He and I were the only 2 people eating with a fork at the table. I, because I was a westerner, he because his twisted fingers made a fork easier than chopsticks.

His empty, stripped apartment building was behind a hill of rubble, rubble that was once another building. We saw him sitting outside his house in his wheelchair one grey morning.

I was a curious westerner who only knew horrifying stories of the disabled in China unable to find aid. The setting and the subject made it irresistible to me.

We approached to see what was wrong, but in the end we found that really, nothing was wrong.

Photo: Matthew J. Stinson

This 37 year old man lived with his parents in a tidy apartment, only hidden by destruction. And his parents lived inside and kept him very well.

They let us come in and we watched his mother prepare food for lunch: beans, tofu and a whole chopped chicken cut in slices right through the bones.

They even gave us little snacks, like dried salted lima beans and grapes. YUM!  

“Chi, chi,” she would insist if we ever stopped eating to ask a question.

Through all our snacking we discovered that her son was born disabled with a condition that was difficult to translate into English, and at the time doctors expected him to live only a few months.

When his mother first saw her son, she loved him, but did not want to burden her husband, who only married her because theirs was an arranged marriage. So, she offered to divorce and move back to the village so his life could continue and theirs would be a simple one.  

But he refused and wanted to stay together.  

 

“This is the only child we will have. Let’s stay together, love this child and enjoy our lives together,” he said.   

And for the past 37 years the family seems to have been doing just that, enjoying their lives together. The couple is in their 60’s, but both look younger and are in great health. The son has an inability to pronounce words, as his face contorts when he speaks. He can’t read. He can’t do many things with his hands and he is in a wheelchair, although as a child he walked. But despite his inabilities he is clean. His hair is combed, his clothes are laundered and his teeth are white and shining. His hygiene is better than some other able bodied Chinese adults.

I asked the father if other disabled children are as well taken care of as their son. He seemed to think most Chinese take very good care of their disabled children. Also, they say the public has been good to them. Their son has always had friends and when they must travel or go out, there are plenty of hands willing to help. People are kind to him. And the government provides a wheelchair and a monthly stipend to help pay the bills.

 

 

The son never went to school, but he can speak well and can read a few characters. He likes to watch the news and can understand everything he hears.

Photo: egorgrebnev

He shows us he has a kind heart. When I ask him if he wants to travel anywhere, he says he loves life right at home and has no desire to leave.  

 “You don’t want to go anywhere at all?” I ask again.

“No.”

His mother overhears the question and laughs.

“He is lying. He is trying to protect us. He wants to go to many places but knows we can’t take him. So he tells us he likes life at home so he doesn’t break our hearts.”

The mother laughs and the son blushes, showing that he is shy as well as selfless.

But there is one cloud of discontent that looms over the family. A developer wants the land underneath their apartment, and has already purchased most of the apartments in the building. (Hence the stripped building and the pile of rubble.)

Photo: mscitykitty1

At that time, the family had only been offered a fraction of what their tiny apartment was worth.

When they were telling us the story, my interpreter gasped in disbelief. She asked me if I’d ever heard of such a thing. I told her I did.

 “Oh, many Americans know of this. This happens all over China, as far as we know. Rich developer pays some government official that will approve the land deal, and the people on the land have to either move or accept whatever money is given them and move out. The developer develops the land, builds more expensive buildings, and rich people move in.”

Her ignorance was just one example of government censorship.

When she told them what I said, they nodded their head as if to say that was their situation. They also said that the media in our city had been paid off by the developer. They also said that when they turned to the police, they were sympathetic, but the police also had no where to turn. The bad guys were too big to chase.

But who knows what’s true. I didn’t make any calls to verify the story; I would like to keep my visa. But the family kept the fight up, and in the end, the developers did eventually offer a very fair price for their apartment.

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