?”
Goodland and Anhang opened their report
with these words: “Whenever the causes of climate change are discussed, fossil fuels top the
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Tzu Chi Quarterly
list. Oil, natural gas, and especially coal are
indeed major sources of human-caused emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases (GHGs). But we believe that the life
cycle and supply chain of domesticated animals
raised for food have been vastly underestimated
as a source of GHGs, and in fact account for at
least half of all human-caused GHGs.”
Meat at what cost?
It has been shown that 55 square feet of virgin forest must be cleared to plant a pasture
large enough to produce a single pound of
hamburger. In Latin America alone, 70 percent
of forests have been reduced to pastures for
grazing since 1970. Here’s another way to look
at it: To produce a pound of meat requires 21
pounds of grain, such as corn, wheat and barley. The production of livestock requires a third
of the global grain production; in the United
States, a heavily meat-eating country, animals
raised for food consume 70 percent of the
nation’s grain output.
It takes a lot of land, water, and other resources to produce a mere pound of beef, which cannot even keep a person full for very long.
On the other hand, if the 21 pounds of grain
were used instead to feed people, it would allow
them to eat for several days. On a global scale,
imagine how much hunger around the word
could be alleviated if the millions of tons of
wheat going to livestock were diverted to
human consumption. Imagine how
many disasters could be averted.
The amount of energy required
to run the equipment for making
fertilizers, planting crops, feeding
livestock, and slaughtering the animals is considerable. It is estimated that
it takes 56,000 kilowatts of electricity to
SESAME OIL GINGER RICE
INGREDIENTS
Steamed rice
Old ginger
Sesame oil
Soy sauce
DIRECTIONS
Finely chop the ginger.
Heat the pan, add sesame oil and chopped ginger. Stir until
the ginger turns a little dark, then add the soy sauce. Turn
down heat and stir to finish the sesame oil ginger sauce.
Mix ten parts steamed rice with one part sesame oil ginger
sauce and serve.
Another option is to make the mixture into rice rolls to go.
CASHEW CORN
INGREDIENTS
One cup cashews
One ear corn
One cucumber
Half carrot
Grated ginger
Salt
DIRECTIONS
Boil corn, then dekernel.
Cube the cucumber and carrot with the skins on.
Lightly deep-fry the cashews, remove them from the oil.
Heat oiled pan. Stir-fry grated ginger. Add in carrot cubes
and stir-fry until the cubes are 80 percent cooked before
adding, in this order, corn kernels, cashew, cucumber, and a
bit of salt. Stir well and serve.
produce a pound of pork in the United States.
Others have suggested that if the practice of
feeding grain to livestock were suspended,
farm demand for electricity would drop 60
percent.
Water is another precious resource used on a
large scale in raising livestock. Producing a
pound of pork requires 430 gallons of water. In
California, a third of irrigation water is used for
growing grain for feeding cows. “Agriculture is
by far the most important use [of water]: over
70% of the global freshwater consumption is
used in that sector,” according to Assessing the
Environmental Impacts of Consumption and
Production—Priority Products and Materials, a
United Nations Environment Programme
(UNEP) report published in 2010.
Animal waste is yet another unpleasant but
inevitable result of livestock agriculture. Rich in
nitrogen, animal feces provide a fertile nutrient
used by algae, which in turn can grow out of
control and pollute lakes, rivers, watersheds,
and sources of drinking water. The waste also
releases ammonia, which greatly intensifies the
effects of acid rain.
Livestock production uses up horrendous
amounts of arable land, grain, electricity, and
water. Not only does it eat up precious resources, it puts out nasty things—and in huge quantities, too. It is bad all around, no matter how you
look at it.
A Western diet heavy in meat and dairy products is incompatible with the sustainability of
the Earth. According to the UNEP report, “In
general, the next decades will see still a significant population growth. It is expected that by
2050, nine to ten billion people will populate the
Earth—a growth of 50%.” The report goes on to
suggest that, “A substantial reduction of impacts
[from this large population] would only be possible with a substantial worldwide diet change,
away from animal products.”
In light of the above statistics, vegetarianism
has many benefits. Among other things, it can
help restore the health of the earth, conserve
resources, avert hunger, and leave our children
with a clean and peaceful world in which to live.
Six basic nutrients
Humans take in nutrients from their food to
sustain their lives, repair damage to tissues or
organs, or promote growth. There are six categories of nutrients: minerals, water, carbohydrates,
fats, protein, and vitamins.
1: Minerals
Of the required minerals, the human
body has a higher
demand for calcium,
sodium, potassium, magnesium, and phosphorus, all of which play important roles in human
metabolism.
The other minerals, required in lesser
amounts, are called “trace elements.” These
include iron, iodine, fluoride, silica, nickel,
boron, tin, zinc, selenium, copper, cobalt, molybdenum, and manganese. They are indispensable
components in many human enzymes and are
therefore also essential to human metabolism. A
deficiency in these trace elements causes a variety of diseases and disorders.
Just as too little of these elements is a bad
thing, so is too much of other elements, especially heavy metals like silver, mercury, lead,
barium, cadmium, and arsenic. They do not
play any important part in normal human
metabolism. The accumulation of these in the
body causes poisoning, malfunction of body
organs, disease, and death.
2: Water
Water is a simple nutrient. It is the most
important component of every cell in the body,
responsible for dissolving and diluting chemical
elements, and it is a wonderful medium for carrying and evenly distributing nutrients to all
parts of the body. Without water, every aspect of
one’s metabolism grinds to a complete halt. Of
all the nutrients, water is the most abundant in
volume, critical in importance, and indispensable in presence.
Winter 2012
63
Water accounts for between 55 and 60 percent of the body weight of an adult. Water cannot be made internally, so it must be ingested.
The body loses about six percent of its weight in
water every day through urination, bowel movements, perspiration, or respiration. When a person has a fever, perspires heavily, vomits, or has
diarrhea, water loss intensifies. If the water is
not replenished, this can lead to dehydration,
shock, or even death.
3: Carbohydrates
The carbohydrates in food are either single
or multiple sugars. Monosaccharides (single
sugars) are the simplest form of sugar and are
usually colorless, water-soluble, crystalline solids. All other sugars (disaccharides, oligosaccharides, and polysaccharides)—including
starch and glycogen, also known as animal
starch—must first be broken down by enzymes
into single sugars before they can be absorbed
in the digestive tract and metabolized.
Fiber consists of multiple sugar molecules
which human enzymes cannot break down into
single sugars. That means humans cannot
absorb fiber and must evacuate it out of their
bodies. Even so, fiber plays an essential role in
human health. It helps retain water in food,
maintains the viscosity of digested food, absorbs
bile, and is the main ingredient for bacterial fermentation in the digestive tract.
Therefore fiber, though not absorbable, helps
to control body weight, promote gastrointestinal function, provide bulk in stool, lower cholesterol, prevent colon cancer, and metabolize
blood sugars. Fiber is indeed a very important
component of human food.
gen, carbon, and nitrogen. Proteins are made up
of long chains of amino acids. There are 20 common types of amino acids, nine of which cannot
be internally produced. These last amino acids
must be obtained from the diet, and are therefore called essential amino acids.
4: Fats
Fats, or lipids, include triglycerides, phospholipids, and sterols. Triglycerides account for
95 percent of all fats in food. Even though the
other two fats together make up a mere five percent, they are indispensable nutrients.
Phospholipids and sterols are the major components of cell membranes and promote the production of hormones, vitamins, and bile acids.
Triglycerides supply energy to the body.
Because fats are poor conductors of heat, they
help keep the body warm. Furthermore, layer
upon layer of fat under the skin protects the
internal organs against physical jolts.
Most plant and fish oils contain polyunsaturated fatty acids. The oils from some plants, such
as palm oil and coconut oil, contain high amounts
of saturated fat. Other plant oils, such as olive
and canola, are high in monounsaturated fatty
acids. Most animal fats, such as that from pigs
and cows, contain saturated fatty acids.
Highly concentrated in eggs, livers, and
legumes, phospholipids are oil and water soluble, so they can be used to make fat and water
mix. Phospholipids are important ingredients
for building cell membranes—they allow the
cells to control the movement of materials
across their membranes. Phospholipids are
natural emulsifiers, helping other fats to spread
evenly in cells.
Sterols include cholic acids,
male and female sex hormones,
adrenaline, vitamin D, and cholesterol. Though plants contain sterols, only animal
products have cholesterol,
which is particularly
abundant in animal
viscera and egg yolks.
6: Vitamins
There are 13 known vitamins. Some are soluble in fat, such as vitamins A, D, E, and K. The
others, including vitamin C, are water soluble.
Unlike carbohydrates, fats, and proteins, vitamins do not produce energy. The body needs
them in small quantities, but they perform functions that are essential to metabolism.
5: Proteins
Proteins are
the most complicated nutrients
of all because
they contain
oxygen, hydro-
Eat right
Many people are under the false impression
that a vegetarian diet is not balanced. Mal­
nutrition can result from an inadequate, excessive, or simply unbalanced diet. Does a vegetarian diet result in malnutrition? Many studies
have proved that vegetarianism offers adequate
protein, does not result in malnutrition, and is
good for one’s health.
On the other hand, meat eaters are more prone
to suffer from nutritional problems because they
may eat more protein and fat and have less fiber
to slow their digestion. Without fiber, food passes
more quickly through the intestines, and people
soon feel hungry again. They take in excessive
calories, which are converted into and stored as
fat, making the owners put on weight. Being
overweight not only increases the burden on the
heart and joints but directly or indirectly brings
about many other diseases as well.
In June 2011, the World Health Organization
published its list of the ten leading causes of
death in the world. Heart disease tops the list,
followed by stroke and other cerebrovascular
diseases. According to Taiwan’s Department of
Health statistics for 2010, cancer was the leading
cause of death on the island, accounting for 28.4
percent of deaths. Heart disease (10.8 percent)
and cerebrovascular disease (7 percent) rounded
out the top three. Heart disease and cerebrovascular disease are both caused by atherosclerosis,
or narrowing of the arteries, the main causes of
which include obesity, high cholesterol, hypertension, and diabetes. Plant-based diets are one
of the most effective preventive measures against
these causative diseases.
Many of the top ten causes of death, globally or locally in Taiwan, are closely related to
Leftover Cookies
INGREDIENTS
Carrot peels, celery leaves, soy pulp from making soy milk,
flour, salt, and soy sauce.
DIRECTIONS
Steam soy pulp until cooked.
Finely chop carrot peels and celery leaves, mix with steamed
soy pulp, flour, and a pinch of salt. Form into round, flat
patties.
Pan-fry over low heat until golden brown on both sides.
Serve with soy sauce on the side.
diet. Studies have shown that members of religious groups that practice vegetarianism have
lower death rates. However, the researchers
could not conclusively attribute longevity to
meatless diets alone, because some of the subjects neither smoked nor drank. The absence of
those two factors might also have helped lower
death rates.
This uncertainty remained until September
1992, when the journal Epidemiology published
“Mortality Pattern of German Vegetarians After
11 Years of Follow-up” by Jenny Chang-Claude,
Rainer Frentzel-Beyme, and Ursula Eilber. The
study removed the influence of smoking and
drinking and proved directly and unambiguously that vegetarians enjoy lower mortality.
In the authors’ own words: “In particular, for
ischemic heart diseases, mortality was reduced
to one-third of that expected. Cancer mortality
was reduced by one-half in men…, but only by
one-quarter in women…. Deaths from diseases
of the respiratory and digestive systems were
also reduced by about 50%.… Some nondietary
factors, such as higher socioeconomic status, virtual absence of smoking, and lower body mass
index, may also have contributed to the lower
mortality of the study participants.”
Winter 2012
65
A vegetarian diet is typically lower in calories, higher in fiber—which helps with the peristalsis of the digestive tract and reduces absorption of calories—and very high in antioxidants—
known to protect cells against free radicals in the
body. Therefore a vegetarian diet lowers the
prevalence of chronic diseases, such as high
blood pressure, diabetes, and cardiovascular diseases, and can slow aging and extend life.
Since vegetarianism lowers the chances of
contracting chronic diseases, it reduces the need
for medications, x-rays and other kinds of examinations, and hospitalization. In this way, it
greatly reduces the cost of medical care.
According to Neal Barnard, MD, et al., in
“The Medical Costs Attributable to Meat
Consumption,” published in Preventive Medicine
#24 in 1995, if the entire population of the United
States were to adopt a vegetarian diet, it could
save up to 8.5 billion dollars of health care costs
on hypertension, 9.5 billion dollars on heart disease, 16.5 billion dollars on cancer, 17.1 billion
dollars on diabetes and related complications,
2.4 billion dollars on gallbladder disease, 1.9 billion dollars on obesity-related musculoskeletal
disorders, and 5.5 billion dollars on foodborne
illnesses. That’s a grand total of 61.4 billion dollars a year in medical savings.
The United Kingdom has in recent years
become the most overweight nation in Europe.
Obesity has led to chronic diseases and cancers,
resulting in huge medical bills. In September
2011, the World Preservation Foundation, a
London-based NGO, published a report entitled
“Plant-Based Diets: A Solution to Our Public
Health Crisis,” urging the British government to
take the lead in promoting plant-based diets. The
report argues that a switch to a plant-based diet
would greatly help reduce the incidence of many
serious illnesses, such as heart disease, obesity,
cancer, and diabetes.
On November 9, 2012, the Los Angeles city
council declared every Monday a “Meatless
Monday.” The city thus became the largest in the
nation to endorse the movement to curb meat
consumption. The resolution was passed “in
support of comprehensive sustainability efforts
as well as to further encourage residents to eat a
more varied plant-based diet to protect their
health, protect animals and protect
the environment.”
“bad” ones, such as sodium, which causes high
blood pressure and edema. A balanced vegetarian diet is low in fat, sufficient in protein, and
high in complex carbohydrates and fiber.
1: Minerals
Vegetables and fruits are rich in minerals,
especially beneficial ones like potassium, magnesium, calcium, phosphorus, and trace elements. On the other hand, they naturally do not
have harmful heavy metals, such as arsenic,
mercury, aluminum, silver, and cadmium—
unless artificially introduced during planting or
handling.
Vegetarian nutrients
Vegetables and fruits are rich in vitamins,
some of which are excellent age-slowing antioxidants. They are also high in “good” minerals,
such as potassium and magnesium, and low in
Vegetarianism and the Earth
2: Water
A person needs about 2,500 milliliters (two
thirds of a gallon) of water each day. While dairy
products and meat contain about 50 percent
Daily food guide
Clouds
(Wind)
Whole grains and
root vegetables
2 to 4 cups
Breathing,
exercise
The Sun
(Fire)
Vitamin D
Vitamin
B12
Fruit
Whole grains Vegetables
Root vegetables
Nuts
Seeds
Vegetable
oils
Beans
*According to ancient Chinese wisdom, health is the product of the balance of the four elements of fire, wind, earth
and water.
* The shape of the earth: It starts with you and me to protect
the Earth.
Beans
1 to 2.5 cups
FRUIT
2-4 servings
Vitamin
B12
Waves
(Water)
Eight glasses
of water a day
Nuts, seeds, and fats
3 to 8 servings. A serving of
nuts or seeds is about a tablespoonful. For oils, it is a
teaspoonful.
Mountains
(Earth)
Earth preservation
* Lotus flower: Represents a peaceful and purified mind
* The five categories of food along with vitamin B12 supplements make a balanced diet.
* Vitamin B12 sources: Supplements, vitamin B12-fortified
grains.
Vegetables
3 to 5 small dishes
Adequate daily exercise
Adequate water intake
designs by Qiu Xue-ting (dietician, secretary general of the Taiwan Vegetarian Nutrition Society)
water, vegetables and
fruit contain as much as
90 percent. Eating
lots of vegetables
and fruit helps ensure
an adequate intake of
water.
3: Carbohydrates
Ideally, between 55 and 60 percent of the
energy the body needs should come from carbohydrates. Based on a 2,000-calorie daily need,
that is about 300 grams of carbohydrates per day,
supplying 1,200 calories. Of those, no more than
ten percent, or 30 grams, should be refined.
Vegetables and fruit are packed with sugars
of all varieties, providing your body with the
carbohydrates it needs.
4: Fats
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration recommends a daily fat intake of no more than 65
grams for an adult, of which no more than 20
grams should be saturated. Its suggested limit
on cholesterol is 300 milligrams per day. Plant
foods are generally low in fat, most of their fats
are unsaturated, and none of them have any
cholesterol—which all helps to fend off atherosclerosis. Furthermore, plant food supplies a
sufficient source of essential fatty acids to aid in
metabolic processes.
5: Proteins
Each day a person needs 0.8 gram of protein
for every kilogram (2.2 pounds) of body weight.
A meat eater generally takes in more than twice
what is needed.
There is a misconception that people living
on plant food are susceptible to protein deficiency. That claim is entirely groundless. Compared
with animal products, plant foods do have less
of certain amino acids, the foundational components of proteins. However, that deficiency is
easily compensated for by consuming different
kinds of plant foods, giving the body all the
needed amino acids in sufficient quantities to
make the needed proteins. This means that vegetarians will not suffer from protein deficiency
as long as they eat a balanced diet.
In fact, World Health Organization statistics
show that plants are the primary source of protein for the world, supplying 65 percent of the
world’s protein needs. People for whom wheat,
rice and other grains are the staple food only
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need to add other vegetables, especially legumes,
to their diets. Then they will not need to worry
about protein deficiency. Beans are high in protein and do not contain health-damaging cholesterol or saturated fats, such as are abundant in
meat products.
6: Vitamins
Plant foods are very rich in vitamins. Whole
grains in particular are packed with B vitamins,
and vitamins C, E and K are also plentiful in
vegetables and fruits. Vegetarians absolutely do
not run short of vitamins.
Nutrition guideline for vegetarians
According to the Almanac of Food Consumption
Survey in Taiwan 2008, ten percent of the population in Taiwan were vegetarians, and one in five of
those was a strict vegan who shunned even eggs
and dairy products. In July 2011, the Department
of Health in Taiwan issued a very helpful guideline for vegetarian diets, which are as follows.
1: Select a wide variety of food according to the
guidelines for a balanced diet.
The guidelines classify food into the following categories: a) whole grains and root vegetables, b) beans, fish, meat and eggs, c) vegetables,
d) fruit, e) low-fat dairy products, and f) oils,
fats and nuts. Choose your food according to
your own type of vegetarianism (whether or not
you eat eggs or dairy products). Beans can substitute for eggs, meat, or dairy products as a
source of protein.
2: Whole grains and root vegetables should
comprise at least a third of your diet every day.
Adding beans is even better.
Whole grains and root vegetables supply carbohydrates and some proteins, and, if unrefined,
also provide B vitamins and trace elements.
Beans, especially soybeans and their processed
products, provide bountiful protein.
Beans and whole grains supply proteins that
are different in structure, so consumption of both
is complementary. It is suggested that people eat
whole grains, root vegetables, and beans every
day. It is advisable to select unrefined whole
grains. At least a third of one’s daily food should
consist of whole grains and root vegetables.
3: Use a variety of cooking oils. Don’t skip nuts.
Oils from sunflowers, soybeans, and olives
oxidize easily in high temperatures, so they are
ALMOND JELLY WITH FRUIT
INGREDIENTS
For jelly:
3 grams of vegetarian gelatin (such as agar)
80 cc hot water
20 cc cold water
10 grams almond powder
For topping:
One kiwi fruit
Two passion fruits
DIRECTIONS
Add almond powder to hot water, stir well. Separately, stir
the agar into cold water. Mix the cold and hot water solutions, pour the mixture into a container. Wait until the mixture cools off before putting it in the refrigerator to set.
Slice the kiwi into chunks, lay them on the gelatin. Scoop
out the passion fruit pulp and seeds and place them on top,
and serve.
VEGETABLE RAINBOW
INGREDIENTS
20 grams red bell pepper
20 grams yellow bell pepper
50 grams broccoli
50 grams vegetable wild rice
15 grams raw shiitake mushrooms
2 grams cooking oil
2 grams salt
1 gram pepper
3 ml sesame oil
potato starch solution
DIRECTIONS
Cut vegetables, boil till cooked, and scoop out onto a plate.
Oil and heat a pan. Stir in all ingredients. Add starch solution
until slightly thickened.
Drip sesame oil on top and serve.
not recommended for frying. High in saturated
fatty acids, coconut and palm oils raise cholesterol levels and therefore should be used only in
moderation. It is advisable to switch cooking oils
frequently because different oils contain different kinds of fatty acid and nutrients.
One serving per day is recommended for
nuts or seeds such as almonds, walnuts, cashews,
pistachios, peanuts, macadamia nuts, pine nuts,
black sesame seeds, white sesame seeds, and
various melon seeds. Go for a variety of nuts or
seeds for balanced nutrition.
4: Dark-colored vegetables, edible mushrooms,
seaweed and algae should all be in your diet.
Dark-colored vegetables are packed with
vitamins and minerals. Edible mushrooms and
algae contain vitamin B12. Each of these three
types of food should be included in your daily
diet.
5: Eat fruit at or around mealtime. Choose fruit
that is in season and locally produced.
Fresh fruit and vegetables provide vitamin C.
Iron is absorbed in proportion to the availability
of vitamin C. Therefore people are encouraged
to eat fruit at or around mealtime to improve
iron absorption.
6: Go easy on oil, sugar and salt.
Reduce seasoning in cooking. Substitute
steaming, boiling, baking, or microwaving for
frying or deep frying to reduce the use of cooking oil.
Eat very little of foods that have been cured,
pickled, heavily seasoned, finely processed,
highly sugared, or high in fat density since such
foods have a lot of oil, salt and sugar.
7: Coarse foods in their original state are good.
Be wary of processed foods. Processed vegetarian foodstuffs are often made with processed
soy protein isolate, gluten, konjac jelly, or shiitake stems. These processed ingredients are often
mixed with additives in order to enhance their
taste and imitate the consistency of meat. For the
sake of health, it’s best to use fresh ingredients
in cooking when possible.
8: Exercise 30 minutes and stay in the sun 20
minutes every day.
Regular exercise is essential to staying healthy.
Proper caloric intake coupled with exercises that
speed up the metabolism is good for health.
We recommend a daily regimen of at least 30
minutes of exercise and 20 minutes of sun exposure, which gives the body an adequate quantity
of the active form of vitamin D to help with calcium absorption. Therefore, outdoor exercise
does not merely burn calories but helps avoid
vitamin D deficiency.
Vegetarian cooking and eating
In the past when food was hard to come by,
people filled themselves up with anything they
could manage to get their hands on. Food has
since become more abundant, and people have
become more selective. Many have demanded
finer food, often at some hidden health cost.
With the rise of health consciousness, more people are beginning to pay attention to the potential benefits of eating healthfully.
Ideally, ingredients for a vegetarian diet
should be as natural as possible, so they should
come with as little processing as possible. For
example, the rice chosen for cooking should usually be brown in color, not white as is the case
when the husk, bran, endosperm, and germ are
removed from whole rice kernels to make refined
rice. Apples are best eaten with their skins on.
Opt for whole oranges instead of orange juice. In
addition, it is important to eat a variety of colors
to have a balanced vegetarian diet.
Healthful eating requires choosing food
ingredients wisely, but if such ingredients are
not cooked properly, they might not provide the
best benefits possible. What are proper or good
ways of cooking for health? Generally speaking,
season only in moderation; avoid broiling, deep
frying, and frying. Excessive seasoning and high
temperatures rob food of its naturally tasty flavors and destroy its nutrients, and fats from the
oil make the consumer put on weight.
Eat at set times, and go to bed early to avoid
the temptation of late night snacking. Do not be
a picky eater. Stop eating once you are 80 percent full so you may give the remaining 20 percent to the needy.
Cook what you need, no more. Take what
you need, and eat what you take. When you do
these things, little or no food will go to waste.
Vegetarians are vegetarians for all sorts of
reasons, including health, religious beliefs, or
the preservation of the environment. Whatever
the motivation, they do the Earth good, and they
do their own health good.
Winter 2012
71
When Two Great Medical
Traditions Meet
By Zheng Ya-ru
Translated by Tang Yau-yang
Photos by Yan Lin-zhao
In the vast domain of medicine,
Chinese and Western approaches to
diagnosis and treatment shine in
their own way. The first could be
likened to a broad-brush, macro
perspective, the second to precise,
micro pictures.
These two broad styles of medicine, when joined, benefit patients
more than either can do separately.
The Clinical Research Center of
Integrated Chinese and Western
Medicine at Taichung Tzu Chi
General Hospital is implementing
that vision of collaboration. The
facility combines ancient Chinese
wisdom with modern Western medical technology and brings real benefits to the ill.
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O
riginating from different cultural perspectives, Chinese and
Western medicine have evolved into very distinct entities.
Traditional Chinese medicine, or TCM, has
its foundation in the concepts of yin and yang
and the “five phases” of wood, fire, earth, metal,
and water. It focuses primarily on “meridians”—
invisible circulatory channels distinct from the
palpable physical organs and body tissues. This
approach views disease from an all-body vantage point.
Western medicine, on the other hand, focuses
on physical cells, organs, and organ systems, often
with laser-like precision that is possible only with
the use of advanced modern technology.
These different approaches give rise to the
macro vs. micro analogy. There can be a definite
benefit to the patient when both styles of medicine are used to treat an injury or illness. For
example, when treatment efficacy hits a plateau
for a patient, a Western doctor may refer the
patient to a TCM physician, and vice versa. For
all their differences, there is a greater benefit
when both approaches are used at the same time,
each complementing the other.
Taichung Tzu Chi General Hospital inaugurated the Clinical Research Center of Integrated
Chinese and Western Medicine in July 2012.
The center joins physicians from the TCM
Department with doctors practicing Western
medicine at the hospital. Working together, they
treat patients with a wide array of diseases and
conditions: colon cancer, breast cancer, lung
cancer, allergies, rheumatism, brain damage,
metabolic disorders, or disorders of the endocrine system. Master Cheng Yen urged the medical staff to keep their minds wide open so as to
get the most benefit from the integration. Center
director and hospital deputy superintendent
Dr. Wang Jen-shu (王人澍), a TCM physician,
vowed to strive for that goal.
Joint treatment
In January this year, A-feng, a man in his 40s,
was rushed to Taichung Tzu Chi Hospital with a
severe headache. A checkup revealed that a cerebral aneurysm had ruptured, resulting in a brain
hemorrhage. After emergency surgery, his vital
signs stabilized. However, he was still at risk of
falling into a vegetative state. Ten days after
surgery, his attending physician referred him to
Dr. Huang Chung-chun (黃仲諄) in the depart74
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ment of Chinese medicine in hopes of providing
better help for him.
Referring to patients suffering from A-feng’s
condition, Dr. Huang observed, “It’s a highly
critical condition. Usually one in three such
patients dies, another becomes bedridden, and
only the third has a chance to walk again.”
A-feng was fortunate to receive timely and
concurrent joint interventions from doctors of
both Western and Chinese medicine. Happily, he
is making steady progress with the help of ongoing physical therapy. He is now able to walk
scores of meters with the aid of a quad cane.
In the eyes of many, Chinese medicine is
gentle and, by extension, slow to work. Huang
dismisses this misconception. He knows better.
He cited effective treatment that he had given
to patients with brain damage, which he excels
in treating.
“In conjunction with Western medicine, if
patients start taking brewed herbal medication
within seven days of a head injury or within five
days of a stroke, they often see remarkable progress,” Huang said, referring to the so-called
“golden window” of joint treatment with both
Western and Chinese medicine.
Huang has seen many significant recoveries
in patients who received joint treatments like
A-feng, but he warned against procrastination:
“Moderately to seriously ill patients [with brain
damage] usually have great difficulty leading a
normal life without assistance if their joint treatment is delayed.” He said treatment that is started within one month after a condition occurs is
the most effective.
Early intervention
Huang makes his rounds on Monday,
Wednesday, and Friday mornings to check on
his patients in the wards and the rehabilitation
center. On his rounds, Huang introduced us to a
high school student who was stepping gingerly
forward. “Xiao-jie is doing really well. His neurosurgeon estimated it would take six months
for him to walk, but look at what he’s already
doing after less than two months.”
Xiao-jie, 20, sustained a head injury in an
automobile accident in late July 2012, and his
mobility and memory were damaged. He started
Dr. Huang Chung-chun chats with a patient and
his family on his rounds. Huang has had a lot of
successful experience treating patients suffering
from strokes or brain damage.
receiving joint Western and Chinese treatment
three days after the accident. Huang attributed
Xiao-jie’s impressive progress to early joint intervention and his youth. The doctor was optimistic that the young man would soon be able to
return to school.
As he does with all his patients during his
rounds, Huang asks Xiao-jie how he feels,
observes his dexterity and appearance, and takes
his pulse. “This is typical of a ‘look, listen, ask,
and touch’ approach to patient care used in traditional Chinese medicine,” explained Huang.
The doctor is careful to take notes about what he
observes and what the patient tells him. The
information that he gathers helps guide him to
the next step of therapy.
Xiao-jie told Dr. Huang that among all his
problems, he was most concerned about his
double vision and difficulty in balancing. Huang
asked if he wanted to try acupuncture. Though
the young patient was apprehensive of needles,
he nonetheless mustered his courage and agreed
to the treatment. “Chinese medicine has sped up
my recovery,” said Xiao-jie, “so I’m willing to
give acupuncture a try.”
Other patients echo Xiao-jie’s satisfaction, but
other doctors also approve the joint approach.
Dr. Huang Bo-ren (黃伯仁) is the head of neurosurgery and works with Huang. He voiced his
approval of TCM: “Adding Chinese medicine to
patient treatment quickens their recovery in
physical therapy. I’m quite convinced of that.”
A key to treating brain damage
Mr. Wang, in his 70s, walked into Huang’s
clinic for a return visit, accompanied by his wife.
As soon as he laid eyes on Huang, the man could
not seem to stop talking. He looked healthy and
energetic. It was hard to imagine that just a year
before he had fallen off a water storage tank and
suffered hemorrhages on both sides of his temporal lobe.
Because the bleeding in the brain was limited, neurosurgeon Dr. Jiang Jun-ting (江俊廷)
decided against surgery. This was to avoid the
risk of additional hemorrhaging that might
damage functioning cerebral cells. He instead
used medication to lower the pressure in Wang’s
brain. The strategy stabilized his condition but
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75
At the rehab center of Taichung Tzu Chi Hospital,
Dr. Huang examines A-feng, a patient recovering
from cerebral hemorrhage. Under the joint care of
doctors practicing Chinese and Western medicine, he is making good progress.
Doctor-prescribed herbal medicine is brewed in
these electric kettles to be administered to
patients.
left him with aphasia. Though he was able to
speak, he often talked nonsense. Jiang then
referred Mr. Wang to Huang.
“Mr. Wang recognized his family but couldn’t
properly name them,” Huang explained. “For
example, he would call his wife ‘Mom’ or
‘Grandma.’ His choice of words was off and his
speech lacked logic.”
Huang gave Wang brewed herbal concoctions to repair the damage in his brain. After
being discharged from the hospital, Wang regularly returned to the hospital for follow-up
appointments, acupuncture, and speech therapy.
He has been making great progress.
Dr. Jiang recounted Wang’s follow-up visit
just a few days before. “During his last visit, Mr.
Wang wanted to get a disability determination
from me. He said, ‘I’m sorry, but I have to bother
you with something.’ I was startled by such a
clear expression of his ideas. He’s recovering very
well. I almost wonder if he is still disabled.”
Gesturing to his wife, Wang said, “This is my
wife.” He was indeed much better than a year
ago. People are astonished by his improvement,
something made possible only by the joint benefits of Western and Chinese medicine, each
bringing its own unique advantages to the
patient care equation.
Huang gave a metaphorical description of
his experience in treating head injuries. “I know
a key that can open the door of treatment for
head trauma and stroke. It is true that this key is
still rough around the edges. It may at places get
stuck going into the keyhole, but [with a little
wiggling here and there] it eventually opens the
door. This key can only be crafted with the joined
hands of Western and Chinese medicine. As the
two sides get more and more experience working together, the key will fit the door more closely and open it with increasing ease.” Huang and
others are on a mission to unlock the secret of
the debilitating powers of brain damage.
Imagine, he suggested, how much better life
would be for brain-damaged patients and their
families, how much misery could be spared, and
how many lives could be lightened if this key
were duplicated and such patients could receive
a timely protocol of joint Western and Chinese
treatment.
A key to other medical frontiers
Dr. Huang’s dream is a key to but one area
of human illness. It is clear that more collaboration between the two large branches of medicine is needed so as to benefit sufferers of other
diseases.
“Chinese medicine can support a wide array
of conditions. For example, it is a great help in
weaning intensive care patients off artificial respirators, and it significantly moderates the side
effects of chemotherapy for cancer patients,” said
Dr. Chen Jian-Jung (陳建仲), director of the TCM
Department at Taichung Tzu Chi Hospital. He
added that in making a diagnosis, hospital TCM
physicians now refer to patients’ Western medicine check-up reports. Traditional Chinese medicine historically relied on the judgment and experience of the TCM practitioner, to the exclusion of
input from the realm of Western medicine. But
understanding the advantages that advancements
in technology can bring, some TCM physicians
have modified their traditional protocols to
include the numbers, precision equipment, and
benefits that Western medicine has to offer.
“Though eight times out of ten I can arrive at
a correct diagnosis simply from a patient’s complaint and my own observations, I still recommend that my patients get Western diagnostic
tests. In addition to verifying my judgment, the
test results can also help patients get a better picture of their own health,” Huang stated.
It appears that the same can be said of physicians of Western medicine in their willingness to
try things outside their conventional playbooks.
Winter 2012
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A technician works an acupuncture
needle on a brain-damaged patient.
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Joint efficacy
His Eminence Cardinal Paul
Shan Kuo-Hsi, S.J. (單國璽,
12/2/1923-8/22/2012), was
diagnosed with lung cancer in
2006. The doctors put him on
targeted chemotherapy, but he
was also treated with Chinese
medicine in hopes of boosting
his immunity. He praised the
efficacy of the joint treatment in
helping him fight the disease.
Dr. John D. Young (楊定一),
chairman of Chang Gung
Biotechnology Corp., writes
about the wisdom of ancient
medicine and the modern science of nanotechnology in his
book, Primordia Medicine. He says, “The more
minute Western medicine becomes, the more it
recognizes the legitimacy of the macro, wholebody approach of traditional Chinese medicine.
Likewise, Chinese medicine concurs that modern science and advanced technology are instrumental in solving problems in medical care.”
Despite the fact that Western and Chinese
medicine come from vastly divergent philosophies and theories, “They are no longer traveling
on parallel lines. Rather, the two can intersect,”
said Dr. Wang Jen-shu, director of the Clinical
Research Center of Integrated Chinese and
Western Medicine. He is in a good position to
make such a comment: He is licensed to practice
both Chinese and Western medicine.
Dr. Wang has been involved with the integration of the two branches of medicine for
some time now. He and a few TCM physicians
formed the Association of Integrated Chinese
and Western Medicine in 1993 to help bring the
benefits of both to patients. Now he is actively
promoting the Clinical Research Center at
Taichung Tzu Chi Hospital. He is working to
establish a model of cooperation between
Chinese and Western medicine, and he is pushing for the publication of research papers on
Chinese medicine.
From the examples in this article, it seems
that the cooperation has gotten underway.
However, Wang acknowledges that the abstract
approach of traditional Chinese medicine has
not lent itself well to the writing of research
papers. He plans to encourage his colleagues at
the hospital to use patient cases in the current
cross-referral model as subjects of study, apply
Dr. Wang Jen-shu (left) shows his exercise routine to a patient. The director of the Clinical
Research Center of Integrated Chinese and
Western Medicine at Tai­chung Tzu Chi Hospital,
he actively advocates and promotes the collaboration of Chinese and Western medicine.
the rigorous research methods of Western medicine, and document their findings in research
papers fit for publication in international journals. This should improve the visibility of TCM
and may spur interest elsewhere in collaboration
between Western and Chinese medicine.
This summer, Tzu Chi University inaugurated its post-baccalaureate degree program in
Chinese medicine. More than 1,600 applicants
vied for admission for 45 slots. A big draw of the
program comes from its emphasis on the integration of Chinese and Western medicine.
Furthermore, the program enjoys input from
expert physicians, a wealth of resources, and
real-life cases of collaboration in the large network of the six Tzu Chi hospitals in Taiwan.
When it comes to joint treatment with
Chinese and Western medicine in these six hospitals, the Dalin hospital has the most experience
in cancer cases, Hualien is known for its treatment of urinary tract infections and acupuncture
for wounds, Taichung excels in herbal medicine,
and Taipei shines in gynecology.
It is inevitable that Chinese and Western
medicine will collaborate more in the future.
Only when old turf wars are abolished can the
two sides join hands in developing new treatments and creating the most benefits for the
human race.
Winter 2012
79
The Cries of a Fish
By Su Mei-juan
Translated by Tang Yau-yang
Paintings by Zi Yan
It was still dark, but thunderous noises jerked Baker out of his sleep. “What’s
going on? Who’s so rude as to disturb my sleep?” the young fish exclaimed, confused by the sudden shock. Still sleepy-eyed, he saw his mother holding his younger sisters and brothers and screaming to his father, “Hurry up! Forget about our
things! Just run for your life!”
Before Baker knew what was happening, his whole family and many of his
neighbors were caught in a huge net, closing tighter and tighter. Everyone scrambled to escape, but to no avail. All the fish, Baker among them, were trapped inside
in a big tangle as the net was raised. Baker felt himself being lifted up and
up. Then came a big thump, and he felt that he had landed bottom down
on a very hard surface. Ouch! It hurt!
Baker realized that the whole throng of fish in the net had just been dumped out
onto the upper deck of a fishing boat. Deckhands measured the length of each fish
and threw any that wasn’t big enough back into the sea.
Baker saw his young sisters and brothers tossed overboard and heard his mother’s anguished cry as she called out for her children. She sounded close, but he
couldn’t move even an inch to get closer because he and all the bigger fish had
been thrown into a container. The container was packed with fish, all unable to do
more than just wiggle in place.
The fish stayed in the container for several days and nights before the boat came
into port. Another commotion ensued as soon as they were docked. A huge net
hoisted Baker and all the rest of them up into the air. With another big thump they
landed on another hard surface—this time a concrete floor. Fishmongers shouted
out their bids for the fish. Baker and many of his friends were taken away.
Soon they were all put into an aquarium. Baker was thrilled when he saw his
mother. He negotiated the crowd the best he could: “Pardon
me. I’m going over to my mom. Coming through, make
way, please.” Finally, after much effort, he was
beside her once again.
Overjoyed to see her son, she circled
around him again and again as she sang his
favorite nursery rhyme. Baker was elated, thinking that he would be with her forever
in their new home.
It was very cold in the new home. Humans looked through the glass at them,
and often a net would drop into the water to fetch a fish or two. In a tight space like
this, no amount of agility could help a fish escape the net for long. One fish after
another was thus removed from the aquarium. Even so, Baker was not concerned
because he knew his mother would protect him.
Early the next morning, he saw a boy and his mother smiling at him. The boy’s
finger traced Baker’s movements to and fro inside the tank. He was having fun
when suddenly horror filled his face. The boy gestured at something behind Baker.
He looked back and saw the dreaded net closing in on him fast. He was too shocked
to move, managing only to yell, “Mom! Mom!”
With lightning speed, his mother dashed into the net. Baker and the boy both
screamed, “No!” but it was too late. Baker’s mother was lifted out of the tank,
slammed down onto a cutting board, and knocked unconscious by a heavy blow
of a kitchen knife. Then she was unceremoniously wrapped in a plastic bag and
handed to a buyer. Soon she disappeared as the buyer walked away.
Baker was crying uncontrollably for his mother when the net dipped once again
into the tank. All the fish swam frantically.
The boy’s mother pulled him away. He seemed to
hear Baker’s cries as he walked with his mom out
of the shop.
He asked his mother, “Why does the man hurt
fish like that?”
“How else do people get fish
to eat?” his mother responded.
“I really want to help the
fish. What can I do?” mused
the boy. “Mom, let’s not eat fish
or meat anymore, okay?”
From that day on, the boy
was a vegetarian. He also got
his parents to join him. He
hoped that all creatures, whether flying in the sky, moving on
land, or swimming in water,
could live in peace and freedom every day.
Walking the Bodhisattva
Path Together
By Huang Hui-zhu
Translated by Clara Fu
Photos by Huang Xiao-zhe
This is a story of three men whose paths crossed in Tzu Chi. Chen Jian-san, Wang Ying-sheng and
Lin Yun-zhu are all trained and certified as Tzu Chi members. Together they serve as Tzu Chi recycling volunteers, helping and supporting one another with love on the Bodhisattva Path.
“I
’m already over 70 years old, and I walk with
a slight limp due to a leg injury and aging.
Yet I’m still able to help others, which is truly
a blessing,” said Chen Jian-san (陳健三), his
wrinkled face radiating happiness.
Lin Yun-zhu (林允住) shared a similar joy
from helping others. “In the past, I had someone
to drive me to and from work and carry my
briefcase for me. But my work gave me a lot of
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stress and turned my hair gray. After I retired, I
joined Tzu Chi as a volunteer. Now I am happy
to help Ying-sheng [also a volunteer] carry his
bag and walker, [such as when he goes up or
down stairs].”
Wang Ying-sheng (王盈盛) was the next to
chime in. “I’m really grateful to Jian-san and
Yun-zhu for taking such good care of me, like a
father would. I feel really blessed.” Wang has led
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a difficult life due to a physical impairment. His
life now shines with beauty in the warm, loving
company of his two helpful friends.
Chen, Lin and Wang are all volunteers at the
Tzu Chi Annan Recycling Station in southern
Taiwan. The three met and became friends at the
station, where they work together. They have
bonded like family, always helping and supporting one another. They also underwent volunteer
training together at Tzu Chi and became certified volunteers.
Like father and son
In July 2009, Lin quit his job as a general
manager for an Indonesian firm in order to look
after his wife, who was suffering from hyperthyroidism. Soon after, however, he began to
sense a lack of focus in his retired life. His wife
suggested that he go and help out at the Annan
Recycling Station near their house. That’s how
Lin began serving as a volunteer there. The volunteer work turned out to be a major turning
point in his life.
Lin Yun-zhu (right) adds richness and meaning to
his golden years by participating in Tzu Chi activities. Serving as a documenting volunteer, he
records stories of beauty and goodness.
Lin has a cheerful personality and always
wears a smile. He is well-versed in painting and
bonsai cultivation. The first thing he does every
day at the recycling station is tidy up the place.
He knows that everyone will feel happier working in a clean, neat environment.
In January 2010, Lin met Wang at the recycling station. Lin was deeply moved when he
saw the younger man walking in slowly with a
walker to do recycling work. Lin encouraged
him to come to the station every day.
Wang, 36, is quiet and reserved. He was diagnosed with epilepsy while in junior high school.
When he was in senior high school, his legs
gradually became weaker and weaker. Although
he went to various hospitals and tried all sorts of
alternative treatment options, his condition only
worsened. He eventually required a walking aid
to get around, and medication and physiotherapy became an inevitable part of his life. He began
to feel depressed and inferior.
Due to his disability, Wang had to rely on
others to help him in every aspect of his life.
Feeling powerless, he became hot-tempered
and often loudly vented his frustration and suffering. Moreover, the monotonous routine of
his life made every passing day seem like a year
to him.
Wang Ying-sheng travels on an electric scooter to
attend a Tzu Chi study session. He now leads a
completely changed life.
In May 2009, Wang’s beloved brother was
killed in a traffic accident. Engulfed in sorrow
and despair, he started driving his electric scooter around aimlessly every day just to kill time.
One day later that year, Wang happened to
run into an old high school classmate, Chen
Xing-jun (陳幸君). They had a nice chat, and at
the end Chen invited him to attend a Tzu Chi
year-end blessing ceremony. Soon after, Wang
began to volunteer at the Tzu Chi Annan
Recycling Station.
The station is crammed with clutter and has
very little open space. Because Wang has limited
mobility, Lin removes any items that block his
way. He also clears a space where Wang can
work, and he brings him recyclables to sort.
After Wang has sorted out things like plastics,
wire, or scrap iron, Lin then puts them in their
proper places.
When they have finished their work, Lin
sweeps the floor clean so that Wang can leave
the recycling station without worrying about
tripping over things.
Besides taking good care of Wang at work,
Lin also cares for his health and encourages him
to exercise more in hopes that one day he can
walk without a walker. They both now get up at
five every morning and go walk around a nearby elementary school sports field. Although
Wang walks very slowly and can only complete
one round in the time it takes Lin to finish eight,
he perseveres. The exercise has toned up his
muscles and strengthened his legs. Both men
have also invited other joggers to become donating members of Tzu Chi.
Lin has led a simpler life since he left his
managerial job and no longer has to deal with
business and social engagements. He is filled
with joy every day. In April 2010, he and Wang
both signed up for Tzu Chi volunteer training to
become certified members. The two men had
bonded like father and son. Before long, fate
brought another person into their lives.
Bringing value to life
Chen Jian-san, 72, had worked in die casting
for 50 years. It was a strenuous job that often
required him to carry heavy loads. The years of
strain took a toll on his right leg, and he walked
with much difficulty.
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Chen was cleaning his house one day after he
retired when he fell and broke his left leg. Being
cooped up indoors for the long recuperation
made him upset and frustrated. In May 2010, his
brother took him to the Tzu Chi Annan Recycling
Station to volunteer so that he could better pass
his time.
While working at the station, Chen often
shared with others stories of his army days over
half a century ago. Wang, physically confined
for many years, was always intrigued by his stories and listened attentively.
At the same time that Wang was curious to
hear Chen’s stories, Chen’s curiosity was piqued
by Lin and Wang’s conversations about their
enriching experiences in the Tzu Chi volunteer
training. He decided to join the training program, too.
Now the three are often seen at Tzu Chi activities together. Lin serves as the driver for the
other two, while Chen pushes Wang’s wheelchair. The two older men consider themselves
Wang’s “bodyguards,” and they never grow
tired of taking care of him.
Because he himself has difficulty walking,
Chen is especially careful when he pushes Wang’s
wheelchair. In addition to watching out for the
younger man’s safety, he also makes sure he
doesn’t hit his own legs against the wheelchair.
Once, the wheelchair got stuck in an elevator
door. Fortunately Chen caught hold of Wang just
in time and prevented him from falling and hurting himself. Now he keeps reminding himself to
be extra careful. He prefers to take care of Wang
personally, and only then does he feel at ease.
On another occasion, Chen and Wang were
chatting as they walked around the recycling
station. Suddenly, Wang’s walker got stuck in
some recyclables. He lost his balance and fell,
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pushing Chen down onto the floor underneath
him. It took several volunteers to lift the heavily
built Wang. Luckily, he didn’t fall on Chen’s left
leg, which had just been operated on.
Since Wang had difficulty moving about, especially when going up or down stairs, Chen chose
to eat lunch with him in a yard outside instead of
the indoor dining area when they attended their
monthly volunteer training sessions.
In addition to Wang, Chen also took care of
three other handicapped classmates during those
lunch periods. Among them was A-de, who suffered from cerebral palsy and had trouble feeding himself. After Chen finished his meal, he fed
A-de. Then he washed their lunch boxes. He did
all this every month for one whole year. The love
and care he showed toward his fellow classmates
was truly moving.
Before Chen joined Tzu Chi, his injured leg
caused him excruciating pain and he nearly gave
up on life altogether. When he first came to volunteer for Tzu Chi, he really just wanted to kill
time. Never did he think that he would be able
to bring value to his life through his work there.
Now as Chen looks after Wang, he is further
convinced that he can lead a meaningful life by
Chen Jian-san found value in life through volunteering in Tzu Chi.
helping others, despite his advanced age and
weak legs.
When Chen thinks of the strong bonds of
love he shares with his fellow volunteers, he is
determined to persevere despite his leg pain. He
believes that where there’s a will, there’s a way,
and that all his pain and suffering will eventually pass.
Serving others
In the past, Wang didn’t know what to do
with all his time, and it tortured him. Now that
he is dedicating himself to Tzu Chi work, he
feels that there isn’t enough time for him to volunteer. Every second is precious.
Wang visits a nursing home with other Tzu
Chi volunteers to care for the elderly there.
When he sees how happy the residents are in the
company of the volunteers, he becomes infected
with their heartfelt joy. While visiting another
Tzu Chi care recipient who had also lost his
mobility as his legs atrophied, Wang encouraged
him by sharing his own experiences. He even
accompanied him to his therapy sessions each
day. Now the man is able to walk with a walker
and his smile has returned.
In April this year, there was a three-day
prayer event at the Luermen Divine Mother
Temple (which honors the goddess Matsu) in
Lin and Chen serve as Wang’s
guardian angels and take good
care of his needs. The three men
have developed deep bonds with
each other.
Tainan, southern Taiwan. In an
effort to help protect the environment, Tzu Chi volunteers
provided non-disposable eating utensils for the event’s
attendees to use for their meals
and snacks. For three consecutive mornings, Wang woke up
at four o’clock to get ready to
go and help out at the temple.
A volunteer picked him up at
five, and Wang worked till ten
on each of the three nights. It
was 11 p.m. by the time he reached home, but he
never complained about being tired. On the contrary, he was full of joy. “Although I was only
able to do simple tasks, like being in charge of
the volunteer attendance record and giving out
volunteer vests, I was very touched to be able to
do a part in this meaningful activity.”
Wang also attends Tzu Chi community study
sessions to gain spiritual nourishment. The
study sessions are located on the third floor of a
walk-up building. He labors up the stairs, supporting himself with one hand on the wall and
the other on the banister. It takes a lot of time
and effort for him to climb up each step. By the
time he reaches the third floor, he’s drenched in
sweat. But he doesn’t think of it as hard work,
and he even keeps thanking the person who carries his bag and walker.
In order to show his appreciation for the care
and love he receives from everyone in Tzu Chi,
he often brings home-grown fruit and vegetables
from his grandfather’s farm to share with them.
As he passes out the food, he makes comments
like, “These organic string beans were grown by
my grandpa,” or “These mangos are sweet and
yummy. I’m glad to share them with you.”
Seeing the happy smiles on the faces of the volunteers as they receive the produce makes Wang
feel very happy.
On November 27, 2011, Wang, Lin and Chen
were certified as Tzu Chi Tzu Cheng Faith Corps
members by Master Cheng Yen. Now looking
back on his involvement in Tzu Chi activities,
Wang can sense his own transformation.
Through seeing the suffering of unfortunate
people, he has realized how blessed he is. He no
longer complains about his handicap. Instead he
keeps an optimistic and cheery attitude.
His mother takes great comfort in how happy
her son has become. Now, as long as Wang goes
out to take part in Tzu Chi activities, she does
not feel worried; she is very happy and at ease.
At the Tzu Chi Annan Recycling Station, volunteers eat their lunch together in the Buddha
Hall. When everybody has finished their lunch
and left, Chen cleans up, sweeps the floor, and
clears the leftovers. As he wipes the altar, located
against one wall of the hall, he quietly says to
the Buddha, “I wish to devote the rest of my life
to doing recycling work.”
Lin has led a comfortable life and has never
encountered any major hardships. Since joining
Tzu Chi, he has visited the homes of those in
need and witnessed how people suffer. As his
heart goes out to them, he also counts his blessings. “I’ll make the best use of my life by bringing light to the dark corners of the world.”
When Wang stepped out of his closed world
and started serving others, he felt the warmth
and care of fellow Tzu Chi volunteers. He’s led a
brighter and more meaningful life by giving of
himself. Feeling others’ suffering as his own, he
says, “I’ll seize every second and do my utmost
to help others.”
Although the three men may not lead lives
that glitter like stars in the sky, their lives emit a
sweet fragrance like wild lilies in the mountains
of spring.
Winter 2012
89
Illustrated
Tzu Chi Events Around the World
wu ming-jun
JING SI APHORISMS
The
The Buddha says:
Lotus flowers grow in stagnant, filthy water,
but because they bloom above the water,
they are pure and undefiled.
We humans may also be like lotus flowers.
We grow up in this ordinary world,
but if our spirits can transcend the world,
they will be pure and undefiled.
In every person’s
heart, there is a pure
lotus blossom of
infinite wisdom.
If you can use
your knowledge and
abilities for the good of
others, then you will
receive endless blessings
and wisdom.
A Catholic bishop: “Most people are basically good-hearted, but nobody goes out and works for
community service. As a result, it seems that we don’t care about each other.”
The responsibility of religious leaders is to guide people with love and peace. When people have
begun to cultivate themselves, they can then cultivate their families and all of society.
Translated by E E Ho and W.L. Rathje; drawings by Tsai Chih-chung; coloring by May E. Gu
90
Tzu Chi Quarterly
Sri Lanka
On October 26 and 27, 29 Tzu Chi volunteers
from Singapore worked with Sri Lankan Tzu
Chi volunteers and over 30 Sri Lankan medical
professionals to conduct a free clinic at
Kahawatta Base Hospital in Ratnapura,
Sabaragamuwa Province. The free clinic focused
on performing cataract surgeries and providing
free eyeglasses.
The cataract surgeries at this clinic were conducted by a Sri Lankan doctor, Shamintha
Amarathunga. Dr. Amarathunga learned about
Tzu Chi three years ago through Dr. Kapila
Kannangara, a member of the local chapter of
the Tzu Chi International Medical Association.
Dr. Amarathunga has since been very supportive of Tzu Chi. He brought with him a medical
team of 30 people to help out at the clinic.
Dr. Amarathunga said that a cataract operation in Sri Lanka costs about 20,000 rupees
Many Sri Lankans who suffer from cataracts
cannot afford surgery. A two-day Tzu Chi free
clinic held at Kahawatta Base Hospital in Ratnapura on October 26 and 27 treated a total of 296
cataract patients.
(US$150). That is about three months’ salary for
a local laborer. At that rate, many Sri Lankans
can’t afford the surgery. Such people have no
choice but to endure the discomfort and inconvenience brought on by the disease, often for the
rest of their lives.
With the help of advanced equipment provided by Tzu Chi and the well-trained medical
team, the doctor was able to complete an operation in an average of four minutes. His skill and
efficiency were admirable. Dr. Amarathunga
said with a smile that his efficiency allowed him
to operate on more people. “When I saw my
patients regaining their eyesight the day after
Winter 2012
91
92
Tzu Chi Quarterly
The two-day distribution benefited a total of
1,101 families. Tzu Chi will continue helping
these Syrian refugees.
Malaysia
On October 13, which fell on a Saturday,
many people showed up at Bachang Chinese
Primary School for a free health screening organized by the Tzu Chi Melaka branch, its ninth
such event this year. In addition to providing
medical consultations and health screening,
these events aimed to raise public awareness on
health-related issues. The October 13 event
offered checks on blood sugar, cholesterol, blood
pressure, and body mass index,
as well as Pap smear tests,
breast examinations, and counseling in Chinese and Western
medicine.
Li Hui (李會), a 70-year-old
woman who sat in a wheelchair,
came with her daughter, Gu Li
Hong (辜麗虹). A stroke about
half a year earlier had partially
paralyzed Li and left her with
shrunken gums. The doctor
said that because of the condi-
A volunteer talks with Syrian
refugee children at a relief distribution site in Jordan.
tion of her gums, she couldn’t
wear her dentures anymore.
From that day on, Li only ate
porridge, soup, oatmeal, and
other liquid or mushy food.
That didn’t give her enough
nutrition, and so she became
frail. In the hope of getting
some helpful doctor’s advice,
Gu brought her mother to the
primary school for a checkup.
After examining her gums,
Dr. Ng Guat Kiat (黃月吉) told
the mother and daughter that
Li could still wear dentures
and eat normal food. Gu was
thrilled to hear the news because it meant that
her mother could become stronger and healthier again.
Besides Tzu Chi volunteers, students from
Nilam College of Nursing and Allied Health
Sciences and Melaka Manipal Medical College
also volunteered at the event. They provided
services including taking blood sugar and blood
pressure and assisting doctors.
Ever-smiling Li Wen Xin (李文馨), a fourthyear student at Melaka Manipal Medical
College, volunteered as a doctor’s assistant. She
was glad that she could serve others as well as
improve her medical knowledge at the event.
guo qiao Yun
the surgery and breaking into big smiles because
of that, I felt a great sense of satisfaction that no
money could bring.”
P.G. Pemawathi, 70, was one of his patients
that day. Her eyesight started to deteriorate two
years ago. It recently worsened to near blindness, so much so that she had to rely on others
for help in almost every aspect of her life.
However, unable to afford surgery, she could do
nothing about it.
She was thrilled when she heard about the
free eye clinic. On the morning of October 26,
she came to the clinic with the help of her daughter, Asoka. It took the doctor but a few minutes
to remove the cataract in her left eye. After the
surgery, she walked out of the operating room
looking relaxed.
When the doctor removed the bandage from
her eye the next day, she exclaimed, “I can see! I
can see!” The smile on her face was brilliant. She
even read out loud a hospital announcement
pasted on the wall. She said cheerfully that now
Jordan
Civil war broke out in Syria in March 2011,
forcing tens of thousands of Syrians to flee to
neighboring countries. As of early November
this year, over 200,000 Syrians had become refugees in Jordan. More than 40,000 of them are living in refugee camps in Jordan.
To assist these refugees, Tzu Chi conducted a
relief distribution with help from a local Islamic
charity group, the Solidarity Association
Charity, which has been providing long-term
aid for refugees.
The distribution was held on November 3
and 4. Tzu Chi volunteers in Jordan travelled to
Neame, 70 kilometers (43 miles) from Amman,
the national capital, and distributed aid supplies
to Syrian refugees in four villages. The aid supplies included noodles, milk powder, tea leaves,
bar soap, and beans.
People from the first village began arriving
half an hour before the distribution was to begin
and stood waiting in long queues. The volunteers conveyed love and care from Master Cheng
Yen and Tzu Chi volunteers around the world to
the refugees in the Arabic language. They also
gave out lollipops to children, who broke into
broad smiles.
courtesy of jordan tzu chi branch
Qiu Yan-yu
Dr. Shamintha Amarathunga conducted the cataract surgeries at the clinic in Sri Lanka.
she could start doing things she hadn’t been able
to do, such as cooking and sewing. “But first, I’ll
go to a temple to pray for blessings for Tzu Chi
volunteers. It’s because of their help that I’m
able to see.”
R.A. Thisara Madushanka, 13, was another
grateful patient. He discovered two years ago
that his eyesight had become blurry, which negatively affected his studies at school. After getting a new pair of glasses, he was able to see
things clearly. “As a student, a pair of glasses is
very valuable to me,” he said. “I will take good
care of them.”
In the course of two days, the free clinic provided surgery for 296 cataract patients. Six
optometrists from Singapore provided optometry services to an additional 482 people and fitted them with glasses. A total of 1,144 pairs of
glasses were issued at the free clinic, including
400 pairs of previously fitted glasses.
The free clinic ran very smoothly. This was
partly attributable to the 50 volunteers from
Colombo who had prepared for the event—from
pre-operation screening, site planning and contacting the local health administration to the
promotion and execution of the event.
Li Wen Xin, a student at Melaka
Manipal Medical College, served
as a doctor’s assistant at a
health screening event held on
October 13 by the Tzu Chi
Melaka branch.
Winter 2012
93
zou yi ji
The health screening event held by the Tzu Chi
Melaka branch on October 13 benefited 273
people.
94
Tzu Chi Quarterly
The Dominican Republic
On the morning of September 21, Tzu Chi
volunteers from Santo Domingo arrived at La
Romana Tzu Chi School in the city of La
Romana to distribute uniforms, schoolbags,
and school supplies to the students. Established
in 2000, the school currently comprises eight
grades and a kindergarten.
some school supplies, but the children acted like
they had received the Christmas gifts they had
always longed for. Their looks of satisfaction
reminded the volunteers of the financially
deprived lives they led and made the volunteers’ hearts go out to them.
The distribution benefited nearly 1,300 students. In addition to a schoolbag and a uniform,
each student in and below the fourth grade
received two notebooks, six pencils, an eraser
and a pencil sharpener; students in higher
grades also got a ruler, dividers, and two pens.
Taiwan
On September 26, 2012, Tzu Chi volunteers
conducted a bone marrow registration drive at
the National Pingtung University of Science
and Technology in Pingdong, southern Taiwan,
to encourage young people to sign up to be
marrow donors. In order to help save the lives
of patients battling blood diseases, the foundation established a marrow donor registry in
October 1993, which developed into a stem cell
center in 2002.
Early in the morning of September 26, nearly 160 volunteers arrived at the university to
get ready for the event. They set up areas for
waiting, for volunteers to explain the marrow
donation procedure to students, for potential
donors to fill out their personal information,
and for participants to have their blood drawn.
To allow more people to learn about this meaningful activity, volunteers had visited the
school several times earlier and held promotional briefings.
Students responded
warmly to the event. Some
signed up at the briefing sessions. Others learned about
the drive on the Internet.
Some met Tzu Chi volunteers on the campus and
were told about the activity.
They all arrived at the venue
to give their blood samples.
Hu Ya-xian (胡雅嫻), from
the Department of Fashion
Design and Man­a gement,
arrived at the venue with her
classmate Lai Ting-jie (賴亭
潔). Hu said that she once
liu shi-yi
She also volunteered regularly at the local Tzu
Chi free clinic center. She said that she had
learned a lot from the compassion and friendliness of Tzu Chi volunteers. “They are warm and
caring to both patients and other volunteers,”
she said. What she witnessed helped her hold
true to the commitments she had made when
she first decided to enter the medical field.
Love, compassion, and a willingness to contribute to society are indeed essential for one to
become an ethical doctor. After finishing a twoyear internship, Dr. Tan Wei How (陳偉豪) went
to work at Melaka General Hospital. At the same
time, he also started looking for an organization
through which he could give to society. Now a
member of the Tzu Chi International Medical
Association, he felt it was very meaningful to
serve at the physical checkup event, and he said
he would continue to give of himself in the
future. In a gentle voice, he explained patiently
to people who came to the activity how to maintain good health.
Also present at the venue were Melaka
General Hospital personnel who promoted
organ donation to help save lives, and medical
staff from the local government clinic who provided Pap smear tests and breast examinations
and held a talk on cervical cancer. About 30 people attended the talk.
An eye doctor from Melaka General Hos­
pital said that the physical examinations were
indeed helpful to the public, because he himself had treated patients who came to him at
the hospital with referrals from physicians who
had volunteered at the Tzu Chi health screening events.
A total of 2,108 people have benefited from
the nine checkup events organized by the Tzu
Chi Melaka branch this year.
When the volunteers arrived at the school,
higher grade students were already waiting in
line. They helped move the goods to the classroom where the distribution would take place.
Ambassador Hou Ping-fu (侯平福) of the
ROC embassy to the Dominican Republic has
always recognized the charity work of Tzu Chi.
When he heard that the foundation was holding
a distribution at the La Romana school to help
students from impoverished families, he donated US$10,000 to help purchase schoolbags.
The ambassador and his wife also came to
the distribution. During the distribution ceremony, he presented the schoolbags to students. Mrs.
Hou also helped give out the supplies. She was
able to accurately pick out the sizes of the uniforms the children needed.
The kindergarten children were the happiest
group of all. When they’d received their supplies
and returned to their classroom, some still carried their new schoolbags on their backs and
refused to put them down. A teacher said jokingly, “They’ll probably sleep with their schoolbags on tonight.”
As soon as Wanda returned to her secondgrade classroom, she started writing with a new
pencil she had just received. Coming from a poor
family, she often had to borrow a pencil from a
good friend of hers, Jafresa, who sat opposite
her. With her new pencils, Wanda wouldn’t need
to do that anymore.
Students in the middle and higher grades
were also excited. The goods they received consisted merely of a schoolbag, a uniform, and
Wanda writes with her new
pencil.
Winter 2012
95
saw a news report on marrow donation on Da Ai
TV. At the time her mother, who was watching
the news with her, encouraged her to sign up to
be a donor. Hu was very glad that she could take
part in the event today.
Wu Jing-han (吳景翰), a graduate student,
came with eight classmates. “When I learned
about this event, I invited them over to take
part,” said Wu. “This is a meaningful activity.
You get to save people’s lives without harming
your own health. I hope I’ll be a match.”
Zeng Kai Bin (曾凱彬), a Malaysian of Chinese
descent, was a freshman at the Department of
Plant Industry. He remarked that he was very
impressed by the charity work Tzu Chi carried
out in Malaysia, so when he learned about this
activity, he hurried over during his lunch break
to participate. He had a whole day of classes on
In September this year, Tzu Chi volunteers held a
bone marrow registration at the National Pingtung
University of Science and Technology in southern
Taiwan. Students responded enthusiastically.
Directory of Tzu Chi Offices
Worldwide
this day, and so he had to hurry off to class after
he had his blood drawn.
Zhuang Yi-fang (莊怡芳), a school faculty
member, remembers seeing a TV news report
about a sad mother who because of her poor
health couldn’t donate her bone marrow to save
her daughter, a leukemia patient. That story left
a deep impression on her, and that was why she
came to the drive. “When you save a person, you
save not only him or her, you save an entire family,” Zhuang commented.
Volunteers were kept busy the entire day.
When the day drew to a close, many of them
had become hoarse after explaining the marrow donation program all day. Yet their hearts
were warmed by the enthusiastic participation
of the students—407 blood samples were collected on this day! Students were still arriving
when night had fallen and the venue was closing up. Volunteers promised them they would
hold another drive at the school the next semester and asked them to be sure to come back and
participate.
taiwan
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96
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Tzu Chi Quarterly
Winter 2012
A simple, uncomplicated, and non-contentious
heart helps us to remain calm and grounded. Then
we will not be easily moved by external influences.
—Master Cheng Yen
PHOTO BY TONG FANG-WEN