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Handicapped writer turns tragedy into commitment

With another person's help, Jackie Chiang (江偉君) struggles to negotiate a flight of stairs in the legislature's compound.

The wheelchair-bound 32-year-old visited the Legislative Yuan yesterday to demonstrate to the media one of the many difficulties the physically challenged face on a daily basis, such as going to the bathroom and moving up and down stairs.

To share her experience as a person living with a handicap, Chiang -- a regional director of an international education center -- launched a new book yesterday.

Princess in a Wheelchair encourages the physically challenged and those suffering from depression to manage their emotions and adopt a positive attitude toward life.

"I realized that if my depression was resulting from a lack of shoes [for walking], I should look at those without any feet," she said.

Chiang's publisher, Hsieh Hsiu-li (謝秀麗), who injured her spine during a mountain-climbing trip on Yangmingshan 24 years ago and met Chiang at the same physical-therapy center, said that her story was uplifting and had given herself a lot of hope.

"I was in so much pain that at some moments I wanted to end my life," Hsieh said. "I even once had the suicide note ready."

Growing up in Yunlin County, Chiang was sent by her parents to Japan to study hotel management when she was 17 and to the US to study marketing and e-commerce at California Polytechnic State University at the age of 20.

Her life took a tragic turn on March 14, 1998, when she and two of her friends rented a car to drive from Seattle to Vancouver, where they were to spend their spring break.

One of the friends fell asleep at the wheel and the vehicle, traveling at high speed, veered off the road and rolled five times before landing upside down in a ditch.

Chiang was rushed to a nearby hospital and diagnosed with spinal damage. She had been paralyzed from her waist down, and would be confined to a wheelchair for the rest of her life.

"I kept asking myself: `Why me? why me?'" she said. "I suffered from severe depression for about two years and the only thing I could do was cry."

After the accident, she began to re-learn the simple daily routines most people take for granted -- cooking, driving, doing the laundry and bathing.

Determination came to help Chiang cope with these daily chores, but not everything came so easily.

Many parents of potential boyfriends hesitated to let their sons go out with her, let alone allow them to consider marrying her.

Before the accident, one of Chiang's girlfriends used to joke about how long it would take her to walk from her classroom to the parking lot -- because she would be stopped all the time by young men who wanted to talk to her.

"But after the accident, it would take me only two minutes to reach the handicapped parking space," she said. "I thought I was not worthy of being loved or to love."

She was encouraged by her then boyfriend, however, to take part in volunteer work and beauty pageants. Chiang, who is fluent in Mandarin, English and Japanese, was crowned Miss Taiwanese USA in 2000.

During her tenure as pageant queen, Chiang returned to Taiwan to promote clean elections in 2000 and to lobby for amendments to the Welfare Regulations for the Mentally and Physically Disadvantaged (殘障福利法) in 2001.

Then, after spending three months wondering whether she should return home for good to work, she eventually decided to give it a try.

Now, seven years after the accident, Chiang has managed to walk out of the darkest period of her life, a time marked by self-pity, anger, fear and frustration.

Her new mission in life, she said, "is to help more people and the physically challenged live in a much more handicapped-friendly environment."
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