Nature can be beautiful, but it can also be coldhearted. Floods, typhoons, earthquakes and droughts plague many people. Luckily, these disasters can also stimulate the kindness and hidden potentials of human beings. Tzu Chi's relief program to mainland China has fired the hopes of disaster victims by providing immediate assistance and encouraging them to walk out of their pain into a bright future.

Traveling through flooded towns, deep mountains, and heartbreaking disaster areas, we felt the agony of farmers whose crops were destroyed in an instant. However, we also learned a lot from the farmers' diligence and strength.

--Huang Wen-ling

Sincere Support

By Lin Mei-yi

After a long period of economic boom, Zhejiang Province, on the eastern coast of China, was one of the richest provinces in mainland China. Last August, unfortunately, Typhoon Herb and high tides devastated much of the province, especially the areas of Sanmen, Ninghai, Panan and Wenling. Tzu Chi relief teams delivered rice, padded jackets, comforters, and sincere assistance to 115,000 refugees in four counties.

On January 4, after a fifteen-day journey, the relief team arrived in Wenling. It was snowing that day.

An old man, wearing his new padded jacket with the Tzu Chi emblem on it, climbed onto his three-wheeled cart. He squeezed both of his arms against his body, luxuriating in the warmth of the blue jacket. Satisfaction rose up from his heart and melted the line of his frozen lips into a crescent smile.

An old woman in her sixties shivered as she walked alone to the exit, tightly clutching her new garment. I asked her why she didn't put it on. She replied that she wanted to save it for Chinese New Year!

Someone called out loudly, "Tzu Chi is here to help us!"

The snow was still falling, but their bodies were warm.

Farmers' Time

We visited the home of a flood victim next to the distribution site in Hunghe, Wenling. A clock on the wooden stairs had stopped at 5:57, the time that it had been soaked in water.

Someone asked the family how they could tell the time. A middle-aged man scratched his head and smiled, but a child playing with a pile of oranges on the floor suddenly replied, "We never look at it anyway!"

Farmers tell time by observing the growth of their crops, which is more practical.

Wang Chang-ming, a cotton farmer in Ninghai County, informed us that growing cotton required investments of RMB$1,000 per mu [about US$800 per acre]. If he was lucky enough not to encounter any rain while harvesting, the highest profit was only RMB$1,200, which was all he had for the family and the children's education for the whole year.

When we were there, all the crops were dead, but the children still needed to go to school. Mr. Hsieh, a teacher from Ninghai Third Secondary School, observed that the semester was nearly over, but about a third of the students had still not paid the tuition fees. It was fortunate that the school had changed its policy and allowed the students to pay the fees later, so that most students could still attend classes.

"Thank You"

Even when we left at six or seven o'clock in the morning, we usually did not arrive at the distribution sites until nine. The farmers, who always go to work before the sun rises, would arrive at the sites several hours before we did. In Panan, residents carried harvested vegetables for forty minutes to the market at the foot of the mountain. Afterwards, they shouldered the empty baskets back to their village and waited for the distribution of relief supplies.

Because of the flood, most land could not be farmed. Some residents went out from the village to work or stayed in the village to rebuild the dikes. However, they were still hardworking and frugal.

That day when we distributed relief items in Changchieh, Ninghai County, was a holiday, so many schoolchildren also came to help. As it turned out, they helped by acting as our translators, since the local dialect was virtually unintelligible to us.

Yeh Che, a fourth-grade student, came to carry a comforter for an old woman in his neighborhood. Waving his hands, he vividly described how the village had been flooded. After that, he dashed off to another group activity in the village. In a short while, he ran back to us and gasped, "There was one thing I forgot to say earlier, and that was thank you for bringing us these things." Then he disappeared among the crowd again.

In Ninghai, children used innocent kisses to express their gratitude. In Sanmen, an old woman who had received her comforter and food the day before carefully picked out the best oranges that she had. She then walked over ten miles with a bag in each hand and presented them to the Tzu Chi relief team. In Panan, a young woman presented a family bracelet to a Tzu Chi sister who had given her a bottle of Vaseline.

How could the attitude and behavior of the Tzu Chi members during the distributions win such touching reactions from the flood victims?

Brother Kuo Ting-jung said that although the material goods were limited, he knew that his sincere, respectful words and actions could warm people's hearts for a very long time. That was why his face was always full of sincere smiles. Sister Chang Hung-ling recalled a sentence from Sogyal Rinpoche, the author of The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying: "Everyone can give support to other people, as long as they are sincere." Hence, whenever we touched their dry, rough hands or presented clothes or comforters to cover their thin, shivering bodies, our hands transmitted our most sincere blessings and support.

Brother Chen Ping-kun said, "When I faced these people this time, there was no pity but only concern and gratitude."

Great Love Imprinted on the Mountains

By Yang Chien-jung

A flood in eastern China in 1991 caused tremendous damage. The disaster caught international attention, and relief supplies from many countries poured into the disaster areas. In the most seriously hit province of Anhwei, Tzu Chi's assistance was not the first to arrive, but it was the most practical and long-lasting.

"You people are so wonderful," our driver said as he looked at the lines of eager recipients through the windshield. "You even thank us when you hand us these goods. I am very touched."

Chuting village in Wuhe County was our first distribution site in Anhwei Province. In order to allow more than 27,000 residents to receive relief supplies smoothly, the local leader called villagers and staff together before the distribution day for a rehearsal. He added two entrances at the Chuting Secondary School and temporarily changed a road to a one-way street in order to expedite the distribution. Even the school teachers and students came to help at the site.

The distribution went very smoothly. Workers from the factory that made the padded jackets and comforters were also present to assist at the distribution. Chai Yi, the factory manager, commented that this was the fifth year that they had cooperated with Tzu Chi. Although foundation members demanded high quality for the jackets and comforters, he said, "Tzu Chi is here to help the needy, so we ought to work with them."

Vaseline

At the next day's distribution, Tzu Chi members kept saying "Thank you" as they handed out the relief supplies. The crowd standing by did not understand why people who were giving things away would keep saying that. The Tzu Chi members continually smiled and greeted everyone, even when they were soaked by a sudden downpour. They applied Vaseline to the reddened hands and ears of people who had been waiting in the freezing weather. Seeing this, some of the crowd also came forward to help distribute relief supplies and carry things for older people.

When the distribution was about to end, one refugee came back to us, waved his cotton jacket in the air and loudly called "Thank you." When our cars passed by people on the road, many of them touched their Vaseline-coated ears and waved at us. Some students who were there to help also brought out their notebooks and asked us to sign our autographs or write something as a memento. Team members wrote down phrases from Still Thoughts to encourage these students to do good deeds and be good children.

During this three-day distribution, Wang Tuan-cheng, vice president of the Tzu Chi Foundation, and Master Te Wei took time to visit a nearby village. Some villagers received flour in the morning and immediately used it to make noodles in the afternoon. They even cordially invited us to enjoy a meal.

Good Seedlings

According to a government official from Anhwei province, a rare tornado in 1992 destroyed the whole village of Chuanchiao in one night. Residents in a nearby village that had already been rebuilt by Tzu Chi all came with trailers to transport the injured to the hospital and to provide rice and food. They said that they were doing all this because Tzu Chi had selflessly helped them before.

The official also said that Tzu Chi not only left behind material goods for the people of Chuanchiao, but also the Tzu Chi spirit. He felt that the Tzu Chi spirit--contentment, gratitude, understanding, accommodation, sincerity, integrity, trust and honesty--was an international standard for dealing with people and events.

Adding Fuel

By Huang Wen-ling

Our vehicle swayed nauseatingly on the bumpy road like a boat on a turbulent sea. Outside the window were endless mountain ranges. The vehicle for the relief team had been travelling for four hours. Passing mountain after mountain, it seemed that we would never get out of there!

Li Hsing-lin, like other farmers in remote mountain areas in Guizhou Province, was a simple man, able and willing to endure hard work. His everyday life revolved around planting and raising his crops.

He planted rice seedlings in February and corn in March. Both were harvested once a year. Li anxiously looked forward to the harvests in August and September. If they could harvest 400 to 500 kg. for every adult, they would surely have enough to eat for that year.

In Guizhou, however, good harvests depend on luck.

For instance, Li's dry farmland was on a high mountain, quite far from any river. Thus, besides collecting water from the river at the foot of the mountain, he mostly depended on the rain.

However, too much rain could also be disastrous. From July 14 to 19, 1997, severe rainstorms destroyed all the farmland in his village.

The Miao people in the deep mountains calculated their wealth based on the harvest of corn. However, after the flooding this time, even the richest family had no food. More than 28,000 people, like Li, were devastated by the flood.

Hail destroyed crops and houses in Pan County in late May 1997. Little girls were so frightened by the powerful hail that they jumped into large rice pots in the house to shield themselves from it. In mid-July, many villages and fields were destroyed by rocks and mudslides.

After initial inspection, Tzu Chi decided to hand out 30 kg. of pearl rice to every person for three months from January to March 1998. Thus, the villagers could have food to eat through the winter.