If you are only concerned about yourself, you will just pray for your own health and prosperity. But if you can think about other people all the time, then you are a loving bodhisattva--one who has achieved a high level of cultivation for the benefit of all living beings.

As the old man talked, tear-like mucus began to run down from his nostrils. It slowly formed into a downward stream and caught the attention of Tzu Chi volunteer Pi Chen. Pi quickly got up and gently wiped the old man's face with his own hands.

Another volunteer, Chang Liang-mei from Guangdong, China, was washing hair for these old folks. She said that when she was in junior high school, her grandmother suffered a stroke. For the next eight years, until her grandmother passed away, Chang always washed and combed her grandmother's hair. The familiar aroma of shampoo still reminds her of that time long ago when she washed her grandmother's hair. Today her hand was all blistered because she had cut carrots for lunch for these seniors.

Like Pi and Chang, other volunteers were wearing Christmas hats with their Tzu Chi "blue-sky-and-white-cloud" uniforms. Even though it was less than 10 degrees Celsius [50；] outside, businesspeople from all over China set aside their own jobs today and volunteered to bring the year-end celebration to ten nursing homes in Quanjiao County, China, as they have been doing for 12 years.

Ten Tzu Chi nursing homes, all in Quanjiao County, look after 347 seniors receiving the "five guarantees": food, clothing, housing, medical care, and funeral services. These "five guarantees" are provided by local governments to men over 60 and women over 55 years old who are physically unable to work, have no income, and have no children to look after them.

A huge flood in 1991 first brought Tzu Chi to Quanjiao County. The volunteers discovered that some towns did not have the money to rebuild nursing homes, and the elderly were forced to find ways of supporting themselves.

These nursing homes, commissioned by Tzu Chi, were finished before the Chinese New Year the following year. The homes were built in traditional Chinese style with white walls and black roof tiles. Eight seniors live in one building; each building has four rooms, each with tables, closets, and chairs.

Tzu Chi volunteers dressed up like Santa Claus were divided into teams. The cooking team prepared food in the kitchen while the activity team sang and danced with the residents. Then, volunteers put buckets of hot water next to the old people's feet, took off their shoes and socks, rinsed and dried their feet with towels, and helped them put on new socks.

Yun Yun, secretary of the China Charity Federation, said that while she was washing an old woman's feet, she asked the woman how she felt. The old woman appeared very shy. Yun and Huang Chiu-kui found that when the volunteers washed the feet and put on socks for these old folks, they seemed a little embarrassed, like children.

Wen Ching-jen from the Gold Coast, Australia, admitted that he himself had never even bathed his own children. At first he didn't think he would be able to rinse these old people's feet, but he did. It was the first time that he had rinsed someone else's feet and helped them put on socks.

Chen Hui-hsing and other volunteers provided free haircuts. Chen skillfully gave the residents refreshing new appearances. She said that she once cut an old man's hair, but she did it poorly and felt bad because the old man kept complaining. So after she went home, she practiced on her husband for seven years. Now she can cut hair with style.

Chen remembered when she started giving manicures to the residents at the nursing home, her first "customer" was her own mother. She feels that the elderly are like bodhisattvas in the human world, and she regards treating the elderly in the nursing homes as easy as performing house chores.

Chen A-tao, the other volunteer barber, is a professional hairdresser in Taiwan. She said that the elderly in the nursing homes might well be our parents from our past or future lives. She felt that cutting their hair or shaving them was like doing the same things for her father.

At lunchtime, hot noodles brought much warmth to the elderly who had just had their feet washed. The noodles seemed to melt away even the chill outside the windows.

Wang Wangying, 86, ate two bowls of noodles. He kept saying that the noodles were very good and that the volunteers were concerned that he had eaten too much. While a volunteer fed noodles to Zhang Youte, 82, he kept saying he was not in good health and wondered whether he would be able to see the volunteers again. Chang Wen-lang promised to see him the next time the volunteers came. Zhang's wife felt so touched that she tearfully embraced a volunteer.

The volunteers gave each of the residents 80 yuan [US$9] to buy anything they needed. The volunteers also gave each of them a warm, light jacket and a cake to celebrate their birthdays.

When Chen Chuan-yuan saw the male volunteers feeding cake to the elderly, she blamed herself for not being able to help as well as these men. When she told a mute resident that she came from Taiwan, he pointed his finger towards the sky, indicating that she was an angel from heaven. She said with a choke in her voice, "I only gave them a little, but they regarded me as though I came from heaven!"

In the afternoon, Chen A-tao and Tsai Wu-lin used scissors to lightly trim the beards of the old men. As I looked through my camera and observed their long shadows on the walls, I noticed their hands moving swiftly before the old people's satisfied faces.

I didn't just see these two pairs of hands at work. I also perceived they were hands that washed vegetables despite the cold water, hands that massaged the backs of the old people, hands that washed their feet, hands that washed their hair...

These weren't just the hands of volunteers, but the hands of bodhisattvas.