Friends call her Hsiu-hsiu, as she is just what the Chinese name suggests--elegant, graceful and beautiful. The mother of two children, she looks much younger than her age. If you meet her at a Tzu Chi activity, you find a vivacious, capable young lady. She is indeed outstanding in many aspects, above all in bringing in money, be it donations or business earnings. Two years after she went into the insurance business, she attained membership in the Million Dollar Round Table, the premier international association for sales professionals in the life insurance-based financial services industry. Though she has made good earnings from her insurance business and other enterprises in the past, she and her family live frugally on her husband's meager salary because she saves all her income for charity.

When asked why she does this, she replies, "Our lives are short. While I'm still alive and kicking, I want to dedicate myself to doing meaningful deeds and making the best use of my life."

With a supportive husband and two well-behaved sons, Hsiu-hsiu has a happy family envied by many. However, life has not always been a bed of roses for her. She was born into a traditional peasant family where boys were preferred over girls. When her mother was in labor at home, her father, just returned from working in the field, stood at the door and asked, "Is it a boy or a girl?" On hearing his wife reply that it was a girl, he walked away at once, leaving her to labor without a midwife. Her mother tried to cry out for help, but there was no one around since most of the villagers were working in the fields at that time. Finally, when a neighbor returned at sunset, heard the crying and came to help, newborn Hsiu-hsiu had already turned purple from the unassisted delivery. Nevertheless, she survived. Her parents decided to give her away, as they had many young mouths to feed and a baby girl would mean an extra burden on their already tight financial situation. However, they were unsuccessful because the baby looked extremely frail. Her parents had no other choice but to keep her while she grew up in poor health.

Hsiu-hsiu learned about the inauspicious circumstances of her birth from her mother when she was fourteen. She then realized that her father had not been at all happy about her birth. Young as she was, she faced the fact with a firm and accommodating heart. "Father just didn't want a baby girl, not me personally," said Hsiu-hsiu to her mother. "Even though he didn't want me as his daughter, I'll still love him."

As if to prove to her father that she was in every way as capable as, if not better than, a boy, Hsiu-hsiu was always very independent. Though she was the youngest child in the family, she worked the hardest to help her parents out in the fields and at home. In school, she was excused from the daily flag-raising and lowering ceremonies because she had to help her father on the farm. There was also an agreement between the schoolteachers and her father that he could come and take her away any time he needed help during the busy farming season. She can still recall that she had to leave the classroom in tears every time her father came to take her.

Hsiu-hsiu was a keen, hardworking learner in school. When she had completed her secondary school education, however, she had to work to help support her family and thus had to discontinue her education. Her first job was in a textile factory, but somehow she knew this was not the life that she wanted. She felt the need to search for a place where she belonged, although she could not understand why she felt that way. "But I already have a home," she thought to herself. Her parents took her to a temple, but she found no refuge in the folk deities. Inexplicably, she began to ponder questions such as: "Where did my life come from? Where will it go when it has come to an end? Why do we kill the chickens when we have raised them?" She was often dominated by a strong fear of the uncertainties and impermanence of life.

After switching a number of jobs, Hsiu-hsiu thought that she ought to learn a skill that would bring in more income for herself and her family. She compared the pros and cons of various professions and finally decided that she would learn hairdressing. She found a job in a hair salon and worked there in the day while attending a vocational institute in the evening. She gave almost all her income to her parents and kept for herself only the amount needed to pay her tuition.

When Hsiu-hsiu was eighteen, she decided to leave her home in a rural area of southern Taiwan to further improve her hairdressing skills in Taipei, the prosperous capital city. Her outstanding performance won her the trust of many customers and she soon became a popular hairdresser in the community where she worked. However, frail as she was, the large flow of customers tired her out and she eventually fell ill.

One day, Cheng Min-an, her future husband, came to visit her. He was the brother of a classmate, and he had admired her secretly for many years during their junior high school days. Hsiu-hsiu's unhealthy appearance deeply worried Cheng and he wished that he could be there to take care of her. The following day, he went back to their hometown to talk to Hsiu-hsiu's father, who somehow misunderstood that Hsiu-hsiu's illness was acute and that Cheng had come to seek approval for a marriage. He said to Cheng, "You two should get married as soon as possible." Cheng was overwhelmed with joy and immediately agreed.

Back in the old days, Chinese parents had the last say in their children's marriage. Hsiu-hsiu apprehensively accepted the marriage for she hardly knew Cheng. Their wedding was one month after Cheng's visit, just before Hsiu-hsiu turned twenty-two. She remembered she was in tears when Cheng came to fetch her on their engagement day. Nevertheless, in retrospect she always feels warmth in her heart because their marriage proved to be a success and her husband was sincere in his desire to take care of her. "My marriage could be the best thing that ever happened in my life," she said with a contented smile. "My husband has always been as loving and caring as he was from the beginning."

After she was married, Hsiu-hsiu opened a hair salon and became her own boss. Business thrived and everything seemed to be going smoothly for her. Yet the fear of the uncertainties abided like a shadow that loomed large in her life. Back in her school days, she used to read her classmates' palms, and she discovered that while all her classmates had lifelines on their palms, hers were missing. From this, she became quite superstitious and frequently consulted fortune-tellers.

When she was twenty-five, the last fortune-teller she went to told her that her days were numbered because her marriage with her husband was mutually destructive. Overcome by this ominous prophesy, she cried all the way home to tell her husband what she had just been told. He tried to console her, but he was also affected to a certain extent by the fear of what might be coming their way.

"That night I had a most bizarre dream," recalled Hsiu-hsiu. "In my dream, there was a glaring light in which I saw the words, 'Do good deeds.'" When she woke up the following morning, she made a vow to Kuan Yin, the Great Compassion Bodhisattva, that she would dedicate the rest of her life to doing good deeds. Whether that dream of hers was indeed an omen or just a manifestation of her sub-conscious, it fundamentally changed her attitude toward life. She began to seek out charity organizations, but did not feel particularly attracted to any. Then the name of the Tzu Chi Foundation came to her mind.

She had made a donation to the foundation many years ago when she read the story of Dharma Master Cheng Yen, the founder of Tzu Chi, who began her charity work by asking each of her thirty followers to save fifty cents each day. Hsiu-hsiu remembered she had a regular customer, Chen Hui-mei, who had told her that she was a Tzu Chi member. Hsiu-hsiu thought that she could consult her. Eager as she was, Hsiu-hsiu could not wait till Sister Hui-mei came to her salon. She decided to look for her home, even though she did not know her address. Sister Hui-mei had once told Hsiu-hsiu that she lived on the seventh floor of a building nearby, so Hsiu-hsiu began combing her community for apartments that matched the description. Her persistence finally paid off when she heard Sister Hui-mei's voice in the intercom.

Hsiu-hsiu told Sister Hui-mei that she wanted to make monthly donations to Tzu Chi. Sister Hui-mei was glad and promised that someday she would take Hsiu-hsiu to the Abode of Still Thoughts, where the Master lived in Hualien.

Hsiu-hsiu didn't expect that the day would come as soon as one month later. She got on the train to Hualien with other Tzu Chi members. When she arrived at the Abode, she was at once permeated with a strong feeling evoked by what she saw. "Isn't this the place that appeared in my dreams again and again during my childhood?" she thought to herself. "This is where I belong!" Hsiu-hsiu knew she had finally come to the "home" that she had been searching for all her life.

When she met Master Cheng Yen, she couldn't help but shed tears. "I kept crying," Hsiu-hsiu recalled with a lump in her throat. "The Master had done so much. I felt the strong urge to help her in her work, and at the same time I felt perplexed for I didn't know how I could help. I was neither rich nor well-educated." Before Hsiu-hsiu was married, she gave all her earnings to her parents. After she was married, she gave them all to her husband. She had no personal savings at all, but the urge to donate a wheelchair, hospital bed or ward, or to become a Tzu Chi Honorary Board member kept cropping up in her mind. All these seemed like "Mission Impossible" to her at that moment.

Tired out by the emotional commotion, Hsiu-hsiu took a long rest after she returned home from the Abode. When she regained her energy, she said to herself, "I might not be capable of helping the Master right now, but I will eventually if I work hard." She started by saving NT$1,000 [US$30] from the daily takings of the hair salon, while not daring to let her husband know. She later joined a Tzu Chi fund-raising scheme wherein she donated NT$1,000 daily for a consecutive period of 1,000 days.

Later, she donated all the money she had saved to buy a car when she learned that the Tzu Chi branch office in southern Taiwan desperately needed a recycling truck. During a trip to Cambodia, she donated money for an ambulance to a local hospital subsidized by Tzu Chi when she learned about its financial predicament. She has been donating books and magazines to schools in Taipei County and prisons all over Taiwan on a monthly basis. She also made donations at numerous Tzu Chi fund-raising campaigns for disaster relief, and she was involved in organizing those campaigns and in other voluntary activities. Impressed by her efforts, her husband eventually joined in her volunteer work, and he finally became a member of the Tzu Cheng Faith Corps.

After becoming members of Tzu Chi, Hsiu-hsiu and her husband once had a narrow escape in a car accident. They were riding on a motorcycle when the taxi in front of them suddenly stopped. Their motorcycle smashed into the taxi, but incredibly they were both unharmed. Hsiu-hsiu believed that the misfortune that should have fallen on her had been mitigated because she had already activated the power of good karma when she vowed to do good deeds.

Hsiu-hsiu once sought advice from Master Cheng Yen about fortune-telling. The Master asked her in return, "Should you believe more in yourself, or in what others tell you about yourself?" The Master's words came as a stunning enlightenment to Hsiu-hsiu, whereby she came to realize her superstition. The Master also said, "What laypeople refer to as destiny or fate is actually what Buddhists call the power of karma. If one believes in the power of karma, then one should believe in destiny." If that is so, then how could one take control of one's own destiny? To this, the Master replied, "With confidence, determination and wisdom. When people are determined to eliminate all evil thoughts in their minds, then with their efforts they will attain wisdom and turn around their bad karma."

In 1992, with their years of regular and persistent donations, both Hsiu-hsiu and her husband became Tzu Chi Honorary Board members. By then, she felt that it was not enough to just donate money. She swiftly decided to close down the hair salon that she had owned for many years, even though business was still thriving. "I suddenly had an inspiration when I was reading the Tzu Chi magazine," she recalled. "I could easily just donate money to charity, but that was not enough." In order to dedicate more time to charity, she became an insurance agent, a job with more flexible work hours.

Nowadays, you can often find Hsiu-hsiu standing on a stage either to receive an award for her outstanding performance in the insurance profession or to raise funds for various Tzu Chi projects. Her vivacious image hardly reminds one of the feeble baby girl who almost did not make it when she was born to a poor peasant family in a rural area of southern Taiwan.

Having witnessed and been touched by the power of compassion in the world of Tzu Chi, Hsiu-hsiu vowed to cultivate herself to walk on the Path of the Bodhisattvas life after life. She compared herself to a rose: before she entered Tzu Chi she was a rosebud, and afterwards she became a rose in full blossom. However, the thorns of the rose are her tempers and bad habits. By observing the Master's teachings, she aspires to eventually get rid of those thorns and transform herself into a thornless rose.