The Kindness of a Chinese Immigrant

By staff reporter FU ZHIBIN

Mary with the Uygur children she helped in Xinjiang.

On September 10, 2002 Mary He was thirty thousand miles above the Pacific Ocean, en route from Vancouver to Beijing. But the Chinese capital was not her final destination. Chinese-born Mary He, who now lives in Canada, took a 4-hour connecting flight to Urumqi, and then another 2-hour flight to Kashi in western China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. She spent the third day of her journey on a coach, traveling for more than 10 hours across the Gobi desert to Hotan. There, she continued her 30-year search for a Uygur boy named Ircken.

Mary’s adventure began one sunny Sunday morning back in 1972, when she took her six-year-old daughter, Weining He, to visit the Temple of Earth in Beijing. There they met a four-year-old Uygur boy. Although the boy could not talk, the two children played happily together in the park. The two parents got talking, and the boy’s father explained that his son, named Ircken, could not speak -- because he had a benign tumor in his throat since infancy. The father was taking Ircken to the Beijing Union Hospital -- considered the best in China - to undergo an operation. Little Ircken was to have tracheotomy, a hole cut in his throat, to help him breath. The father took a tiny black-and-white photo of the two kids and Mary, and gave it to her as a keepsake. Mary and her daughter returned to the park many times, hoping to meet the boy again, but they never did.

Eight years later, Mary moved to Canada with her husband and daughter. She still kept the photo with her, as she could not forget the brave little boy or stop wondering if he was still alive. In 2000, Weining qualified as a doctor at the University of British Columbia. Again, Mary thought of Ircken. Now that Weining was a trained doctor, perhaps there was something we can do to help him. So the two made plans to look for Ircken. She had the photo enlarged, and mailed it to the address in Hotan that Ircken’s father had given them all those years before, but received no response. Later, Mary wrote to the local government, hoping to find clues that might reveal Ircken and his father’s whereabouts. Again her efforts were in vain. The area had seen tremendous changes in the thirty years, making it difficult to locate a person with naught but a thirty-year-old photograph, but Mary still prayed that one day she might discover what had happened to the Uygur boy.

Then, in 2002, Mary and her husband Peter were invited to the October 1 National Day Banquet, held by China’s central government. She decided to use the opportunity to go to Xinjiang by herself to find Ircken. So in mid-September that year, Mary set out on her long journey to Hotan. When she arrived, she started to play detective, talking to many old villagers whilst showing them the tattered old photo. Eventually, one of them pointed her in the direction of a local elementary school. There, Mary saw six teachers chatting amongst themselves. She approached them, with the photo held up high. One teacher slowly walked towards her saying, “Do you know the boy in this photo?” Sensing that her search was almost over, Mary stammered, “Yes…are you…Ircken?” The now 34-year-old Ircken responded with a teary-eyed hug. “I have been looking for you for 30 years, and finally I’ve found you,” chocked Mary. Ircken responded huskily, “My mother is Uygur, but now I have another, a Han mother who lives in Canada.”

The two talked for hours. Ircken told Mary that he had been working as a Chinese teacher in the school. After their meeting in the park in Beijing, he had undergone fourteen operations on his throat within two year. He was finally able to speak his first word, “papa”, after an operation by a specialist in Shanghai. At Lunchtime, the children rushed out of their classrooms, and gazed shyly at Mary. About to take their photo, she noticed that many of them were barefoot in the cold autumn wind, and her heart ached for them.

The day Mary arrived at the school happened to be tuition fee collection day. Although the fees were just 6 yuan (equivalent to 1 Canadian dollar) for half a year, many of the children’s families were hard-pressed to find it. Children brought their teachers a couple of cents, or sometimes eggs or walnuts, paying it off bit by bit. And although on low wage themselves, the teachers often helped the children cover their tuition fees. Mary also noticed that the local kids lived mainly on nang, a hard, dry piece of pastry, dipped in water to make it soft enough to eat. None of their families could afford meat, milk or vegetables. Shocked at their impoverished state, she immediately donated 300 yuan to the school headmaster, telling him that she would send more when she got back to Canada.

The next day, she brought 300 big bars or chocolate to the school for the children and teachers. “It is better that you don’t eat this now,” Mary advised them, “bring it back home and share a little with your brothers and sisters after school.” The children nodded in agreement, but as soon as the school bell rang, they all ran outside, quickly peeled off the wrappers and wolfed down the chocolate.

While sitting in on Ircken’s class, Mary noticed that his voice was very hoarse, and that he sometimes had to shout to be heard. She went to the county leader and asked him to let Ircken change jobs, and thus save his injured throat. The kindly county leader accepted her suggestion, and Ircken was sent to work in the local education bureau.

Before leaving Ircken and the primary school, Mary left 1,000 yuan for the children. On the way back to Beijing, she stayed overnight in Urumqi. There, she changed her accommodation from the 5-star hotel she had reserved to a small inn costing just 15 yuan per night. She wanted to save more money for the poor children of Hotan. Back in Canada, Mary could not erase the image of the poor barefoot children from her mind. Aware that it was starting to snow there, she transferred 10,000 yuan to Hotan County so that the students could buy padded clothes, warm pants and shoes.

In early 2003, Mary was flicking through a local Chinese community newspaper, the Singtao Daily, when she saw a photo of Chinese premier Wen Jiabao talking with farmers. The picture inspired her to write to Premier Wen and tell him of her experiences in Xinjiang. In April that year, she sent her letter to Beijing. The following September, she learned that Xinjiang Autonomous Region was to allocate an annual sum of 190 billion yuan to the region’s 2 million poor students, and that all children in the farming and herding areas would receive free education.

The 2002 Xinjiang trip left a deep impression on Mary. She couldn’t forget the innocent smiles and expressions on the children’s faces, or that the headmaster of Ircken’s school had told her that his school was not the poorest in Xinjiang. Schools in Tarwakule, 100 kilometers away from Hotan County, and surrounded by deserts, being the poorest. Mary’s philanthropic instincts sent her to Xinjiang again in September 2004. Driving out to Tarwakule, through the dust and sands that blotted out the sun, Mary dreaded to think just how backward the place might be. She soon found out. Upon meeting the kids, she gave them all the candies and bread she had brought over from Canada, and bought even more from the local shops. Then, she measured all the students in the school, and faxed their clothes sizes to a garment factory in Urumqi, capital of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, and ordered warm clothes and shoes for each and every one of them. The day she donated them to the school, the headmaster was deeply moved, and he made a short speech of thanks: “Though Mary left her homeland many years ago, she retains a deep love for our country. This she showed us by coming to Hotan and to Tawakule to help our children. To repay her kindness, we should get the best education we can. She is living proof that the Han and Uygur people are part of the same family.”

Mary also expressed her thoughts in the simple donation ceremony, “I consider all the poor Uygur students and orphans as my own children. Though I live in Canada, my heart is with you in this desert. This is my second hometown, and I will always be thinking of you.”

During her second trip to Xinjiang, Mary visited many local families, leaving money and clothes with each of them. When she left, an old farmer approached her and said, “Please don’t forget us.” Mary will never forget Hotan, or the children. She feels a maternal bond with Ircken, – and with all the Uygur children that she met– and is always ready to offer them her help.