Ramon Magsaysay awardee Chen Shu-Jiu of Taiwan. INQUIRER PHOTO/RAFFY LERMA
Every day for the past four decades, 60-year-old Chen Shu-Jiu wakes up at 2:30 a.m. to set up her stall at the busy central market in Taitung, a county in eastern Taiwan. With her fresh merchandise—about a hundred varieties of vegetables—towering over her, she works until dark.
After a backbreaking day at the market, Chen returns to her modest home and listens to Buddhist teachings on the radio before getting some shuteye.
By living a Spartan lifestyle, Chen has been able through the years to give away some NT$7 million (US$320,000) out of her modest earnings to various charities engaged in early childhood care and children’s education.
Chen’s tremendous generosity has been celebrated internationally. She has been acclaimed as an inspiration and a role model, traveled to many places, walked the red carpet and met VIPs, like Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.
‘Just a vegetable seller’
On Friday, Chen accepted the Ramon Magsaysay Award, conferred on people who address issues of human development in Asia with courage and creativity and make contributions that have transformed their societies for the better.
Chen and the five other laureates for 2012 received their awards in ceremonies at the Philippine International Convention Center in Pasay City.
But the unassuming Chen remains indifferent to the accolades she has received for her philanthropy since she was first featured in a local paper two years ago, maintaining that she’s just an ordinary vegetable seller.
As much as possible, she doesn’t want to be away too long from her market stall, which she took over after her father died some 20 years ago.
“I don’t feel like I’m a hero or a great person whatsoever because I don’t feel like I’ve done much. I just feel like I’m still that vegetable vendor at the market,” Chen said, speaking through a translator.
Pure altruism
But to others, especially those who have been touched by her unselfishness, she has done great things worthy of emulation and praise.
In electing Chen to receive this year’s prize, the Ramon Magsaysay Foundation said it “recognizes the pure altruism of her giving, which reflects a deep, consistent, quiet compassion, and has transformed the lives of the numerous Taiwanese she has unselfishly helped.”
Over the past two decades, she has donated almost all her personal earnings to a Buddhist monastery, Fo Guang Shan, to enable it to finance a school, and to an orphanage, Kids Alive International, a Christian mission devoted to the rescue of orphans and vulnerable children, to provide them with food and education and see to their spiritual and emotional needs.
Through her donations to her alma mater, Ren-Ai Elementary School, she has also helped finance the establishment of a fully equipped library.
Live a simple life
But how can one simple vegetable seller, who makes marginal profits, give so much to others?
For Chen, the answer is simple: Live only on the most basic things.
She said that NT$100 (about US$3) was all she needed every day for food and other essentials. The rest, she gives away.
“If you keep too much money in your pocket, you get a lot of temptation to spend it [on things you don’t need],” she said with a chuckle.
Even before receiving the $50,000 cash prize that came with the Ramon Magsaysay certificate and a medallion bearing the likeness of the late Philippine President, she has already decided to donate the prize money to a general hospital in Taitung for the construction of an intensive care unit.
Upon her return to her country, she will personally make the donation in Taipei, where the main branch of Mackay Memorial Hospital is located. It is the only tertiary teaching hospital in Taitung.
An early life lesson
As the eldest daughter of vegetable vendors who worked hard to put food on the table for a family of eight, Chen learned the value of perseverance and self-denial early in life.
She was 13 years old when she came face to face with what it meant to have so little in life.
In 1964, her mother developed complications from a pregnancy that sent her father desperately knocking on neighbors’ doors for money for her treatment. Whatever her father was able to raise was not enough to save her mother.
After her mother’s death, Chen had to stop schooling to help her father sell vegetables at the market. She had just finished Grade 6 then.
“At that time, I felt like people looked down on the poor and that money was very important and very useful so I felt I must do everything I can to earn more money,” she said.
With five brothers and sisters to help support, she didn’t hesitate to give up her education.
Unexpected act of generosity
“I didn’t really think about myself at the time. All I knew was I had to help out in every way I could in order to provide for my family because I had a lot of younger brothers and sisters that I needed to provide for,” said Chen, who has never married.
Five years later, another tragedy struck the family. One of her younger brothers caught a disease that depleted even more the household’s meager finances. The family could not afford to pay for the brother’s medical care.
Having learned about the plight of Chen’s family through a local newspaper, her teachers and classmates at her old school initiated a fund drive to help with her brother’s medical treatment. But the treatment was just too costly. The donations failed to save her brother’s life.
Chen keeps close to her heart that unexpected act of generosity shown by her teachers and classmates. She draws strength and inspiration everyday from that episode in her life.
“It’s because I received help when I was young so now I always think about others before I think about myself,” she said.