Two Become One

Two disabled men serve as hands and eyes for each other to achieve a noble goal.

16:20 20 April 2015

Two life-long friends, 53-year-old double amputee and 54-year-old blind, have been working together for about 13 years planting trees in rural China. Jia Haixia and Jia Wenqi go to a government-leased eight-hectare plot of land to plant trees. Everyday, they serve as hands and eyes for each other to plant as many trees in the area to prevent their village form flooding and improve the environmental surroundings. 

 

Wenqi, a double arm amputee, said: "I am his hands, he is my eyes. "We are good partners."

 

Haixia was born blind due to cataract while Wenqi lost his arms at the age of three when he touched an unprotected electric cable lying on the ground and received a high voltage shock. 

 

"For me it is not complicated," Haixia says. "I'm disabled and don't want to be a burden on my family, so I plant trees. After ten years the trees will grow and I will get money."

 

When they began working together on the project, other villagers were cynical, Haixia explains. "They didn't believe what we were doing was possible," he says, "the whole riverbank had been bare for years and there were hardly any trees." But after a few years the trees grew, the area became greener and the villagers changed their attitude choosing now to assist the two men.

 

"They help us to fix our tools, water the trees and trim the weeds," Haixia says. "They even bought us saplings to plant."