If a massive earthquake hadn't struck Taiwan on September 21, 1999, Chung Feng-chi would still have been working hard on the pear orchard owned by her family. But after the quake, she and a group of other women from the disaster regions started to play different roles in their lives with tenacious vitality.

Psychologists point out that it takes at least five years for the psychological wounds left by a massive earthquake to heal. Actually, for people who live in the areas devastated by the September 21, 1999, earthquake, the disaster might mean something more than a traumatic experience--it can also be a major turning point for them. Having lost nearly everything in the earthquake, they can use the opportunity to rethink the meaning of life and to develop their hidden potential. And the process of their healing is becoming real life teaching material for schools in "Life Education."

Over the last two years, the resilience and vitality shown by the survivors, especially the adults, in the disaster areas have surprised many people. Perhaps it is because they must shoulder the burden of supporting their families and that they must pick up their lives more quickly than others.

While the schools rebuilt under Tzu Chi's Project Hope were being completed one by one, the foundation also focused on how to heal injured minds. We found a group of women in the disaster regions who have discovered new meaning in life through the catastrophe. Some of them are mothers whose children attend the schools rebuilt under Project Hope, some are dance teachers in those schools, and some are community volunteers. In the past, their families were the centers of their lives. After the 9-21 quake, however, they began to involve themselves in community activities, breaking out of their old life pattern and finding a stage to display their versatility.

They are the participants and the executors of psychological healing. More importantly, while searching for the value of their lives, they are also applying their own healing processes to teach their own children how to deal with problems in life. They have a better appreciation of and greater zeal for life.

MOTHERS ON THE STAGE

"People's Theatre" does not try to teach you something, but helps you to discover what you want to do and what you can do through communicating with life. We do not define it as a type of psychological therapy, but nevertheless it does have that kind of effect.

--Dramatist Chung Chiao

One afternoon in Shihkang Village, Taichung County, a group of Hakka women hurried to Yang Chen-chen's house from their workplaces. They began to discuss in all seriousness their next play. It would be performed at Shihkang Junior High School, where Yang's son studies.

More realistic on the stage

"That's right, we are truly doing a meaningful thing. Sometimes I'm more realistic when I'm on the stage," said troupe member Lai Shu-yuan.

What miracles led these housewives, busy working in the kitchen or in the field or keeping a stall in the market, to become actresses playing characters of real-life events? The "Shihkang Mommies' Theatre" was established to help women in the rebuilt region stand on their own feet again. Chung Chiao, founder of the theatre, said, "I never planned to teach them acting from the beginning. I only guide them to commune with their individual life experiences."

Why did these women, who had never acted before, join the troupe? "In the beginning, we just found it embarrassing to not attend the class as they had already come all the way to help us," said Yang Chen-chen, the youngest member and manager of the troupe. What she didn't expect was that her quake-phobia would be cured after a few lessons.

Shihkang Village was severely damaged by the quake. However, the women's fear and perplexity were not properly examined in time, only completely buried under cooking and housework. Chung Chiao wanted them to dig out their most vivid memories of the earthquake and express it in body language. In that split second, the source of their agitation and distress suddenly rose before their minds. Yang Chen-chen said, "People often avoid talking about the earthquake. But to heal a wound, we need to find it first."

Now, they can talk about the earthquake and be completely at ease. Sometimes, they even joke about each other's larger-than-life poses on stage as if they had effortlessly walked through a game of life and death.

Even though they have overcome their fear of the disaster, these women still need the courage to face their other life experiences if they want to carry on their "acting." When troupe member Chung Feng-chi was young, she was sure that she would not marry a farmer. Yet she took on a lifetime role as a farmer's wife when she came to Shihkang. After that, she gave up her dreams and busied herself with chores in the fields. Although she found fulfillment in her work, she still couldn't let go of her dreams. That night, she showed a side of herself that had never been seen by others on the stage.

"On the stage, I don't see anyone in the audience and I totally forget who I am." She no longer needs to hide her passion for life while she is on the stage. When she steps down from the platform, she says, "I feel so relaxed."

Playing another role

They had waved away their traumas and examined their inner selves. Their follow-up step was to do what they had never done before: take the leading role for public community discussions.

For the past two years, one of the most popular topics discussed in the community has been the reconstruction of the Liu family's kitchen. The kitchen collapsed during the quake and so their ancestors' spirit tablets had no place to stay [in Chinese tradition, a spirit tablet has the name of the deceased inscribed on it and is placed in an honorable position of the house]. Also, how to rebuild the kitchen was an irresolvable problem. "Such problems had always been discussed and decided by men; we women normally had no say in it." Though no one asked for her opinion, Peng Jui-chih, the daughter-in-law of the Liu family, had a little wish from the bottom of her heart: "I hope that everyone will stop arguing and let the ancestors rest in peace."

As a result, the theatre allowed these women to voice their thoughts. That day, they talked frankly about rebuilding the Liu family's kitchen on stage. Some dressed up as men and imitated men's bluntness and vulgarity. Some impersonated old women and kept breaking into the men's conversations, and even invited the audiences to participate. In the meantime Peng, holding a spirit tablet in her hands, apathetically stood at a corner of the stage expressing her only thought deeply and silently.

Under the spotlight, they play the roles of people whose voices have never been seriously considered in real life. At the same time, however, they no longer see themselves as such people because they have made great progress in making themselves heard through their ad libs.

Yang Chen-chen said, "We were busy with housework, and nothing else, for twenty or thirty years. Now we have to do a lot of reading and thinking. Our lives have become very busy, but really interesting." The playing of multiple roles also leads her to ponder her son's behavior from different angles.

But, if they want to continue acting, they will probably have endless homework to do. They are going to take a shot at all sorts of different characters in the future. On stage, they are no longer simply "wife" and "mother," and their ideas are never again suppressed because of their gender.

Joining the troupe has led them to realize the things they could have done but did not have the chance to do or did not recognize that they had the ability to do. They indeed are a group of actresses, but they don't need any acting techniques, nor do they need to be trained. What they show their audiences is the "genuineness" from the bottom of their hearts that went out of focus and was forgotten.

A DANCER WITH NO SPOTLIGHT

The greatness of dancing is not about performing, but helping children build up their self-confidence and hence create a different life through the movement of all body parts and the relaxation of body and mind.

--Choreographer Lin Hwai-min

With her shoulder-length hair and young face, Chu Kuang-chuan looks like an active dance star on stage. It is hard to imagine that she has been working in the rebuilt area ever since the 9-21 earthquake. For the last two years, her stage has generally been set up beside public toilets or a temple.

Dancing without a stage

"I had prepared myself mentally for my first trial class in the rebuilt region before I went there, but what I saw still surprised me." Chu was a dancer from the famous Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan. After the quake, the troupe teamed up with the Tzu Chi Foundation to transport relief goods to the disaster area. When they returned to Taipei, they brainstormed on how to help quake victims with their expertise. Lin Hwai-min, Cloud Gate's artistic director, referred to related reports about the earthquake that hit Hanshin, Japan, in 1995, and found that a type of creative body movement was quite good for local children's psychological recovery. Hence, in October 1999, Chu Kuang-chuan and two other dancers volunteered to go down south to carry out a therapeutic dance course called the Blue Sky Class.

At that time in the disaster areas, even schoolteachers had no classrooms to teach their students. Therefore they first needed to find places for dancing classes. Whether it was beside chalky construction sites or on dusty school concourses, they used any available location to hold classes. Chu remembers that period of time as "the start of dancing off the theatrical stage."

Other than the difficulty of finding classrooms, getting the cold shoulder from people in the disaster zone was also a problem. Children were the most sensitive ones; they clearly knew that they were what other people called "victims," and indifference was their protective camouflage.

Now the number of schools that have registered for the Blue Sky Class has shot up from six to seventy, and the class has become a lesson that many children look forward to every week. The children changed from being unconcerned to trusting and loving. Chu Kuang-chuan said, "From the beginning, we planned to hold the course for five years. When we conduct the class, we never purposely talk or ask about the earthquake. We just help these children express themselves and their emotions, such as fear and anxiety, through body language."

In the past, learning was a process of absolute obedience for Chu, who started dancing at a very young age. Every dance movement and every angle was absolute. No questions were allowed and no alterations could be made. The source of self-confidence depended on how accurately you could perform the dancing steps. Chu remembers sometimes being miserable in those days.

Pluralistic beauty without a spotlight

Nothing is absolute in the Blue Sky Class. Chu only gives the children a goal, and they can choose whatever method they want to achieve it. Sometimes she asks the children to imagine walking without legs; sometimes she lets them envision themselves as lions; or she gives them a colored ribbon to draw different patterns in the air, as if they were painting with colored pencils. Each child has his or her own character, and hence they use different ways to express themselves. Chu's only goal is for the children to nurture their ability to observe, so that they will be able to simulate and create with their own methods, and so that they will understand how different emotions are expressed.

In her opinion, the reason that the children have become more confident in the last two years is not that they can dance, but because they learned how to use forms of expression other than verbal language to convey their real selves.

During the course, she encourages everyone to hug her. Once a teacher who had been teaching for three years asked Chu, "Why do the kids give me the cold shoulder, but treat you with enthusiasm and warmth?" Chu immediately urged the teacher to hug her children. At first, all those present felt awkward. But after hugging the children, the teacher, who had been incompatible with her students, gradually became closer to them.

Another case was about a child with infantile autism. His parents had already passed away, and ever since then he had stopped talking, even though he had the ability to do so. He also had problems walking. During the first few classes he still did not speak, but his laughter did not cease and his body language was lively and ardent. Several lessons later, he started talking and got closer with his classmates.

The teacher who became intimate with her students and the silent boy who laughed are examples of how Chu and her teammates bring self-confidence and honesty to children in the rebuilt region. They have also changed the role that dancing plays in their own hearts. "Dancing is not a performing tool, but a medium for communicating with and understanding others."

Chu clearly knows that this job is quite a challenge for a female dancer like herself. It is neither pretty nor clean. And the applause is no longer for the accuracy of a dance movement, but rather for the understanding of each other's spiritual needs and potential. Beauty for her is no longer an image under the spotlight, but the will to keep on trying hard to communicate and express feelings even in a dusty or noisy environment.

THE GUARDIAN ANGELS OF RESOURCES

If the residents in the rebuilt region can express themselves and be encouraged to get involved in community activities based on their beliefs and values, then they are in fact well on the path to effective psychological recovery.

--Psychologist Wu Ying-chang

Three o'clock in the afternoon is an important time for a group of women who live in Nanhsing Village, Nantou City. No matter how busy they are, they put down whatever they are doing and gather together at the local Tzu Chi recycling station, next to a soybean sauce shop. They tidy up bottles and paper, and then use a trolley to transport recyclable materials to Chunghsing Junior High School. A group of children then helps them sort everything out.

Among these middle-aged women, we can often see two venerable figures: Lin Pan and Lin Tui.

Grey-haired volunteer sisters

Lin Pan lives in that soybean sauce shop adjacent to the Tzu Chi recycling station. She was the first Tzu Chi volunteer in Nanhsing Village. When she first started her recycling work, she was yelled at by other villagers whose livelihood depended on junk scavenging. Yet she has never been absent from the volunteering work, even when her arm was broken due to a fall while she was working. Even now she still has difficulty moving her arm. Lin Tui has been Lin Pan's neighbor for more than ten years, and she became a volunteer because of Lin Pan. Both of them are close to the age of eighty, but they are not slow or clumsy. They can still swiftly flatten cans and pack and carry packages as if time had not left any trace on their bodies.

Whenever they talk about volunteering, they always laugh blissfully. Even Lin Pan, who had always thought of herself as an unfortunate and unhappy person, would release her frown and repeatedly say, "We're happy to do this." They are often mistaken for sisters, since they are about the same age and have the same surname. Also, their life experiences are quite similar.

Before the 9-21 earthquake, their whole lives were spent in front of the television at home. "We watched TV and were watched by the TV," joked Lin Tui. The time they spent in front of the television seemed to be endless, and how they passed their time had become meaningless to them. They admitted that such a lifestyle was boring, but when asked the things they wanted to do, Lin Tui said bluntly, "I have no dream in this lifetime."

Neither of them ever went to school [not uncommon among the older generation in Taiwan], and they both started working when they were young. One of them herded cattle and another worked on a sugar cane field. When they were old enough their parents arranged marriages for them, and like many other women of their era they became full-time housemaids--cooking meals, washing clothes, giving birth and looking after children. Both of their families sank into financial difficulties because of heavy gambling on the lottery. Both their husbands passed away early, and the women had to support their families. Their children grew up, and as the loads on the women's shoulders were unloaded, their lives became monotonous.

It was not easy for these two ladies, who had been busy for their families all their lives, to find another goal outside this ambit. Were it not for the earthquake, they would rather have stayed inside the familiar arena and just been bored. To them, the outside world and the community seemed a long distance away.

Regaining control of their lives

Their houses were both partially damaged by the earthquake. Lin Tui was so scared that she slept on the sofa nearest the door for a whole year. However, they gradually forgot their fear when they saw Tzu Chi volunteers working amid the scenes of devastation around them and comforting other people who were as frightened as they were. Lin Pan then came to realize, "Tzu Chi volunteers come to help us build schools and prefabricated houses, and they even cook for us... I might be able to do something positive, too."

So after their houses were fixed, their roles switched from so-called victims to volunteers. They helped sweep out the construction site of a Project Hope school and cook for the workers. When the school was completed, they carried on doing environmental protection work.

They say that they are not good with words and have no outstanding view on a policy for community environmental protection. They only want to extend their love and care for their families to other people who need help in the community, so that others will feel that this place is not a disaster area, but a clean and friendly community.

Growing up in a very conservative era, they once led a life that was as uncontrollable as the lottery. They left their lives up to fate and allowed them to be arranged by others, until they became old.

Now Lin Pan's unknitted brows seem to convey the message that she has finally found a set of rules other than those of the lottery. Being a volunteer, contributing without asking for anything in return is actually gaining. Even if they are yelled at, it is also a kind of glory. This is a game that has neither winners nor losers. What they are trying to express is the desire to regain control of their lives and to use what is left in them to care for and help others.

Now, they are no longer lonely, old people who can only stay at home and watch television. Instead, they are important figures in promoting community activities. Volunteer work has helped them forget their terror and find the meaning of life, which for them used to lie in watching television.