An 82-year-old farmer from Sinying District (新營), Greater Tainan, has been pedaling 6km to the city center on a tricycle for the past 18 years so that his wife could receive medical treatment.
Chao Shen Chin-liu (趙沈金柳), 78, has walking disabilities resulting from spinal surgery, a condition that is exacerbated by her age, and is unable to ride on a motorcycle.
In light of this, her husband, Chao Shui-sheng (趙水盛), takes her to a downtown clinic — 6km there and 6km back — whenever she needs medical treatment.
Photo: Yang Chin-cheng, Taipei Times
To enhance traffic safety as he escorts his wife, Chao Shui-sheng has placed several CDs on his tricycle’s front wheel as reflectors, along with a warning triangle reflector. Aside from this, a wicker chair was installed on the back for his wife to sit on.
Pedaling 12km may seem to be an easy task for people in good physical condition, but Chao Shui-sheng is in his 80s and has a disability certificate because of poor vision in his right eye, and weak vision in his left — so much so that everything beyond 5m is a blur.
Despite the physical barriers, Chao Shui-sheng said he did not feel tired from his long-distance pedaling.
On the couple’s cycling route to the clinic, the husband occasionally glances back to check on Chao Shen Chin-liu seated behind him. Upon their arrival at the clinic, Chao Shui-sheng reverses his tricycle to the front entrance, then lends a hand to his wife as she dismounts and proceeds into the clinic with a walking stick.
“Grandpa is very thoughtful so that grandma can have the chance to get some air outside. Remember to treat him nicely,” nurses at the clinic said to Chao Shui-sheng’s wife, adding the elderly couple share a close connection.
“So long as I can move, and can cycle, I will keep on pedaling my tricycle to transport my wife,” Chao Shui-sheng said, with the 78-year-old wife expressing gratitude to her husband for taking care of her during their 60 years of marriage.
Cho Chun-mou (周俊牟), a resident of Sinying’s Piliao Borough (埤寮), said the couple’s lifelong dedication to one another could serve as an inspiration and example to others amid the high divorce rate in Taiwanese society.
Translated by Stacy Hsu, staff writer
Police have detained a Taoyuan couple suspected of over the past two months colluding with human trafficking rings and employment scammers in Southeast Asia to send nearly 100 Taiwanese jobseekers to Cambodia. At a media briefing in Taipei yesterday, the Criminal Investigation Bureau presented items seized from the couple, including alleged victims’ passports, forged COVID-19 vaccination records, mobile phones, bank documents, checks and cash. The man, surnamed Tsai (蔡), and his girlfriend, surnamed Tsan (詹), were taken into custody last month, after police at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport stopped four jobseekers from boarding a flight to Phnom Penh, said Dustin Lee (李泱輯),
BILINGUAL PLAN: The 17 educators were recruited under a program that seeks to empower Taiwanese, the envoy to the Philippines said The Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in the Philippines on Thursday hosted a send-off event for the first group of English-language teachers from the country who were recruited for a Ministry of Education-initiated program to advance bilingual education in Taiwan. The 14 teachers and three teaching assistants are part of the Taiwan Foreign English Teacher Program, which aims to help find English-language instructors for Taiwan’s public elementary and junior-high schools, the office said. Seventy-seven teachers and 11 teaching assistants from the Philippines have been hired to teach in Taiwan in the coming school year, office data showed. Among the first group is 57-year-old
TRICKED INTO MOVING: Local governments in China do not offer any help, and Taiwanese there must compete with Chinese in an unfamiliar setting, a researcher said Beijing’s incentives for Taiwanese businesspeople to invest in China are only intended to lure them across the Taiwan Strait, after which they receive no real support, an expert said on Sunday. Over the past few years, Beijing has been offering a number of incentives that “benefit Taiwanese in name, while benefiting China in reality,” a cross-strait affairs expert said on condition of anonymity. Strategies such as the “31 incentives” are intended to lure Taiwanese talent, capital and technology to help address China’s economic issues while also furthering its “united front” efforts, they said. Local governments in China do not offer much practical
‘ORDINARY PEOPLE’: A man watching Taiwanese military drills said that there would be nothing anyone could do if the situation escalates in the Taiwan Strait Many people in Taiwan look upon China’s military exercises over the past week with calm resignation, doubting that war is imminent and if anything, feeling pride in their nation’s determination to defend itself. After a visit to Taiwan last week by US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, China has sent ships and aircraft across an unofficial buffer between Taiwan and China’s coast and missiles over Taipei and into waters surrounding the nation since Thursday last week. However, Rosa Chang, proudly watching her son take part in Taiwanese military exercises that included dozens of howitzers firing shells into the Taiwan Strait off
RSS