Rainbow Village: Story of Zhengchao

Rainbow Village Help Center is a TFish Associate Member. It was established for the purpose of giving glasses to impoverished children.

In the west of China, the economy is backwards and the climate is awful. Malnutrition, poor health care, and  unpurified drinking water are quite common among people living in this area. The rural children suffer from all kinds of illnesses. The undeveloped medical system aggravates this type of situation. Many families can become impoverished again by treating their children.   

Huang Zhengchao is 2 years old. He was born in a Zhuang ethnic minority family living in the small village of Wenshan, Yunnan province near Vietnam. He has a 13-year-old sister in secondary school and a father who works in the city. Life is not too difficult. The family even built the new house with a reconstruction project implemented by the government. When the new house was almost completed in May 2012, Zhengchao’s left eye had swollen to a massive amount. Due to the shortage of medical knowledge and negligence, his parents didn’t pay much attention to it. His left eye bulged quickly in a month. The sudden change threw his parents into panic, and the family began the 9-month journey in seeking treatment.

On June 29, 2012, the family took Zhengchao to see a doctor in a county hospital. The hospital could not deliver the appropriate diagnose and treatment due to their lack of medical skills. The family had to seek treatment in many hospitals around the country, exhausting all their money and energy. He was diagnosed with bilateral retinoblastoma, but the family had no money for the treatment. 

With the help of the volunteers, the family found Rainbow Village and joined its Bright Future project on March 7th, 2013. Zhengchao has been admitted by a hospital in Beijing on March 10th. The illness was delayed too long, and the tumors transferred to the brain stem cells. It became more than just an operation and chemotherapy. We hope Zhengchao can still be cured.

Original article written by Quandi Cheng, translated by Maggie Li, edited by Yanyan Zhang