How do the doctors around here treat patients?
Text / Chen Ching-Chun
Editor's note: This article is excerpted from "Not a Single Hand Can Be Let Go: Principal Chen Ching-Chun, Who Turned the Tide." Principal Chen Ching-Chun has repeatedly won various education awards. He turned Huanan Elementary School, which was on the verge of closure, into a star school. There was no doctor in the mountain village, so he set up a medical station, so that sick elderly people would not have to cross the mountains to go down the mountain for medical care. This book collects Principal Chen's education and community transformation work in the mountainous area of Yunlin.
Watching the old woman struggle along, I could not bear it
At noon, the scorching sunlight congealed over the old house in the mountain area, and the winding mountain path seemed motionless. I was driving toward a settlement in the mountain area when I caught sight of an old woman wearing a bamboo hat in the distance. She carried a shoulder pole with vegetables and fruit bought down the mountain hanging from both ends, bent over as she walked along the mountain road.
"Grandma, you are heading home!" I stopped the car and greeted her in Taiwanese.
The old woman raised her head, her face full of wrinkles, and suddenly revealed a row of yellowed teeth as she said, "Yes! I walked early in the morning to take the bus, and went to Dounan to see the doctor along the way. I just got off the bus and walked here."
"Grandma, let me give you a ride!" I asked her to get in the car, since I was going the same way and could take her part of the distance. "No need! Young man. I will just walk slowly." The old woman insisted on walking home by herself. When I came to Huanan, I only then learned that there was no bus stop sign in the Huanan mountain area. If you lived in the farthest settlement, walking to the nearest stop took at least an hour. Whenever I saw these elderly people walking alone on the road, I would always give them a ride along the way, so the elderly could walk a little less.
This habit of giving rides along the way is the unique human warmth of the mountain area. Seeing the old woman dragging her heavy steps, I knew her legs were not good, yet for medical visits and shopping she had to endure the hard round trip. I drove slowly far behind the old woman, watching her go uphill, pause, wipe sweat, and walk again. I could not bear it in my heart, could not bear that an elderly person in her seventies or eighties, just to see a doctor, had to cross the mountains to go down the mountain and then make her way home again, so I stopped the car again and asked her to get in.
