How an act of kindness had helped changed the life of this kid, and helped him grow up to be a good man, from the Front Page Sections, translated…
Lu who was recently voted as the Taiwanese community chapter manager in Huizhou, Guangdong, lived in poverty in his younger years, in his third grade year, the female high school student, “Gui-Juan Kwan” from the Ren-Ai club from Huanan High School gave him a study guide, and he’d used the study guide, and learned the course, his grades improved, and this book became the turning point of his young life.
Almost forty years later, he’d wanted to find the high school girl who’d given him this book, to thank her for the gift, to help him see the light in his life, and invited her to go to Huizhou to the inauguration of his position.
Lu said, that there was a passage that Guan wrote to encourage him on the back pages of the study book. It was 1979, the girl must’ve been in her second or last year of high school, and, he believed her to be close to age sixty, and lives in Chiayi, the two of them only met up once. Back then, as the girl heard his story, she’d cried out of compassion for him, it’d left a deep imprint on him.
Lu lived in the broke down dorms of the farm in Gongguan, Chiayi when he was a child, at age one and a half, his father died from a car accident, the following year, his mother remarried, his four older sister and he went to live with his paternal grandparents, his grandfather was ill and weak, his grandmother worked as a matchmaker, to keep the household economics, once a bride ran off, and his grandmother was sued for fraud, she’d served for six months in jail, and the family was without food on the tables.
Back then he could only go to the trash dump in the city of Chiayi to pick up the recycled tin cans to trade it for cash to make the ends meet, and the only pickled meat had rotted away and maggots were growing inside, and he could only pick out the maggots with the toothpicks, and eat the food still. Once he’d tripped and fallen as he was picking up the cans for recycling, and stayed at home to tend to his own injuries. “Gui-Juan Kwan” visited him at home, and gave him the study guides as a gift, so he could learn on his own. Originally, he’d missed too many classes that he couldn’t make the grades and was made to stay in the same grade again, but he’d made the third highest grade on his final exams, the school didn’t object to him entering the next grade level, and it’d helped opened up that door to knowledge that he now had, then, he’d finished his college years successfully, part-timing through school.
His four older sisters all gave up on schooling, to work, to put him through his education; and now, he’d become rich in business, other than being a long-term sponsor of the Taiwan fund for children and family, along with help fund the education of children in China, he’d wanted to find the teenage girl in his younger years who’d helped turned his life around, “Gui-Juan Kwan”.
This just showed, how someone’s kindness had touched this man’s life, and now, as he became capable, he’d started, sponsoring children who were in need, helping them receive a proper education, and he’d wanted to find this older girl who was in her high school years, who’d given him that study guide that he’d learned from, that’s helped him turn his own life around.
Life, the Obstacle Course 