What does Wall Street's financial elite look like?
In most people's imagination, they have a bright resume and a generous salary, and they are the "high-performance stocks" on the top of the pyramid.
There was a man who, at the age of thirty, lived such an admirable life on his own.
He is the protagonist we are going to talk about today, Chung To.
Chung entered Columbia University at the age of 18, received a master's degree from Harvard University at the age of 24, earned an annual salary of one million dollars at the age of 29, and was hired as a vice president of a top investment bank in France.
If he had gone down according to the original script, Chung Du would have probably become a world-class financial giant long ago.
But at the age of 30, he tore up his elite business card with his own hands and started a second life in rural Henan.
There, Chung To is not President Du, nor is he an elite.
His only identity is only "Dad Du" of 30,000 AIDS orphans.
01.
The village of blood disaster, because he has a glimmer of life
In July 1998, a young Chinese met a father and daughter on the train back to their hometown.
The father had a "strange disease", his body was ulcerated, and his breath was dying, and his daughter was flustered and helpless.
The young man felt compassion when he saw this, and offered to accompany the father and daughter to seek medical treatment. After a series of tests, the hospital confirmed that the father was infected with AIDS and is now dying.
The father had already expected his condition, he was not worried about his life, but he couldn't let go of his daughter Xiaowen.
In a desperate situation, he regarded the kind-hearted young man as a lifesaver, and begged him to help raise his daughter before he died.
This young man is Chung To.
He responded to this entrustment, and after finishing the father's funeral, he returned to her hometown, a small village in Shangcai County, Henan Province, with the orphan girl Xiaowen.
At that time, Chung To didn't know that this journey would completely "derail" his life. He just stood almost stunned at the entrance of the village, stunned by what he saw before him and speechless for a long time.
How could there be such a human purgatory? As if under a curse, the whole village was entangled in illness and death, and there was an ominous aura everywhere.
The village is full of the old, weak, sick and disabled, all of them are in shape, and they are suffering from HIV. Orphans like Xiaowen are almost one in every three families.
But the absurdity is that countless infected people do not know what disease they have until the moment they stop breathing.
Why is there such a large-scale AIDS outbreak in a small, quiet and isolated village?
Every time Chung understands a little more, his heart aches even more. Because he discovered that AIDS is not a curse, poverty and ignorance are.
Five years ago, in order to get rid of poverty, the villagers found a "fast track to prosperity" - donating blood.
More precisely, the sale of blood. The remuneration received for donating blood two or three times that year was equivalent to the income of an ordinary farmer for one year.
Just like Yu Hua's Xu Sanguan chose to sell blood to protect his family, the "plasma industry" easily took root in the local area because of the psychology of the poor to seek wealth and make a living.
If they are all legal and compliant blood donation points, it will be fine, but the terrible thing is that interests breed evil, and there are more and more black blood stations. Poor sanitation and reuse of syringes make it a natural breeding ground for HIV.
It didn't take long for a bloody disaster to envelop the entire village. By the time the villagers realized something was wrong, it was too late.
Fortunately, most children are protected by their parents and are not infected with the virus.
However, they have not been spared.
Orphans are labelled "AIDS", discriminated against, ostracized and, worse, slaves to hatred.
A 15-year-old boy, after witnessing the death of his parents, carved a striking word "hatred" on his arm.
He gritted his teeth and told Chung To: "I will definitely take revenge and kill the person who killed my parents!" At such a young age, the boy's eyes were full of hatred and despair.
The tragic situation of the AIDS patients before they died, the numb eyes of the children in pain, and the lifeless villages...... This nightmare made Chung To's heart ache.
He was desperate to do something to change that.
After leaving the AIDS village with mixed feelings, the idea of a public welfare student aid gradually took shape in Chung To's heart.
02.
Walk down the altar and go into the abyss alone
去艾滋村那年，杜聪30岁。
It is said that he will stand at thirty, I am afraid that Chung To himself did not expect that he would break off his previous life in the year of "standing".
How beautiful was Chung To's life in the past?
He was born in Hong Kong and immigrated to the United States with his parents at the age of 14.
The experience of being regarded as an "outlier" by white classmates in middle school made Chung To's heart hold back. He wanted to stand at the top of the pyramid in his own right, so that no one would dare to look down on him.
Teenagers are stoic and do what they say. He studied hard for three years and was finally admitted to Columbia University at the age of 18.
In the following decade, Chung To went from Harvard to Wall Street, and lived step by step to become an upstart in the capital world.
He was undoubtedly extremely talented, having only been on the job for a year and having bought his first home in one of the best locations in New York.
At the age of 27, Chung became an associate director of UBS in Hong Kong. Two years later, he was hired by a French investment bank for a million-dollar salary as vice president.
Chung To, who came out of the house at the beginning of the year, is also dazzling like a pearl on Wall Street, which is full of talents, and is the youngest potential stock in the circle.
"Millions per minute", the kind of life of playing capital in the palm of the stock is no longer an unattainable dream.
In just ten years in the capital market, Chung To has already ranked among the top circles in the United States.
In his spare time, Chung To had afternoon tea with Rockefeller's great-granddaughter, listened to Kunqu opera with Lin Qingxia, and had a close personal relationship with Bai Xianyong.
His life on Wall Street is a world very different from that of the AIDS Village.
But after the trip to the AIDS village, Chung To could no longer continue his elite life. He felt that he had lived in a dream and floated in the air, but now he had seen reality and stepped on the ground.
Looking ahead, it is the ladder that rises from the ground to hold up his career map, and looking back, it is the children living in dire straits, hesitant and earnest eyes for help.
After a brief weighing, Chung resolutely turned and walked towards the latter.
In 1998, Chung Du resigned and returned to China to formally establish the Chi Heng Foundation in Hong Kong. He never dragged his feet when he acted.
But Du's mother was stunned by her son's battle.
At first, she thought that Chung To was just enthusiastic and part-time doing public welfare. Unexpectedly, he put all his wealth into it, and he didn't want a good future.
Du's mother didn't understand, how could this child, who had been excellent and worry-free since he was a child, suddenly "fall willingly"?
She hated her and became angry at her son: "I asked you to study at Harvard, not for you to come out to volunteer!"
But whether it was the doubts of relatives or the incomprehension of the outside world, it did not stop Chung To's footsteps.
What really made it difficult for him to move an inch was the rejection and suspicion of the AIDS village.
03.
Raising "Ai" with love is long and resistant
People who have been living in darkness have no earlier reaction when they see the light, but fear.
They dare not be gullible, and they are even more afraid of being burned by the light.
This is the reason why Chung To returned to the AIDS village with hope, but was treated coldly by the villagers.
It was difficult to organize public welfare on his own, and Chung To's first choice at that time was to unite with local doctors and cadres to act together.
But the doctors stayed away from him, and the village cadres even stopped him in every way.
After being driven out of the village many times, Chung To vaguely figured out what the villagers thought: they were worried that Chung Du had come to thoroughly investigate and hold him accountable, for fear of getting into trouble.
To Chung could only pat his chest and promise the villagers over and over again: "I'm not here to ask the teacher for guilt, I'm here to save people!"
Chung To's sincerity gradually relieved the villagers' defenses. After the doubts were dispelled, the villagers no longer resisted his arrival and were willing to cooperate with the investigation and visit.
But improving the attitudes of the villagers is only the first step. The next step is to raise donations for the whole society and to coordinate the relief work, which will be carried out by multiple parties.
During that time, Chung Du worked voluntarily day and night, to describe it as his self-deprecation: "After resigning, I am even busier, all year round, and I don't earn a penny." ”
Compared with the objective busyness, the subjective gap makes it more difficult for Chung To adapt to it.
After going deep into the village and fighting side by side with the villagers, Chung To's living and food standards have dropped significantly.
During the day, he was running around and had little time to sit down and have a good meal, and two casual bites on the road counted as a meal.
Even harder to stay up at night is the night. Since doing public welfare, Chung To has Xi sleeping on the floor and sleeping on hard beds. With a moldy blanket on his body and listening to the sound of rats, he forced himself to sleep.
Sometimes he was so busy that he couldn't get enough sleep for two hours a day.
Faced with tears and illness all day long, Chung To inevitably became pessimistic, and he often felt that he was choked by the throat of despair.
Under the high pressure of exhaustion, he was diagnosed with depression in 2004, followed by a series of reactions such as insomnia and heart palpitations.
The energetic and sunny Chung of the past seems to have disappeared, and now he is sad and moody, as if he is ten years old.
In the moment when he almost collapsed, it was the children he rescued who pulled him along.
To Chung, who was stunned in the darkness at night, hesitantly opened the drawer and took out a letter that he had read countless times.
The children expressed their most sincere feelings in childish handwriting: "Mom and Dad are gone, but I still have Dad Du." ”
Chung To knows that this hard-won trust and dependence must not be disappointed.
Just like his friend Bai Xianyong said to him: "Don't think of yourself as a savior, save one, be one." ”
04.
To heal the sick, but also to heal the heart
Chung To described AIDS as an unquenchable fire. As a "firefighter", his most important task is not to extinguish fires, but to save people.
Material assistance alone is not enough to save lives.
If you want to really help these AIDS orphans, you can't just hand them a piece of driftwood, but teach them to swim and cross themselves.
In a speech, Chung Toh mentioned that he had received a letter from prison.
In the letter, the child wrote: "I hate, I hate everything. I don't want my mother to leave me, I want to keep her. ”
But not only did he not keep his mother, but he also embarked on the road of breaking the law and committing crimes because of hatred.
This letter was like a wake-up call, striking Chung To's heart hard. He realized that more important than improving the children's living conditions was to cure their "heart disease".
Most children born in AIDS families have low self-esteem and sensitivity, and their psychological defense is particularly high. If you want to get along with them, you need more time and love.
In 2002, Chung To launched the "Starfish" student program. It not only solves the children's reading problems, but also comprehensively carries out education funding, including skills training, psychological assistance, public welfare projects for college students, etc.
These projects liberate the children's nature, allowing them to rebuild trust with society and open their arms to the world.
In the 25 years since its establishment, Chi Heng Foundation has sponsored nearly 30,000 AIDS orphans.
Among them, some were admitted to key universities, including Tsinghua University and Peking University, and some went on to study abroad.
Some children have no talent for reading, so Chung To runs baking classes. He opened a French bakery in Shanghai, escorting him from apprenticeship to employment. The income can also feed back to the foundation, killing three birds with one stone, a virtuous circle.
At a celebration, the children in the baking class stood with Chung To, smiling heartily and openly.
Who can see that they have been overwhelmed by the label of "AIDS orphans"?
"I have known the world, and I still pity the grass and trees. This poem is the best annotation of Chung To's walk on the road of public welfare, and it is also the first lesson of life that Dad Du taught to his children.
As a result, many children have willingly returned to Chi Heng when they grow up, just to help their younger siblings come out of the gloom.
"I don't want these children to repeat the mistakes of their parents, and I believe that education can change the root cause of the problem," Chung said. ”
Like the teenager who rushed to the top of the pyramid 40 years ago, the 55-year-old Chung is still doing his best for his ideals.
Some time ago, he used the proceeds of the fundraising to set up an eco-friendly bag processing factory, which provided jobs for women suffering from AIDS so that they could support themselves.
The road to AIDS public welfare is very long, and Chung To does not want to stop. Because he knows that he still has tens of thousands of "children" to raise.
For Chung To, every hard day from now on is a burden of happiness.
This kind of life is far more meaningful than sitting on the top of the pyramid, and he is willing to do it.