Miss Lo told a story of hard work and harsh life of a typical Taiwanese fruit farmer

On last Sunday, or May 2, 2009, I participated in a bicycle ride and organic farm learning field trip sponsored by the College of Agriculture and Natural Resource of National Chung-Hsing University. Before we hiked additional few hundred feet to the fruit-farm of Mr. Liaw on the top of the hill, we left our bicycle in the yards of another farmer, Ms. Lo. Miss Lo and her husband are fruit farmers on this part of Tung-Shu mountain range. They grow pears on their farm, mostly on steep slopes of hills.

The photo showed Ms. Lo explaining how they grew pears on the farm. In the photo, Miss Lo is the lady with a mouth mask facing the camera. Behind her mouth mask, she told us the harsh life of a typical Taiwanese fruit farmer.

Miss Lo wore the mouth mask not because she had a flu. She wore the mask simply she did not want us to see her disfigured face. She had a very bad motorcycle accident on a hill slope of this part of the mountain in March of this year. To avoid a pebble on the road, she pulled the brake to her motorcycle. The motorcycle carried her to strike a pole. The striking force was so huge that she lost 9 teeth; her face was disfiguring with blood. Bleeding made her completely numb on her lower part of the face. The cellular phone she carried with her her saved her life. An ambulance came and sent her first to a local hospital. Later she was transported to a bigger hospital in Taichung City to complete the emergency care.

To appreciate that this is part of the life reality of farmers like Miss. Lo, you have to realize that this a remote part of Taiwanese mountain range. To get the supplies from the city, farmers have to risk their life everyday riding motorcycles on the narrow, windy, and very, very steep mountain roads. When we arrived here from the Tung-Shu train station with the bicycles, we have to come down from the bike to carry the bike with us because the slope was too big for us to risk riding the bicycle up and down on this mountain road. Yet, the farmers here have to do that every day, 365 days a year. That is a life reality.

Miss Lo is almost recovered. After we completed organic farm and was about to carry the bikes to a lesser-slope mountain road to ride back, we saw her background, also on a motorcycle.