By Ma Lie and Wang Ping

XI'AN: When Wu Yaocheng received the medal of Ten Outstanding Youth Volunteers in China at the Great Hall of the People on January 19, the director of Shaanxi Youth Volunteer Medical Assistance Base for the Poor believed his enterprise was only a beginning.

In the past eight years, Wu, a demobilized soldier, who is also suffering from poverty, helped hundreds of poor patients by giving themfree medical treatment.

In 1972, Wu Yaocheng was born into a poor family with a long history of practising traditional Chinese medicine in Shanghe County of Shandong Province in East China. He studied hard at school.

However, in 1987 when Wu was 15 years old, an unexpected thing changed his life.

One autumn day that year Wu and his classmates went to an orchard next to their school and played games there. Very much attracted by the beautiful red apples on the trees, the boys picked many and broke some branches of the trees.

The headmaster was very angry when he was told that some of his students did bad things in the orchard and decided to punish the troublemakers.

He suspended classes for three days and ordered those who went to the orchard to tell him who was the head of the troublemakers.

Wu was criticized and expelled from school.

"The attack was too strong for me, a young boy to bear, I even thought to kill myself at that time," Wu recalled.

Wu was considered a thief and no other schools wanted to enroll him in his hometown. He had to stop his schooling and became a bricklayer at a construction site.

"Many people thought that I was a bad boy at that time, but I told myself that I must be a good man," Wu said.

He tried to do good things for others, even those who looked down upon him, and to show that he was not a bad boy.

One day, Wu helped an old man who got lost on the way to his daughter's home. Wu was very pleased to be called "good boy" by the old man's family.

No matter where he worked, in the village or at construction sites, Wu always tried to affect people's view of him with hard work. In daily life, he helped villagers do whatever he could, such as carrying water for the old and helping women with their harvest.

Gradually he gained people's trust. In 1990, 18-year-old Wu joined the army and went to a military hospital in Chang'an County, Shaanxi Province, in Northwest China.

In the hospital, Wu often encountered patients who could not afford medical treatment, and who had to resign themselves to living with their suffering. He thought hard about how to help the poor patients.

"I was a cook and earned only 24 yuan (US$2.90) per month in the army. I thought if I were a doctor I could help the poor patients," Wu said. "Why couldn't I learn medical skills since I was in the hospital?"

After thinking and visiting with others about it, Wu said he decided to learn acupuncture and moxibustion "because the techniques require little money, but are quite effective in treating more than 40 diseases."

But, from the day Wu decided to learn acupuncture and moxibustion, he began to encounter difficulties. As a cook and soldier in the hospital, he could only teach himself the skills after a heavy day of work.

Every night after the lights went out, Wu got up quietly and went out to read books about acupuncture and moxibustion under a street light.

Because Wu did not graduate from middle school, he could not understand the theory of acupuncture and moxibustion in Chinese medical books. So he often went to learn from the doctors in the hospital whenever he had time; he practised acupuncture on his own body.

"Once I put a needle on a wrong point and that made my arms and legs ache and weak. What's worse, I could not take the needle out with my hand. At last, I took it out with my teeth," Wu said.

Wu paid a high price for studying ancient Chinese medical skills. He often slept for just three or four hours at night. His weight decreased from about 67 kilograms down to less than 50 kilograms.

But his great efforts paid off. After a year of hard study of medical skills needed, Wu was ready to take on treating patients.

His efforts drew attention from the hospital leaders who organized a number of medical experts to examine his skills. His work was appraised highly, and he was transferred to work as a doctor of acupuncture and moxibustion. Patients all praised his work.

In 1992, when Wu was about to be demobilized from the military hospital and go back to his hometown, many of his patients pleaded with him to stay.

"When I went to say goodbye to my patients in the wards, an old patient said, 'Do you have the heart to leave us when we are still suffering, Doctor Wu?' This made me feel reluctant to leave," Wu said.

Wu stayed and later he was assigned to a clinic in a large military enterprise in Chang'an County.

In the course of his medical practice, Wu came to learn that the medical system in China is far from perfect.

Workers at State enterprises, governmental agency and institute staffers are accounted for within the medical system, but farmers, especially poor farmers, are not. Often a farmer's family would be relegated to poverty if a family member came to suffer from disease.

Thus Wu made up his mind to open a clinic for the poor and offer them free medical treatment.

In 1993, Wu left the military institute and opened his own clinic in Chang'an County.

Wu did not charge patients for medical treatment at his clinic, except for a 1 yuan (US$0.12) per patient registration fee. Each patient got as many acupuncture or moxibustion treatments as they needed until they were cured.

In the past eight years, Wu has relinquished more than 200,000 yuan (US$24,090) in medical treatment fees, based on standard charges at ordinary hospitals.

Wu said a registration fee provides enough cash for him to operate an acupuncture and moxibustion clinic, because they require very little money. He said the rent on the house he uses as a clinic is low.

Wu said he hates to take money from poor patients, hence his clinic has been dubbed the "Clinic for the Poor" among the local people. A board bearing these words hangs on the wall at his clinic. Alongside this board are 87 silk banners given by the patients who have recovered after receiving treatment from Wu.

The board was given by Han Yuqin, an elderly woman farmer who suffered from a protrusion of an intervertebral disc for years.

Wu met her in 1991, when he was still in the military hospital. Many times, Wu carried Han on his back when he took her home after her acupuncture or moxibustion treatments.

Before Han recovered, Wu was demobilized from the military hospital. However, he continued to treat his patient. Han finally recovered.

Seeing Wu was busy treating poor patients, but taking little from them, Han thought of doing something to help Wu.

"I have no money and I have no skills to treat patients. The only thing I could do was tell others Wu is a good doctor who whole-heartedly helps the poor by using this board," Han said.

Han was only one example. In the past eight years, Wu has treated thousands of poor patients who have no money to see doctors. And he has also provided them with more than 15,000 free-of-charge cards he made for poor patients to encourage them to use his clinic.

However, his philanthropic acts have not been understood by everyone. His wife, a worker in another military institute, thought him foolish to relinquish so much money. She left Wu with his two-year-old daughter in 1996.

"I was disheartened after the divorce and was down with an illness for two months. I thought hard whether it was worth such a loss in my life," Wu said.

But he did not turn back. He continued to help the poor with free medical treatments and enlarged his service.

In 1997, Wu began to pass on his acupuncture skills to younger people, also free of charge. The teacher had a peculiar requirement for the students, they all had to be poor.

"The young can lift themselves out of poverty if they have certain skills, and I think the poor boys are more hardworking and have more sympathy for the patients. I do not want them to repay me, I hope they will help others with their newly acquired skills," Wu said.

In October 1997, the Shaanxi Association of Youth Volunteers turned Wu's clinic into a provincial Youth Volunteer Medical Assistance Base for the Poor and invited a number of noted Chinese medical experts to serve as consultants at the base.

"Although there are still a lot of difficulties, I will continue to try to help the poor. I hope to establish more clinics for the poor in China, and to cure more patients who do not have enough money to go to a hospital," Wu said.

(From China Daily)