Bad Luck, Big Achievements:Kao Cheng-Sheng

"When I was nine years old, I hated the gods. I couldn't understand why they had done this!" Kao pulls his pants leg up to reveal a sight that shocks visitors: a lower left leg that is nothing but skin and bone.

Crippled Pasuya

When Kao was a youngster he dreamed of running like Pasuya, a figure in Tsou myth that could run as fast as a sparrow flies. Kao had learned the story from his father. "I worshipped my father, who had received traditional tribal training as a hunter!" Kao's father was a police officer, a big, robust man who could sleep outside in the cold mountains without a covering. Kao used to practice running every day, up until that fateful day when he was nine.

On that day an older student had come from outside the village to race Kao. Displaying the form he had perfected in training, Kao was well out in front, but when he crossed the finish line he disturbed a sleeping hundred-pace snake. When the snake bit Kao, he lost consciousness and his companion was scared to flight. Kao doesn't know how long he was out, but "when I came to, I couldn't stand up. To get help I had to drag myself with my arms to school and knock on the teachers' dormitory."

Kao was sent to the hospital for treatment, which saved his life. Yet within ten days one chunk after another of his leg fell off. "The gnarled mass of flesh and blood shocked people," Kao recalls. He would never run again. Bedridden for a year, he stayed at home recuperating. He fell into self-pity.

"I asked the Tsou gods time and again about why this had happened, but I never got an answer. My mother gave me a Bible, but when I leafed through it, it didn't offer an answer either. I angrily used my withered left leg to smash the Bible into tatters." Kao remembers that he started to mistreat small animals, and would pick up sticks to attack the little kids in the village, shouting obscenities. It was hard for Kao to sleep at night, and he would often scream at the fields, "Why me?" "I once even took out my father's hunting knife and begged my mother to kill me."

When Kao was 11, he hobbled down to the Danaiku Bridge with a cane. "I felt like committing suicide." Kao had given up hope, but when he bent his head with dejection he saw fish in the clear water. "I resolved instead to throw my cane in the water and struggle onward."

Beginning then Kao became determined not to give up on himself and to face up to all the world's spiritual challenges. He started vigorously massaging and moving his powerless left leg, embarking on his own course of physical therapy. In order to teach himself how to walk and climb, the highly determined Kao would hop the two kilometers to Danaiku. "My toes would get so bruised that the nails would fall off." But Kao forced himself to press on.

On Kao's frequent visits to Danaiku he met a little girl who was adopted by a local family after both her natural parents died. Her foster family would make her fight with the dogs for sweet potato skins. Kao couldn't stand what he saw and would give her his own boxed lunch. Finally he just brought the girl home to live with his family. "I was just following the teachings of the Bible about love and 'doing unto others'!" Gradually the bitterness in Kao's heart began to dissipate.

His father's miracle

When Kao graduated from elementary school, his father became bedridden with Parkinson's disease, and Kao, as the second eldest child, became responsible for his father's care. From 13 to 21, Kao had to give up his studies entirely.

When Kao was 21 and his father appeared near the end, a Japanese priest famous for using prayer for healing came to Taiwan. Kao held on to this visit as his father's last hope and asked some young people in the village to make a wooden stretcher for his father and to carry him to Chishan in Kaohsiung County. He was hoping for a miracle, and miraculously enough his father recovered three days later. Shortly thereafter he was even able to run around a track.

Seven years later Kao would encounter another miracle: "One day when I was praying, I saw an angel descend from Heaven to take my father's spirit." He prayed to God not to take his father. Not long after, his father slowly woke and told Kao that the angels had brought him to Heaven to travel and teach him songs, and that seven years later they would come back for him again. When Kao heard this, he felt that he had fulfilled his responsibility of caring for his father, and that now he could do what he wanted to do for himself. At the age of 28, he entered Yushan Theological College and Seminary.

Completing the dream

When Kao was 40, his elementary school teacher Wen Chu-chang urged him to lead fellow villagers in building a future for his hometown. Weighing various considerations, in 1987 they came up with the recovery plan for Danaiku. Kao on his own performed a survey of the valley. "I remembered the old stories I had heard from village elders. Though the forests of giant camphor trees had been cut, the Taiwan ku fish still offered an opportunity. If these fish would swim in the river again, Shanmei could base its future on them!" Kao recalls that later that same year he proposed a plan to promote the reintroduction of the fish and quickly got the bylaws for the self-administered conservation district passed. Then he embarked on more than ten years of patrolling the river until the ecological park was established.

Now Kao has stepped down after successive terms as Shanmei mayor, and he has turned over responsibility for the park to the next generation, having established a system and corporate structure intended to ensure its continued existence.

Nearly 70 years old, Kao has a confidence that comes from religious faith. Once he starts along a path, he has no doubts. "This was all work that God gave me to do. He gave me experiences that others didn't have so that I would be confident that I could make the impossible possible!"

Looking toward the future, Kao is worried about environmental damage in Taiwan. "A Japanese expert has said that in 50 years Taiwan will have to buy its drinking water from abroad." Actively promoting a conception of global environmental education, he has not rested for a moment and is now preparing to set up the "Environmental Angel Foundation." At the same time he is once again performing counseling for the church. At the end of the year he published True Stories of the Danaiku Legend and Truth Seeker. He hopes that the book will let more people know about Danaiku, and move the people of Taiwan toward solidarity and struggle, "so that what we've lost, we can recover!"

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Having realized his dream of reviving Danaiku, Kao, who is nearly 70, still wants to press onward with environmental education for Taiwan as a whole.