Good Vision: Can One Doctor Cure a Village? Find Out On Nov 22
A little boy named Li Juncheng dreams of becoming a truck driver when he grows up, but he’s blind. The teenage Rong Rong wants to study to become an artist, but first she needs to treat the debilitating bone infection in her foot before fighting the unlikely odds of rural students making it to college. Meanwhile, her grand-mother perseveres through backbreaking labor despite her cataracts. These could be hopeless stories, if not for the efforts of Dr. Zhang, who runs a free mobile clinic in their small village in Ningxia. It’s hardly a cure-all for the hardships in their lives, but it’s a start. In her subtly quiet documentary, Restoring the Light, filmmaker Carol Liu brings us a rare open-faced look at this community, breaking our hearts about China’s starker realities while still giving us hope for change.
Here, she tells us more …
On documentaries on China
“It’s either the human rights film or the ‘China’s the next enemy’ film. Those two narratives are really dominant, so much so that I think the less sensational stories of rural China get overlooked.”
On Dr. Zhang
“He’s actually from rural Ningxia himself and came back to start the clinic. He’s sort of given up what he could have had, the good life in the city, to pursue this work. He’s a special doctor with a very unique humanitarian awareness and professionalism, made all the more rare by the current environment of Chinese healthcare today.”
On giving in China
“I do feel sometimes that I am witnessing a developing crisis of faith in human integrity. China ranks seventh to last in generosity worldwide, just below far less-resourced countries like Rwanda and Bangladesh, according to the 2010 World Giving Index. For China to mature peacefully and contribute meaningfully to the world, a greater social awareness needs to develop. In spite of all that, the response to the film and the subsequent efforts to help those in the community show that hope and compassion still thrive.”
On the fate of the young blind boy
“Li Juncheng is now attending the one special education school serving all of Ningxia province. But he’s only one kid, and there are millions of kids out there like him.”
Catch Restoring the Light and learn more about how to pitch in at the American Chamber of Commerce on Nov 22. You can read more about the night and purchase tickets here.
You can download the November issue of the Beijinger here.
NB: the Beijinger misprinted the information for this event on p64 of the November issue. It takes place on Nov 22 not Nov 21. Apologies for any inconvenience that this error has caused
