Heart to Heart- Jingdezhen Trip

On the weekend which began on April 11th, I set out with a group of 12 other women who are volunteers for Heart to Heart, to travel to Jingdezhen in order to accomplish two things: visit four former heart surgery patients, and pay a visit to three schools. Although the primary function of the organization is to raise funds (primarily through the sale of bears - I've written about this before (see here)- and now some jewelry) to pay for surgery for Chinese children with heart defects, we also collect clothing to distribute to the local charities, make toiletry kits for the patients to take home, and sometimes direct funding to worthy projects such as libraries for remote elementary schools. Shanghai expatriate community connections, and the American Women's club provided enough funding to start three libraries.

Friday morning, we met super early to load the bus with the bags of clothing, our suitcases, and us. Eight hours later, we arrived at the hotel, where we quickly checked in and reloaded on a smaller bus to go out to the country to visit both schools and ex-patients. The whole weekend was a getting on and off the bus until we arrived back in Shanghai Sunday night around 7:00 p.m.

The ex-patients were seen in their own homes. All of them seem to be recovering quite well; one of them has even grown a few inches. Their living conditions were as I expected them; there were many people to a home, their houses were sparsely furnished with older furniture and there were few luxuries. Clearly, they are poor- none of them have the 44000.00 to give their beloved children a life saving operation. However, because most of them live in agricultural areas, they can grow their own food and thus appear to have enough to eat. There wasn't the abject poverty that we see here in the city poor.

I took no photos of their homes. I was unable to walk through their houses with my camera; I felt as though it was an invasion of their privacy and pride. Others took photos and will be using them to show their wealthy (by comparison) friends the standard of living, in the hopes that it will result in increased funding. I think that all of these children deserve funding for their heart operation, and photos of their homes are irrelevant. People should donate because this is worthy cause, because this surgery changes the lives of these small human beings who through no fault of their own were born with a flawed heart, and because it changes the lives of their parents too.



The schools were quite a different experience. We visited all three schools on the Saturday. The children at each school were waiting on either side of the main road into the school and greeted the bus load of women with chants of "Warm welcome to you". Every school had set up a table for the guests of honor and then sometimes had a seating arrangements for the rest of us. Speeches were made, and cheques for the libraries were given. Then the fun actually began.


Each of the women on the had brought with them small toys, candies, balls and an assortment of gifts for the children as well as a wish to hug and hold the children. When it was appropriate, we distributed this to them. Some of the women were swarmed. With so little disposable income in their families, it is possible to believe that new objects, and those destined for fun were pretty rare in their world. We all have incredible photos of the children, the scrambles and the school.


As a last word on the trip, I would like to show you a couple of photographs taken at the school. The photo of the library was taken at the first school. They used the funding to buy the books as well as build shelves; prior to this donation, there were no books in the school at all. Thanks to the gift, the new was graced with a number of books as well as a computer and printer. The second photo was taken at the same school and demonstrates the age and condition of their desks (note that they sit on narrow bench like seats). It is very likely that their parents sat at the same desks.

As important as it is to fund raise for heart surgery- and it does mean the difference between life and death to these children- I can't imagine a life without books. I've walked miles (in the pouring rain) in this town to get to a used book sale- just so that I could quiet the panic inside my head as my stash of unread books became smaller. I think that $2000.00 is a small price to pay to bring stories, information and joy to a community through their children, and I might just see, with the help of others, what can be done to add to the collection of books of the three libraries we visited, or start new ones.