I’ve lived for half a century, but my recent real experience made my dream more beautiful.

In late October this year, with a mood that was hard to describe by words, I flew from Shenzhen to Kunming, the “City of Spring” and the capital of Yunnan Province.

Early next morning, we flew to a city that we had never heard of before – Lincang, an unsophisticated city with many minority habitants. We visited the local government agencies and the officials in charge, with whom we had a very good communication. On our third day in Lincang, we took a bus to Mending Town. After 6 hours of a rough bus ride up and down a bumpy mountain road, we finally arrived at Mengdin at around 2 pm. Mengdin is located at the border between China and Burma. The weather there was warmer than that in Lincang and Kunming. Accompanied by the head of the local Agriculture Department, we paid a visit to the Rehabilitation Village. The road condition to the village was even worse, and, because there were not enough government cars, the head of local Agriculture Department drove us to the village with his own car (my heart ached for his car). It was the first time that I had the opportunity to visit recovered leprosy patients in remote mountain areas, and I was able to see with my own eyes the daily life and living environment of the patients. Dr. Li provided cleaning and medical care to the patients and distributed the small gifts that we had brought to each of them. The villagers were greatly moved. For lack of physical mobility and means of transportation, it is hard for the villagers to come in contact with the outside world. Now that they were visited by friends from far away, they were so overjoyed that their faces all beamed with happiness—the kind of simple, true happiness we see in small children. The head of the local Agriculture Department said, “Have you noticed that several villagers have been moved into tears, so pleased, so happy to see you!”

We walked around the village and heard, from a distance, the sound of children reading books. When we drew closer, we saw a plain hut. A young man (should be the local teacher), with his head lowered and face expressionless, was reading a dilapidated, yellow-paged book in his hand, and a group of first- to third-graders were reading aloud, after the teacher, texts they could not understand. There were no other young people in the village except for small children living with their elderly grandparents. Fourth-graders and above have to walk two hours to attend school outside the village. How hard it is for them!

Considering how fortunate we are, we should be more grateful for all that we have. On our second night in Mengdin Town, the local officials arranged a visit for us to a nearby village, where we held a health and hygiene seminar to help people learn more about health care and family relation issues. Summoned by the head of the village, near one hundred villagers—young and old, bringing their own little stools—gathered to listen to the seminar. Before our visit, seven Chinese-Americans also came among the villagers and spoke on disease prevention, dental care, women's health care, and so on. They also taught the villagers how to care for each other and live a healthy life.

I’m very grateful for this experience, for it refreshed my view on life and my values; filled my heart with deeper gratitude; made me cherish, to a greater extent, my life and others’ lives; and instilled in me that, come what may, I must learn to bravely face it.