Ruth Lin, a medical missionary who came to Taiwan half a century ago and settled here, passed away on Monday at the age of 95.
Lin was born Ruth Duncan in Lubbock, Texas, in 1921. After graduating with a nursing degree, she went to Qinghai Province in China, where she helped establish a hospital that provided medical services to Tibetan people and trained nurses.
Unexpectedly, she and other nurses working on the Tibetan Plateau — “the roof of the world” — were confined to the hospital for seven months by the Chinese Communists, after which she left China in a dejected mood and came to Taiwan.
Thanks to her faith, she firmly believed that God would set out a path for her to follow.
In 1952, she went to the Happy Mount sanatorium in what is now New Taipei City’s Bali District (八里) to care for leprosy patients. As fate would have it, she met Frank Lin (林澄輝), the son of a wealthy family in Tainan, and, after overcoming numerous difficulties, they became husband and wife.
In those days, most people were terrified of leprosy. One day in what is today Tainan’s Jiali District (佳里), Ruth Lin saw a leprosy sufferer in his 40s who was shut away in a little room with bars on the windows, like an animal, and could never set foot outside.
In 1956, the Lins established a special dermatological clinic in Tainan that was devoted to treating leprosy patients. For more than a decade, Ruth Lin took in and treated more than 1,000 leprosy patients in Tainan, while patiently spreading healthcare education in the hope of removing the stigma attached to the disease.
The Lins met each other, fell in love and lived together as husband and wife for half a century. Having no children, they depended on each other in their old age. In 2005, they selflessly donated their home and NT$60 million (US$1.8 million at current exchange rates) in savings to turn the building into a care center, and in 2011 they again donated land valued at more than NT$200 million, and NT$130 million in property, to build a center to provide elderly people with high-quality care.
Someone once asked Ruth Lin where she was from, to which she, with her high-profile nose, fair hair and blue eyes, replied in fluent Hoklo (also known as Taiwanese) that she was Taiwanese through and through.
The Lins were industrious and frugal all throughout their lives, using their medical expertise to help people and care for the most needy patients, and they gave all their wealth to the nation.
In 2007, then-president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) presented the Lins with the Order of Brilliant Star with Violet Grand Cordon in recognition of their outstanding contributions to the development of the nation and Ruth Lin was given an award for her contributions to medicine.
There is only thing that can really heal physical and mental illnesses and pain, and that is selfless love. Taiwan, luckily, has never been lacking in loving people. Now Ruth Lin has left this world and gone to her home in heaven. Having traveled from the US to China and then to Taiwan, she devoted the golden years of her life to Taiwan and married a Taiwanese.
She was indeed a true Taiwanese — and perhaps she loved Taiwan even more than some Taiwanese do. She devoted her life to caring for the old, the weak, the sick and disabled people.
Taiwanese are proud of Ruth Lin and grateful for her life-long contributions to the nation.
Chang Chao-hsuan is a family physician.
Translated by Julian Clegg
What began on Feb. 28 as a military campaign against Iran quickly became the largest energy-supply disruption in modern times. Unlike the oil crises of the 1970s, which stemmed from producer-led embargoes, US President Donald Trump is the first leader in modern history to trigger a cascading global energy crisis through direct military action. In the process, Trump has also laid bare Taiwan’s strategic and economic fragilities, offering Beijing a real-time tutorial in how to exploit them. Repairing the damage to Persian Gulf oil and gas infrastructure could take years, suggesting that elevated energy prices are likely to persist. But the most
In late January, Taiwan’s first indigenous submarine, the Hai Kun (海鯤, or Narwhal), completed its first submerged dive, reaching a depth of roughly 50m during trials in the waters off Kaohsiung. By March, it had managed a fifth dive, still well short of the deep-water and endurance tests required before the navy could accept the vessel. The original delivery deadline of November last year passed months ago. CSBC Corp, Taiwan, the lead contractor, now targets June and the Ministry of National Defense is levying daily penalties for every day the submarine remains unfinished. The Hai Kun was supposed to be
Most schoolchildren learn that the circumference of the Earth is about 40,000km. They do not learn that the global economy depends on just 160 of those kilometers. Blocking two narrow waterways — the Strait of Hormuz and the Taiwan Strait — could send the economy back in time, if not to the Stone Age that US President Donald Trump has been threatening to bomb Iran back to, then at least to the mid-20th century, before the Rolling Stones first hit the airwaves. Over the past month and a half, Iran has turned the Strait of Hormuz, which is about 39km wide at
There is a peculiar kind of political theater unfolding in East Asia — one that would be laughable if its consequences were not so dangerous. Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) on April 12 returned from Beijing, where she met Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and spoke earnestly about preserving “peace” and maintaining the “status quo.” It is a position that sounds responsible, even prudent. It is also a fiction. Taiwan is, by any honest definition, an independent country. It governs itself, defends itself, elects its leaders, and functions as a free and sovereign democracy. Independence is not a
RSS