Over the past decade, Wu Sheng-hui (吳勝輝), 54, has done everything he can to “seize the moment” and repair the nation’s roads, saying that he hopes his actions help provide safer roads for everyone.
The Changhua County resident said he used to work as a solderer in a factory, but one day found himself unable to lift his hands above his shoulders. He was eventually diagnosed with neck arthritis.
The condition prevented him from manual labor and he turned to business, but suffered many failures, Wu said, adding that he was reduced to living off borrowed money.
Photo: Liu Hsiao-hsin, Taipei Times
Wu said he contemplated suicide due to the mounting financial pressure of various loans, but he felt it would been too selfish to just “leave,” as he still had a family to provide for.
Despite the hardships, Wu said he thought: “It cannot get any worse than this,” and he sold some farmland to pay off his debts.
He also started to sell fuel additives to factories.
The sale of the land and the success of his additives sales brought Wu away from the brink of despair, and he decided to devote himself to volunteering, he said.
“Life is short,” Wu said, adding that this was a lesson he learned after his diagnosis.
After thinking hard about what he wanted to do, he thought of the nation’s uneven and pothole-ridden roads, and decided he would fix them and make them safer.
Wu said he made a deal with some sales representatives, whereby he sold them fuel additives at cost, and they sold him asphalt at cost.
One owner of an asphalt factory told him to “take as much as he needed” after learning that Wu was purchasing the asphalt to pave roads of his own volition, he said.
It is a good thing he does not have to reach higher than his shoulders to pave roads, Wu said.
Wu said his activities initially depended on where he went, and he fixed roads wherever he encountered problems, whether it was in New Taipei City’s Tucheng District (土城) or Chiayi County’s mountainous areas.
Wu said his activities began to be centered around Changhua County after he became acquainted with Sioushuei Township (秀水) representative Liang Shu-chuan (梁淑娟), who would inform him of roads that needed fixing.
Wu said he used to blame fate for his hardships, but now feels that “as long as you keep a positive attitude in the face of hardship, your luck will change.”
He said that his happiest moment working on the roads was when he was thanked by a passing driver, who told Wu that the pothole he was filling in had caused many crashes.
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