With tears, laughter and song, but without the now-customary heated emotions, displays of anger, slogan-chanting or altercations with police, residents of Losheng Sanatorium yesterday told their life stories at an event to launch a new book that has been written about them.
Losheng Sanatorium residents, as well as some familiar faces from the campaign to preserve the Lo-sheng Sanatorium complex in New Taipei City’s (新北市) Sinjhuang District (新莊), again gathered at the Peng-lai House, one of the buildings on the sanatorium complex, years after the government made the final decision to preserve a small part of the sanatorium complex.
However, this time they were not there to stage a protest, but to launch a 430-page book about the lives of the sanatorium’s residents and their struggle to preserve the place where they were forced to live decades ago, but which they now consider home.
Photo: Loa Iok-sin, Taipei Times.
The book features photographs of residents and of old buildings, some still standing and some that have been torn down.
Completed in the 1930s during the Japanese Colonial Period, the Losheng Sanatorium was used to isolate people with Hansen’s disease, which is also known as leprosy.
Following a decision to demolish the sanatorium complex to make room for a Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) system maintenance depot in 2002, sanatorium residents and preservationists have been on a years-long campaign to save the sanatorium as witness to the history of Taiwan’s public health.
However, the government only agreed to a compromised plan to preserve about 12 percent of the original complex, and the MRT depot construction resumed in December 2008 despite continuous protests.
“This is an interesting book, because it’s a book full of stories,” Losheng resident Tan Chai-thiam (陳再添) told the crowd at the book-launch party. “But when you read, don’t think those stories are just stories, those are our lives, those are lives that we lived — no matter how hard it was — and what you should look for is how we survived.”
Tan said it was hard to live with Hansen’s disease because patients would constantly feel pain in their joints, “but we suffered more than the physical pain — we had to suffer discrimination from not only the outside world, but even from the medical personnel within the sanatorium.”
He said those who survived sometimes decades-long stays in the sanatorium are all brave people, as a lot of people could not tolerate it and committed suicide.
Tan, 75, was discovered to have Hansen’s disease and forcefully taken from his home in 1952 when he was 16. He has been living at Losheng ever since.
Another sanatorium resident, Tang Hsiang-ming (湯祥明), echoed Tan.
“When you read the chapter about my story, you would find that some people that I mentioned wish to remain anonymous or use fake names, because, even today, they are still worried about discrimination, and would rather remain anonymous,” Tang said.
While discrimination from the outside is something common to them, Tang shared a story of how he was insulted by a nurse within the sanatorium.
He recounted that one time, his knees ached badly, so he called for help.
“I saw an off-duty nurse, I asked her to give me some painkiller. She ignored me, so I begged her, she still ignored me, but I continued to beg her,” Tang said. “Suddenly, she turned around, and told me in a cold voice: ‘You’re a patient of the dirty disease, you should just die from the pain.’”
Tang was born in 1933. He was diagnosed with Hansen’s disease and brought to the sanatorium in 1951, when he was 19.
Before he was taken away from home, Tang was a student of Taipei Municipal Chien-kuo Senior High School, the top boys’ high school in the city.
Besides the sad stories and painful experiences, Tan said, Losheng residents who survived tried to live their lives like others outside.
“We don’t just immerse ourselves in pain here, we live our lives. We smiled, we laughed, we cried, we were happy at times and sad at times,” Tan said. “There are people who are married, and sometimes, some people also got themselves involved in a love triangle.”
The book, titled Losheng: the People at No. 145 Dingjiaopo (樂生: 頂角坡一四五號的人們) was completed and published by volunteers at Losheng Sanatorium Oral History Team based on interviews that were conducted by 18 interviewers since 2007.
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