Sunday, March 20, 2011

Helping Japan



The situation in Japan seems to be getting worse with each passing day. You'd think that after a major earthquake and tsunami, the worst would be over, but now they've got to deal with radiation poisoning yet again. Some of the pictures that I've seen look as though they've been hit with another atomic bomb.

Christy, being the kind-hearted person she is, decided to volunteer her time working for the Taiwanese equivalent of the Red Cross. It's a Buddhist organization called "Tzu Chi." She spent her afternoon in Austin's Chinatown, outside a grocery store called "MT Mart", collecting donations from whoever decided to be generous. Most people were pretty generous. I noticed her collection box was filled with a lot of $5, $10, and $20 bills. However, there will be a Grinch in every situation. One older Chinese man said to Christy "You're a slave for Japan." There will always be Chinese (and Americans) who will never forgive the Japanese over WWII. Even though most of the participants in that war have already passed on, the animosity hasn't. I still see comments from people (and even Tokyo's own mayor!) who say that the tragedy in Japan was "God's punishment." It's either God's punishment for Japan's greed, or WWII, or their killing of dolphins, etc. Let's get over it, people.

For anyone who wants to either donate time or money to the Tzu Chi Foundation, their website address is
http://www.tzuchi.org/

For the local Austin branch, the number is 512-491-0358

And now a word (in Chinese) from Christy:

如果你想要進一步了解或是提供任何幫助, 歡迎上慈濟網站。

2 comments:

  1. Why Japan and not New Zealand, Turkey, China, Haiti, Chile?

    ReplyDelete
  2. I don't recall those countries being hit by a tsunami anytime recently.

    ReplyDelete