A Life without Limits

“Every day I see the world from a height of 100 centimeters. My wheelchair is my feet, carrying me anywhere I want to go. Even if I only have the perspect­ive of 100 centimeters, I want to live to be a 100% woman, because this me, the way I am, is no different from you.” Before she starts her lecture, Lin Hsin-pei plays a video to introduce herself. Though it lasts only a few short moments, already there are people in the audience wiping away tears. This video was actually made for the singer Jolin Tsai, with Lin playing the main role in it. For anyone who guesses correctly what the video is, Lin says with a laugh that she will give them a priceless gift: a big hug with a cheerful smile.

Lin Hsin-pei was an active child, but when she was four she suddenly found herself paralyzed from the waist down. Despite being in a wheelchair, she attended a mainstream school, and though it was tough, it enabled her to become a bridge between disabled and non-disabled people.

A restricted life

Lin was a mischievous child who enjoyed playing and jumping around. But when she was four, one day she woke from a nap and couldn’t stand up. From that moment on her family was caught in a nightmare of hospitals and doctors.

After a few years, there was still no improvement in Lin’s legs, and she had no choice but to reluctantly accept that for no known reason, she was paraplegic. Her mother sent her to a mainstream school, and to prove that she was “normal” Lin would feign a reaction whenever a fellow student tickled her on the calf. Fearful of letting her classmates know that she wore a diaper, Lin didn’t dare drink ­water, and she would even pretend to go to the bathroom. But no matter how much of a show she put on, her life was filled with discrimination against her, both deliberate and unintentional.

Because she was in a wheelchair since early childhood, Lin’s spine became severely curved. After graduating from university, she underwent surgery to put 39 steel pins in her body. But fate had not finished testing her. She had to remain lying down for a long period for her surgical wounds to heal, and she developed bedsores. Her doctors said there was no other option than to debride the sores and stitch up the wounds. But Lin’s wounds continually reopened, and over the next three years she was in and out of the hospital. Only after she had undergone eight surgeries was she able to start a new life.

Traveling the world

During the 1095 days Lin spent having her bedsores treated, the repeated relapses and the length of her illness left her feeling hopeless. To take her mind off things, she tried sharing her hospital diary and her experiences of traveling abroad on Facebook. Un­expectedly, many netizens left comments encouraging her to keep her spirits up. Even more surprisingly, two years after she left the hospital, an advertising company, having seen Lin’s de­scrip­tion of a trip abroad she had taken on her own in her wheelchair, sought her out to film a commercial entitled “The Power of Fearless­ness.” They traveled together to France, the Nether­lands, and elsewhere, telling everyone not to let their dreams be limited by fear.

Lin states that when they were discussing the project, the director proposed that she might try extreme sports like paragliding, skiing, and scuba diving. She always responded: “I’m in a wheelchair, so there’s no way I can do that.”

“I’m asking you if you want to, not if you’re able to.” The director explained, “Everyone has some ob­stacles in life. But if there is no way to change or eliminate these obstacles, can you try to peacefully coexist with them, and take them with you as you move forward?” With Lin willing to try, she and the film crew overcame all kinds of technical difficulties. During their 25-day journey, Lin experienced her first long-haul flight, lasting 16 hours, and though the film crew were all greatly alarmed when for a time she suffered severe swelling and purple dis­color­ation on both legs, thereafter they filmed her going paragliding and skiing in New Zealand. They spent seven hours filming her scuba diving in Palau, as her wheelchair tipped over 20 times before they finally captured footage of her floating at the bottom of the sea, moving forward in her wheelchair.

Lin discovered: “For a lot of things that seemed impossible to me, it turns out that I was just putting too many limitations on myself. When you encounter problems, the right thing to do is figure out how to get past them.”

Lin recounts how her good friend Hui-hui (left) left a note on a vehicle blocking a ramp at an entryway; the note related Lin’s story in a way that inspired empathy. This is how she remembers this close friend, who has sadly passed away.

A speaker’s journey

After “The Power of Fearlessness” was released online it got quite an extensive response. In just one week it received a million hits, and more and more people got to know about Lin. The well-known mainland Chinese TV program I Am a Speaker subsequently invited her to appear on their show.

Before taking part in I Am a Speaker, Lin had already given a total of 50 lectures. She still remembers her very first one, which was a talk she gave at an activity sponsored by the Keelung City Government to teach parenting skills to people with children who were physic­ally or mentally challenged. She assumed it would be a bunch of people in their thirties and forties with small kids, but the event was packed with people in their seventies and eighties who had middle-­aged ­children with disabilities.

Lin admits that at the time her qualifications as a speaker were thin, that she didn’t know how to build on her own story to inspire others, and that she didn’t even dare to look into the eyes of her audience. She originally thought her speech would be a failure, but on the day a photo of her with professional baseball player Peng Cheng-min unexpectedly captured the attention of her audience, and she was able to interact with them. “It’s hard for me to describe the shock of that day. Here were a group of people in their seventies and eighties with very hard lives who had to keep their disabled children by their sides, and they could never let them go for the rest of their lives.”

After her talk, many parents came over to embrace Lin. Families with physically or mentally challenged children feel a sense of estrangement when they go to see a lecturer who is fully healthy, because their children can never be like that person. But Lin in her wheelchair is being her authentic self. “It turns out that my existence can help some people feel more hopeful.” This realization, which caused Lin to decide to pursue public speaking, is also the reason that she worked hard to prepare for the I Am a Speaker stage.

Lin advanced to the finals of the show’s second season, and finished with an honorable mention. Having to appear on screen to talk about her own weakness and lack of self-esteem, several times Lin was so nervous before going on stage that she was in tears. However, each time she mustered the courage to go up and share how she has lived with her disability and accepted herself as she is. She was not at all disconcerted by her disability, but in fact drew on it to inspire empathy in others. She said what she wanted to say and has no regrets.

For the advertisement “The Power of Fearlessness,” Lin tried scuba diving, paragliding and skiing, courageously testing her own limits.

Treasuring each encounter

As of today Lin has given more than 450 lectures, including at venues overseas and in remote areas of Taiwan.

Whenever anyone asks Lin what her most un­forget­table lecture experience has been, she mentions a ­primary school in Nantou County’s Ren’ai Township. The school was in an indigenous community deep in the mountains, three hours’ drive from the Taiwan High Speed Rail station in Taichung. After giving her speech, she embraced the students to say goodbye. As she was doing this, a child who had suffered severe burns all over his body, and whose face was so dis­figured that only his eyes and nostrils were recognizable, appeared in front of her. Deeply moved by the plight of this child, Lin, holding back tears, hugged him and said “God loves you.” The boy softly replied “I know,” without showing any trace of self-pity. He optimistically believed that one day his unremitting perseverance would be rewarded by God.

At every lecture, so long as members of the audience are willing to interact with her, Lin always gives each person a huge hug to convey her support.

In addition to addressing students, Lin Hsin-pei has also spoken at training events for teachers. Building on her own experience in school, she hopes to show ­teachers how to be more empathetic when encountering physically or mentally challenged students. Lin uses her own story to inspire people with disabilities, uses hugs to narrow the distance between non-disabled people and those with health conditions or impairments, and uses her life to touch other lives, planting the idea in people’s minds that we are all equal.                 

Lin Hsin-pei took on the challenge of traveling by herself to Thailand. Along the way she met many people who helped her and enriched her life with their kindness, which gave her many stories to share with others.

Lin gives lectures to encourage others, and conveys warmth with embraces, creating even more emotional connections in her life.