The scholarship presentation ceremony was held in the Anping Secondary School auditorium. An old, hunchbacked farm woman leaning on a cane peeked into the auditorium, glancing left and right as though looking for someone. Seeing her farmer's clothing, a security guard thought she must have come to the wrong place and told her to leave. Luckily, we found out that she was Li Lan's grandmother, and we invited her to join us. She was the only family member to attend the ceremony for thirty-nine students.

Grandma Li, as we called her, was seventy-five years old. She couldn't speak clearly, but we could tell she was happy that her granddaughter had received a scholarship. When I saw her tightly clutching the medical registration paper that Tzu Chi had given her the previous day, I realized that she would be coming to the free clinic that afternoon. She hoped that good people from far away could cure the back pain that she had lived with for years. Grandma Li said to us with her strong accent, "You are so kind, you are so kind."

On the morning of November 9, the children at Anping Secondary School listened closely to their teacher. The topic of the class was "Time Sweeps Across the Yellow Earth." Looking at the fallen leaves outside the window that chilly winter morning, the teacher explained that time used the four seasons to paint its marks on the earth. In addition to the changing of the four seasons, there is also the inconsistency of nature. When nature is happy everyone has food to eat and lives happily, but when nature is angry she steals people's homes and destroys everything.

The children in the classroom were young, but behind their naive smiles they understood the impermanence of nature. They vividly remembered the 1995 Yangtze River floods, a memory which will be with them forever.

"Along with the drizzle and the playful autumn wind, the ripe fruits cover the September trees...," the students repeated after their teacher. Their childish voices depicted the bliss of life on the farms.



The cotton field


The road we took for home visits was so muddy that our car got stuck and we had to walk. We followed a child named Gu Ze, who led us into a cotton field.

In early November, the field was filled with orderly, well-spread rows of cotton plants. In front of the farmhouse door, cotton was drying in the sun and fibers flew through the air. We talked to Gu Ze's father about farm life. He said happily, "This year hasn't been bad-I'll earn several thousand dollars."

Gu Ze's grade average made him the sixth best student in his school last semester, and he was nominated for a Tzu Chi merit scholarship. His family was considered well-to-do. Their house, built in 1994, was tidy and clean. Gu Ze had loving parents and an eighty-something-year-old loving grandmother.

When I looked at the walls and the surrounding countryside, I saw no trace of the floods. I guessed the place had been fortunate and the water hadn't come up this way. But even a well-to-do family like the Gus still had to depend for their living on nature-not every year brought a good harvest.

After walking around another field, we reached Li Lan's home in Tuanzhou Village. She grew up in a poor family, much poorer than the Gus. The furniture was old and simple. There was only one room, which contained one bed. On the bed was the comforter Tzu Chi gave them in 1995. Li Lan and her grandmother had been sharing this tiny bed for more than ten years.

Her father passed away two months after she was born. Her mother remarried, leaving the little girl with her grandmother. Grandma Li never forgave Li Lan's mother. When we met them, they were dependent on Li Lan's uncle, who was himself married with a child and who worked in the town. Their financial situation was quite grim.

Fortunately Li Lan did not have to pay for her tuition. She won our Tzu Chi scholarship for poor students and had no problems finishing junior high school. But when we asked her if she wanted to go on to senior high school, she replied despondently that she wanted to help her grandmother by finding a job.

The tuition at Anping Secondary School was seventy yuan [US$8.47] per semester, which was waved in the case of orphaned students. Students with only one parent paid half. Still, the amount was a burden to farmers who only had a small piece of land.



Doctors are a luxury few can afford


On the day of the free clinic the wind swept from the river up to Anping, bringing the temperature down by ten degrees Celsius [18 F]. Li Lan's grandmother came very early, and we invited her to sit in the auditorium so she wouldn't catch a cold. We also gave her a bun to eat. At half past noon, we took her to register for the free clinic.

The free clinic was divided into the departments of registration, blood pressure, pharmacy, internal medicine, surgery, dentistry, gynecology, ophthalmology, Chinese traditional medicine, and health education. This time, health education was to be the focal point of the clinic.

The villagers had never heard the phrase, "Prevention is better than treatment." They only wanted their symptoms treated, but they never bothered to cure their diseases. Many diseases were preventable, so we grabbed the chance to teach children and their parents about good health and sanitation practices, hoping they could protect themselves by reducing the chances of getting ill.

Many patients were elderly and illiterate. Without help from our volunteers, they would have had no idea which department to go to.

Like Grandma Li, many farmers worked hard all their lives, but never had any extra money to visit the doctor. They could do nothing but painfully endure their diseases. Even if they did have enough money, they were reluctant to use it for treatment.

Some traveled many hours by bus to come to the free clinic. The kind, loving volunteers at the site warmed their hearts. "You are all so incredible," one grandmother marveled. "You traveled such a long way to get here... and then you thanked us for giving you a chance to help us! I'm pretty old now, but this is the first time in my life I've ever heard of anything like that!"

Grandma Li's back had been hunched for years. She merely tried to keep the pain under control so that she could continue working. Dr. Hung Hung-tien, the osteopath treating her, told us that her pain was not a symptom that could be cured completely. A few doses of medicine from the free clinic was no solution to her problem.

A patient in the next room caught our attention. The varicose veins on his foot had caused poor blood circulation and the skin on his ankle had started to rot. It was a horrible sight. The doctor suggested that he have surgery while he was still young. Otherwise, the disease would only get worse.

The patient told us that he was neither financially nor psychologically prepared to agree to this. "Can't I just put on some cream?" Traditional ideas were still prevalent: he only wanted to apply ointment on the wound and would not accept surgery until the last minute.

Doctors told us that many patients with serious diseases could not be treated properly with just one simple free clinic. They suggested that these patients go to a hospital for immediate treatment. However, these patients came to the free clinic because they couldn't afford to go to a hospital, and also because they hoped for a miraculous recovery. There was so little we could do.

We walked Grandma Li to the door and gave her a bag of green bean powder, a dietary supplement. The illiterate woman thought it was traditional Chinese herbs and asked us how she should take it. Unable to laugh at this mistake, we immediately explained to her what it was.

We said to her, "The wind is blowing hard and the road is slippery, so take care!" The wind blows hard in Tongling in November. Watching the old woman's slouching back as she plodded slowly home, we wished we could do more.