Saving souls
Neha Sahay
In "soulless" China, stories of humanity are suddenly all over the media. The flip side of these incidents is the indifference of the Communist Party to its citizens. The Communist Party of China had declared the founding of the "People's Republic of China" in 1949. If, at that time, it swore by socialism, it now swears by "socialism with Chinese characteristics".
So under Chinese socialism today, one sees sights reminiscent of pre-liberation China. At that time, it was a common sight to see beggars selling their baby daughters on the streets. The writer, Jung Chang, describes one such scene of a mother, child and placard saying, "Daughter for sale for 10 kilos of rice."
Today, there's some progress. Rice is a given, health is not. Last month, on the streets of Fuzhou, a woman knelt outside a bus stop near a hospital with her two little daughters, hawking her wares: her third daughter, less than a year old, whom she carried on her back. Her husband, a construction worker, had fallen from the third floor of his work site. The contractor had given him 7,000 yuan and disappeared.
Around the same time, residents of the capital witnessed an unusual sight: outside a busy subway station, stood a man dressed up as a punching bag. "One punch -10 yuan", said his T-shirt. The 30 year old was offering himself to pay for his two-year-old son's treatment. The infant, suffering from leukemia, had been transferred to a Beijing hospital from Sichuan. The infant had already undergone a bone marrow transplant, which cost 700,000 yuan. His doctor predicted that another 400,000 yuan would have to be spent for his full recovery. The father had sold his house, and borrowed 40,000 yuan from acquaintances. Offering himself as a punching bag on the streets of Beijing was his final resort.
Good news
In Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province, a man dressed up as a woman to sell sanitary napkins for 20 yuan a packet. The placard next to him said he wanted to save his daughter. The two year old sat next to him, a mask around her mouth, a leukemia patient. Already, the 32-year-old cook, earning 1,000 yuan a month, had spent 20,000 yuan on her chemotherapy. His wife was the solitary bread winner, working at a petrol pump in another city.
Did their stories end happily? Yes, but no thanks to the CPC. It was the Chinese media's coverage, the generosity of ordinary Chinese citizens, and the reach of social media that worked. The woman got 1.27 million yuan in donations, 10,000 coming from one anonymous donor in faraway Guangdong. The absconding contractor, struck by guilt, re-appeared, and offered to pay for the entire treatment.
But this was an amazing couple - when the donations touched 100,000 yuan, they told the media to announce that they didn't need any more. After the surgery, the wheelchair-bound husband went to the bank to close his account. "It's not easy for anyone to make money," he said. "This has all been hard-earned by others." This was a couple so poor that when their youngest daughter was born, the father had wanted to sell her off, but the mother had stopped him. The donations they received could have come in use - the man will never be able to do any heavy manual work again. Yet, the couple donated 600,000 yuan, most of it to the Red Cross. The husband hoped it would be used in his hometown, where he intended to settle down.
The others didn't do badly either: the 'punching bag' received over 800,000 yuan; the cross-dresser got 1.4 million, 400,000 in just one day! His daughter's bone marrow transplant cost 800,000 yuan, but he decided he could help his mother too. Setting aside 200,000 yuan for her, he decided to donate the rest.
Saving souls
