Celebrating Good Deeds

By Li Li

Celebrating Good Deeds

By Li Li

A TV show highlights the efforts of kind-hearted people in a society facing a moral crisis

C hang Ping-yi, a former reporter w ith the Taipei-basedChina Times,received a Touching China award from CCTV, China’s national television network, on February 3.

Launched in 2003, the Touching China award honors about 10 individuals and between one and three groups each year who have touched the hearts of the Chinese people.

Chang, who has spent 12 years volunteering as a teacher in a “l(fā)eper village” in Sichuan Province, was the fi rst Taiwanese to w in this award.

In 1999, 40-year-old Chang decided that she was ready to switch the focus of her life to her family. Having just given birth to her second son, she had decided to end a 12-year professional career that had seen her w in both the Vivian Wu Journalism Award and the Golden Tripod Award for Journalism, two of Taiwan’s most prominent journalism awards.

Satisfied that she had achieved enough as a journalist, Chang was preparing to dedicate her time to raising her children in her family’s four-story mountainside villa.

“Being a good journalist means sometimes you have to forget about everything other than work, even your family. I thought my new role as a stay-at-home mom would allow me to explore a different dimension of myself,” she said in an interview w ithSouthern Metropolis Weeklybased in Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, last December.

However, Chang didn’t quite make the smooth transition to a life of domestic bliss she had hoped for.

Covering what she thought would be her final story, she traveled to Dayingpan, a village in southwest China’s Sichuan Province that was designated an area for the treatment of leprosy amidst a national epidemic in the 1950s. Chang was shocked to find that half a century later, Dayingpan was still referred to as a “l(fā)eper village” and isolated from the outside world because of the stigma against people with leprosy, a chronic and often disfiguring infectious disease.

Chang was touched by the hard lives led by people disfigured by leprosy, but was deeply troubled when she discovered the fate of children in Dayingpan, who were mostly healthy but illiterate. In the village’s only school, crumbling classrooms were crowded w ith more than 70 students. Some children were forced to stand during class hours because of a lack of seats. The school was on the verge of closing down as Wang Wenfu,the only teacher, wanted to quit his job due to low wages.

While her original plan had only been to w rite a single story on the village, Chang said that as a mother she could not turn away from the children in the village.

After going back to Taiwan, she w rote several articles on the lack of education resources in the leper village and visited people who might provide financial aid for a new school.

In 2003, Chang quit her job, as planned, but,instead of focusing all her energy on raising her own children, she dedicated herself to the cause of promoting education in Dayingpan and giving hope to the children of the village.

She founded a charity group called W ings of Hope in Taiwan and w rote articles, gave speeches and talked to potential donors in order to raise money to build new classrooms and dormitories.

In Dayingpan, Chang volunteered as a teacher, paid door-to-door visits to convince parents to send their children to school and visited local government officials in search of support.

In 2005, 16 students graduated from the school, the fi rst batch of graduates the school ever produced. Due to Chang’s efforts, in 2008, the Sichuan Provincial Government invested 2.6 m illion yuan ($412,607) to expand the six-grade school into a nine-grade one.A new campus w ith teaching buildings, students’ dorm itories and teachers’ dormitories,was put into use at the end of 2009. The number of students in the school has grown from less than 100 to more than 300.

Keeping people motivated

A lthough prom inent scientists, astronauts, senior government officials and celebrities havebeen among the award w inners in the last 10 years, the majority of Touching China heroes are ordinary people.

(Left) BRAVERY AND COMPASSION HONORED:Chang Ping-yi, who has dedicated herself to p rom oting education in a“l(fā)eper village” in Sichuan Province for over 12 years,at the Touching China award cerem ony

REUNION: Wu Jup ing (left)visits the 2-year-o ld girl whom she rescued from a high-rise falling last July, on Sep tem ber 12, 2011

Bai Fangli, an ordinary rickshaw peddler in north China’s Tianjin, donated almost all his income to financing students and schools in the last 20 years of his life. Bai, who was nom inated for the Touching China award tw ice but failed to receive an award, passed away in 2005 at the age of 92.

Wu Juping, a 31-year-old woman, was nicknamed “China’s most beautiful mom”by netizens after saving the life of a 2-yearold who fell from the 10th floor of a building in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, on July 2,2011.

“Being selfless and helping others isn’t as difficult as many think. I w ill keep trying to do good deeds,” Wu said during a brief interview at the award ceremony.

Last October a hit-and-run accident in Foshan, Guangdong Province, raised a national wave of concern about falling moral standards in China. At least 18 bystanders nonchalantly walked past a toddler who had been knocked down by a van in a hardware market, only for the child to be hit by a second vehicle. The 2-yearold, who was eventually rescued by a refuse collector, died a week later. The apathy displayed by bystanders, passersby and people in the neighborhood, was captured by a surveillance camera and shocked the public.

While some blamed the lack of a good Samaritan law that would protect people who helped others from legal repercussions in China, others said that greed and grow ing materialism have caused a decline in humanity and compassion across society.

At this year’s Touching China award ceremony, Bai Yansong, a famous news anchor who has been the show’s master of ceremonies for 10 years, said, “In a society where peop le’s moral bottom line is being challenged, people’s aspirations for kindness and justice have become stronger and stronger.”

A commentary on news portal People.com.cn said that people who are moved by Touching China award w inners should follow their examples and take action.

Since the first Touching China award ceremony was broadcast live on January 24,2003, the program has secured a large and loyal audience. Chen Riling, an entrepreneur from south China’s Guangdong Province, was in the studio audience for this year’s award ceremony. As a loyal spectator, he stops all production at his factories every year when the show is on so that his employees can watch its broadcast live.

Hu Zhong, a recipient of this year’s awards,said that he asked all of his students to watch the show on TV. “I believe the seeds for goodness exist in the hearts of everyone. This show on CCTV is like water and sunshine and nourishes those seeds to grow,” Hu said.

Zhu Bo, producer of the Touching China program, said that after a shortlist of candidates was announced last October, nearly 70 million people cast votes to select this year’s award w inners.

Despite the program’s enormous popularity, producers who participated in its original design did not have high expectations.

“We did not expect it to be so popular. We did not know how the public would receive a program about helping people as the most popular programs on television are usually about money, power and fame,” Zhu said.

Since its launch, many local TV channels had imitated Touching China to produce similar programs to honor local samaritans.“We don’t want to monopolize this brand.Instead, we are happy to see it copied by more people,” he said.