Living Alone at Leper’s Village

Leaning on a wooden door, 72-year-old Lin Mushen had been sitting alone on a stool for the whole afternoon on a recent January day. The setting sunlight penetrated trees, then lay on his room. He grasped the door, and struggled with his disabled body to stand up. It’s time for him to make supper.

“I do the same thing repeatedly every day. I know exactly what I would do at each moment of the day,” he said, staring at the mountain that was not far away, sheltering half of the setting sun.

Lin caught leprosy in his early 30s. It was a disease that could not be cured at that time in China. As a result, he was sent to a remote village in a mountain of Jie Dong City, where he has lived for more than four decades.

43 elderly men, who also had leprosy before, lived in two public buildings in the village. All of them were away from their families’ company, although they had recovered from the disease. Everyone had his own room, or shared a room with another man. Lin lived on the first floor of the first building.

Lin grew up in a family with a fair fortune. When the Cultural Revolution broke out, the government alleged that his families were the capitalists who would threaten the integrity of the nation. Red Guards rushed into Lin’s house and plundered everything he owned.

“Some teased me while some threw things at me, they even beat me fiercely. But I didn’t care about what they thought of me , ” Lin said. “I was the capitalist? So what!”

“They are stupid,” he spat on the ground and said.

During that period, the ones who ran private businesses would be undoubtedly excluded by society, but Lin insisted on stowing away to Singapore, which was called Nanyang by locals, to conduct business. He only took two trousers and one T-shirt and soon established his own company there in the 1960s.

He was diagnosed with leprosy when he was 30. Shortly afterwards he was sent to the village where he lived now.

“I even hadn’t got married. I hadn’t had my children,” he said, lowering his head.

Under depression and desperation, he stepped into the village. As he stood at the building he was going to live in, an old man passed by him with a strange look. He thought the man was looking down on him with disdain. He heavily beat him without any hesitation. The other men were watching them. Lin knew that from then on, no one dared to bully him.

Things went as he thought. The other men in the village seldom visited him, even though there was just a few meters’ distance between the rooms. Lin enjoyed his life without their interruption.

Lin would stay at his room all day long and all year around. He seldom went down the mountain. Occasionally he would put on layers of clothes, and walk strenuously down the mountain. He had muscular atrophy and skin eruptions due to leprosy, and he needed to make great efforts to balance his body.

Once Lin went to a market at the foot of the mountain. He wanted to buy some potatoes from a peddler. The peddler talked cheerfully with him. He asked Lin where he lived. Lin pointed to the village and said that he lived there. The peddler soon turned a frightened look, packed his vegetables as quickly as possible, and ran away.

“People keep talking and pointing at me. I really can’t stand how they look at me. It’s terrible,” Lin said.

Even though he had recovered after several years’ therapy, he still lived in the village, rather than went home. He said he was afraid of social stress. He felt comfortable living in the village surrounded by the mountains and trees. He thought living there was more secure.

Now he had lived in the village for nearly half of a century. However, he seldom talked to the other old men.

“If I make friends with them, they will ask me for money because they are poor,” he said.

In fact, all the old men in the village received a monthly allowance of 200 yuan (30 USD) from the local government. The allowance was not enough when they fell sick and needed to pay for medical bills.

Lin had a brother who was said to be an official with a high salary. When he lacked money, his brother would give him “lots of money”. Thus Lin didn’t worry about living expenses. He proudly said he was the wealthiest man in the village.

There was only one old man in the village he treated as a friend. It was Zhou Shenglin who used to share a room with him.

Lin treasured Zhou very much. Once Zhou’s health situation was so bad that he needed transfusion every day. At one midnight, Zhou had a heart attack. He could not say any word but patted on his bed. As soon as Lin realized it, he rushed to a clinic which was 10-minutes’ walk away and asked the doctors for help. The accident happened so suddenly that he forgot to put on the shoes and thus ran on the mountain road barefoot. Finally Zhou survived.

But he didn’t live long after the accident. He died of heart failure a month afterwards. Lin’s eyes were filled with tears when he recalled it.

“I had asked some good doctors to check him with my brother’s help. But it didn’t help,” he said, hands wiping away the tears.

After Zhou’s death, his bed was moved out of the room. Lin bought a television. When he felt lonely, he would turn on the TV and watch some opera shows. He still kept silence to the other old men.

“Nothing accompanies me but this television,” he said.

As time passed by, Lin’s health worsened. He would not do the farm work at the garden nearby any more. His garden had been abandoned for two years.

“Every day I carefully look at the sun when it goes up or down. I am always afraid that I cannot open my eyes to see it the next day,” Lin said, sighing.

Article by Zhanting (Cathy) He 何展婷 Photo by Qingrou Tang.