 | When we first met her, Zhang Lan stared with shy eyes from underneath a head of unkempt, knotted hair, bundled into a ponytail that looked more like a worn-out broom. Her face might have even been considered pretty, if it hadn’t been covered in grime. In fact, she was filthy from head to toe.
Lan, 12, lived in Luositang, a small village in Anning, Yunnan Province, southwestern China. The village, whose residents belonged to the Miao minority people, was rustic and unspoiled, but remarkably primitive and very poor. Houses were little more than crude, make-shift shelters, consisting of clay-brick walls on which a few pieces of lumber were laid as beams. Hay or tarpaulins were spread across the beams, resulting in something that just barely passed for a roof. The dwellings provided only limited protection from the elements.
The Zhang residence, with its leaky roof, was perhaps in worse shape than any other in the village. Rainstorms would certainly have turned the inside into a muddy mess. The house lacked even a bed. All six members of the household slept on a pile of donated clothes.
Mornings in the Zhang household started with everyone busy getting ready for the day. Lan chopped greens to feed the pig. She had only one sibling, a nine-year-old brother named Fei. He squatted by a muddy brown stream in front of their house and washed his face. Their uncle, Zhang Yaoli, the head of the household, stoked the fire and cooked breakfast. His daughter, Cui, readied herself for school, and her brother, not yet one year old, cried to his mother for his morning milk. Everyone was busy with their own tasks.
After breakfast, the uncle walked to work at a nearby tin mine. Cui soon left the house and went to school by herself. Lan and Fei had to remain at home and deal with the many chores awaiting them. For the moment, they were too busy to envy their cousin going to school.
Little workers
Though of school age, Lan and her brother could not attend school; they were too poor. The chances that they would ever be able to go were next to zero. Their parents died some years back, and they were adopted by their uncle and aunt. They would not go hungry, but that was about the extent of what their uncle could do for the orphaned sister and brother. They could not attend school because their family needed them to work.
It was Fei’s responsibility to tend to the family’s most valuable asset: about 20 goats. He herded them to lush pastures to graze while making sure that none of the animals wandered off and became lost. Going to school seemed out of the question for the young boy.
Lan’s aunt often left the house to work odd jobs when they became available, so the girl frequently assumed the role of the woman of the house. This meant taking care of her young cousin along with every other chore in the home. She accepted all of her responsibilities cheerfully—with only one exception.
The water in the stream outside the house was not potable, so the girl had to go to the nearest well every day and fetch water for the family. She walked to the well with two empty buckets hanging on a yoke. After rinsing the buckets, she used a large ladle to fill them with water from the well. The buckets when full weighed a total of nearly 20 kilograms (44 pounds).
This would be heavy for almost anyone, but it was especially burdensome for 12-year-old Lan’s thin frame. The strain of the weight was made plain by her obvious effort and struggle to lift the load off the ground. The yoke, bent slightly by the buckets, sat squarely on her shoulders. She staggered a bit as she balanced the buckets between strides. She crossed a short tree-trunk bridge without hesitation, but the incline made her legs tremble. Still, she pressed on. How else could she get the water home for the whole family? She had to rest a couple of times before she was able to cover the 200 meters (218 yards) between the well and the house.
A beacon of hope
From the way things were going day in and day out, Lan and Fei could just see what their futures held. Both of them would be illiterate and probably poor for life; Lan would marry and form a family with a local Miao man; Fei would struggle to eke out a living as a simple laborer. It was a pattern of fate that had been repeated over and over again among the villagers. The brother and sister were destined to be just two more victims of this cycle of poverty, and they knew it. Only a miracle might save them from their bleak futures. But miracles sometimes happen, even to people as hard up as the Zhangs.
One day, the leprosarium in Anning caught fire. The news caught the attention of Shi Jianyun, an elderly woman who ran her own fruit orchard in Anning. Hearing about the plight of the fire survivors, she recalled occasions when she had needed help and how she had wished that someone would give her a hand. She and a few friends drove for nearly three hours to visit the leprosarium, high in the mountains of Anning, where they offered their help to the residents. To their surprise, the residents declined the women’s help and instead directed them to a village of Miao people in the mountains—to Luositang, where the Zhangs lived. They said that those Miao people needed help more than they did.
This referral led Shi to meet the Zhang siblings and learn about their plight. Though she was most enthusiastic and willing to help, she knew full well that helping the family was more than she alone could take on. She therefore sought help from Tzu Chi volunteers in Kunming.
On March 1, 2009, a group of volunteers and a crew from Da Ai TV, the Tzu Chi TV station, went to Luositang to visit the Zhang family. They delivered daily necessities like rice and cooking oil for them. Shi also bought two headbands, a comb, and a personal mirror for Lan, who had not seen herself in a mirror since she accidentally broke the only one in the house long before.
Shi and another volunteer taught the siblings basic personal hygiene, and they washed their hair, faces, and feet for them. Dust wasn’t the only thing that had stained Lan’s young face; some places remained brownish even after the volunteer had cleaned them several times. Water would not wipe away the sun spots that the highly ultraviolet sunlight in the Yunnan highlands had burned into her face. Even so, Lan was happy to see a clean, neat image of herself smiling in the mirror. Shi put the headband on her, and that was the icing on the cake. Shi gave the other headband to Cui.
Now the volunteers had to find a way for the sister and brother to attend school. If they went to school, who would tend to their toddler cousin and the goats? How about the extra expenses?
The video taken during the visit was shown at a meeting at the Tzu Chi headquarters in Taiwan. Many of the viewers felt sorry for the Zhang siblings. Master Cheng Yen herself even asked the volunteers in Kunming to do their best to help them. On March 23, the Kunming team returned to the Zhang residence to see the uncle and his wife. They suggested that the aunt stay home full-time to care for her son, and that the uncle sell the goats. The volunteers offered to make up the shortfall in their household expenditures.
Although the uncle and the aunt themselves had never received an education, they could see the logic in the proposed plan. They were quite reasonable and went right along with the volunteers’ suggestions. Wasting no time, the aunt put her son on her back, took Lan’s hand, and walked with the volunteers to the nearest elementary school. There they completed the necessary paperwork for Lan to resume school, which she promptly and happily did the following day, March 24.
Lan could start right away because she had attended kindergarten before her parents died. Fei had never attended any school, so he would have to wait till the start of the next semester before he could enroll.
Although Lan was able to start months ahead of her brother, she did not do very well in her first few months of school. She had been absent from school for so many years that it showed. The principal suggested it might be a good idea if she repeat the first grade. Therefore, before the end of the summer vacation, the two of them were properly registered to start first grade in the fall semester.
This past fall, the first light of dawn and the roosters’ crow ushered in the first day of the new semester and their new life. Lan and Fei set out for school early. Yang Hailan, 12, who lived nearby, went with them. Yang had never attended school either. The volunteers had heard of her situation as they were helping the Zhang siblings, and so they had arranged for her to start school too.
The three of them walked briskly through a light mist. They didn’t want to be late on this momentous day, and the school was a good hour away. The hills on the way to school were tough on their legs, but they had already come to realize that not getting an education guaranteed a life of constant struggle. They cherished this opportunity to learn, which had been made possible only through the love and effort of many people.
At school, they were all taller than their classmates and, as expected, they were less well versed in their lessons. But starting school late and a little behind was better than not starting at all.
Who would have foreseen that Shi’s desire to help the residents of the leprosarium would lead to the identification of these three children? A small but wholesome wish of Shi Jianyun turned into a very large good thing. Such is the unceasing cycle of goodness.
The three children were curious about almost everything on campus: classmates, teachers, chairs, desks, and even faucets. Lan turned on a faucet by the restroom and felt the water flowing through her fingers. The girl who once had to fetch water from a well for her family smiled. It was the warm smile of a child touched by a miracle. |