Sat, May 12, 2001 page4

• Former broker goes from moneymaker to lifesaver

  PERSONAL FULFILLMENT Zachary Tse serves as an inspiration to those whose work leave them depressed. He quit his job to help others overseas full time

  • By Monique Chu / STAFF REPORTER
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  Forty-one-year-old Zachary Tse (謝景貴) was at center stage on Thursday at a foreign ministry tea party to thank 58 charity groups and private enterprises which supplied humanitarian aid to El Salvador and India after the massive earthquakes which hit the two countries in January.

  Officials, reporters and guests all took turns to surround Tse either to take a photo with him or ask him questions about his overseas aid work. "He gave such a moving talk [on international relief work] at the Foreign Service Institute [in April]," commented a young diplomat who had attended Tse's lecture last month.

  "He showed us someone willing to transcend national boundaries to serve others in need in this global village... And he let us feel his sincerity," commented the diplomat.

  

  Zachary Tse gave up a promising career and lucrative annual income as a broker to work full-time as a humanitarian relief worker with the Buddhist Compassion Relief Tzu Chi Foundation.

  TAIPEI TIMES FILE PHOTO

  At the end of the party, a veteran foreign ministry official came to Tse, saying: "I am thinking about joining you after I retire."

  Tse, now senior supervisor at the Buddhist Compassion Relief Tzu Chi Foundation, had been unable to wait to become a full-time aid worker before he retired from his post as a broker with the internationally renowned Merrill Lynch.

  "I had worked in private banking for 10 years, and my annual income five years ago was over US$100,000. That's not bad money," the law major joked.

  "But certain fields deserve one's complete devotion, and I believe that humanitarian work is a field that merits my devoting life to it," he said.

  But, many wondered, what accounts for this transformation from professional broker with a high income to humanitarian field worker in war-torn and disaster-ravaged foreign lands? How did such a transformation take place?"

  Tse grinned, as if to mock the question that was on everybody's lips.

  "I was not crazy, nor was I dumb," he said.

  Tse said he decided to take a U-turn in his career five years ago because of Master Cheng Yen (證嚴法師), founder of the Buddhist Compassion Relief Tzu Chi Foundation in Hualien.

  "The voice spoke in my heart. I just wanted to be a good guy, but nobody told me that a good guy could be a professional good guy. And if you don't mind, I really want to tell you that it was Master Cheng Yen who inspired me," Tse said.

  "On July 19, 1990, I saw her give a talk on TV. I was alone at home but I cried. The question in my mind was: why was she, such a small, slim woman, fully devoted to [her work] simply for the sake of others instead of herself? Why couldn't I do that?" he added.

  But opposition from his father prevented him from realizing his dream of being a full-time humanitarian field worker. Only after the death of his father years later did he decide to move to Hualien and formally join the foundation as a humanitarian worker.

  In November 1997, he embarked on his first overseas mission in flood-ravaged Cambodia, delivering rice to refugees. In May 1998, he visited war-torn Afghanistan to deliver some 600kg of antibiotics to a region of about six million people where there was a shortage of such drugs.

  He also went to quake-stricken Turkey, hurricane-swept Columbia, El Salvador and Honduras, and war-torn Kosovo.

  "In Kosovo, I saw doctors from Germany, France, Belgium and even Mexico, whereas [Taiwan] had few people there. But now we have more and more people participating in international relief work," Tse said.

  Despite the severe physical demands of his work, Tse said that he at least found his heart at ease because of the genuine contentment he derives from his work.

  "Sometimes I have to get up around 4am or 5am [in the field]. Physically I get very tired, but feel at ease. In the past I felt dissatisfied as a broker and I couldn't sleep at night because I was very worried about market fluctuations," Tse said.

  Nowadays Tse finds himself laden with grief over the misfortunes of the people he meets overseas. During his trip to El Salvador, Tse turned down the foundation's offer of a return ticket to Taiwan during the Chinese New Year period.

  "I was overcome with grief. What we really wanted to do was to exercise `objectless great kindness, selfless great compassion' (無緣大慈，同體大悲). That is, how to treat these grandfathers and grandmothers despite the lack of kinship, as our own grandfathers and grandmothers," he said.

  "But 95 to 98 percent of the houses collapsed. So if they were our relatives, then our home had been reduced to that pile of debris," he said.

  "And you wanted me to return to Taiwan to sleep in a building with a roof?

  "My body might have been in a safe haven but my heart would have felt distress. So I wanted to stay," he added.

  Tse professes himself always ready for his next overseas assignment while nostalgic about his previous ones. "If you were there, you would sense that we took a lot of love there," he said.
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