By Hu Yi-fen
Translated by Wu Hsiao-ting
Photographs by Kuo I-teh

Reprinted with permission of By Rhythms Monthly Issued in summer 2001

Fr. Stephen Jaschko is originally from Hungary, but he has put down roots in Taiwan and devoted his life to the Chinese people and to taking care of a group of mentally handicapped children. Never waiting until there was enough money to do things, he started a center for the mentally handicapped with only US$100. His greatest wish in life is to establish a permanent home for them.

A winter wind rose, and the night was wet with dew. In the small Hakka town of Kuanhsi, in northern Taiwan, stood a church which seemed to have long sunk into oblivion. The signboard, inscribed with “Kuanhsi Catholic Church” and “Catholic Hua Kuang Center,” looked even more desolate in the relentless chilly wind.

In a cramped but clean little room by the church, Fr. Stephen Jaschko, sj, who just entered the ninth decade of his life last year, diligently punched the keys of a forty-year-old typewriter. Even though he has retired, he still leads a busy life with his heart set on improving the welfare of the retarded children in the Catholic Hua Kuang Center.

A birthday wish

Fr. Jaschko was born on August 18, 1911, in Kosice, an industrial city then in Hungary but now in the Slovak Republic. He was greatly influenced by his mother. “My mother was a very nice person. She was always so happy. She often led me in prayer and told me how God loves us.” Like an innocent child, Fr. Jaschko said that the most precious things he learned from his mother were how to love and be grateful.

He has dedicated sixty-four years of his life to the Chinese people–twenty years in mainland China, and over forty years in Taiwan taking care of a group of “old children” who are unlikely to grow up (two thirds of the two hundred Hua Kuang residents are adults).

At the insistence of the Hua Kuang residents, Fr. Jaschko celebrated his ninetieth birthday. But in order to save the birthday cake for the children, he did not take so much as a tiny bite of it. He made only one wish–to build as soon as possible a home with medical, educational, vocational and functional purposes for the Hua Kuang children so that they can lead a dignified life like other normal, healthy people.

“Building the Hua Kuang Welfare Establishment is my dream. I hope the kids here can lead a dignified life.” In order to spread the message, the Sagem Group financed a commercial for Fr. Jaschko to call for help from the public. The commercial was dubbed by the famous Taiwanese writer, Hsiao Yeh. “A ninety-year-old foreigner came to Taiwan to take care of other people’s children. If a foreigner can do that for our own children, how can we not do something for them?”

At a fund-raising press conference for the Hua Kuang Welfare Establishment, Fr. Jaschko said, “I am often touched by the abundant love of the Taiwanese people. The children at Hua Kuang do not have other abilities, but they do have the power to attract the love of the people on the island.”

Eight years ago, a series of tragedies occurred in which retarded parents, fearing that after they died there would be no one to take care of their retarded children, killed their children and then committed suicide. Shaken by these tragedies, Fr. Jaschko resolved to build a home where mentally disabled children could be nurtured and brought up in good health.

After several years of efforts, he finally managed to procure 14.6 acres of land in Hsinpu Township, Hsinchu County. He paid more than NT$20 million [about US$650,000] for it by means of a loan and with help from other people. It took another NT$330 million to level the land and build the Hua Kuang Welfare Establishment. Fr. Jaschko and the staff of the Catholic Hua Kuang Center have to raise at least NT$230 million before they can apply for a subsidy from the government. So far they have raised nearly half the amount, but there is still NT$150 million to go.

Reform through labor

In 1936, Fr. Jaschko was sent by the Jesuit missionary society to mainland China to preach the Gospel. Before he left, his family held a farewell party for him. The close-knit family was unwilling to let him go to such a faraway place. Ever since he was a little boy, he had not spent much time at home. His family saw even less of him after he turned sixteen and decided to join the Jesuits. None of them knew when they would see him again after he went to China. Therefore, the farewell party was filled with profound sorrow.

Fr. Jaschko settled down in Anhui Province, eastern China, to learn Chinese. His teacher gave him the Chinese name “Yeh Yu-ken” based on the pronunciation of his Hungarian name, Jaschko. The Chinese name, meaning “putting down roots,” augured his future–he would remain on Chinese soil for the rest of his life.

During the nearly twenty years he spent in mainland China, the missionary witnessed an era in which the country was torn by war and strife. He himself was deeply involved and affected by it.

War broke out between China and Japan and sickness and poverty plagued the Chinese people, but there was not a single hospital for those who were ill or injured. Hoping to relieve the pain and suffering of these people, Fr. Jaschko, who had studied both theology and medicine, set out to establish a hospital in Hebei. With one hundred beds, his hospital was the first of such a large scale in Hebei Province.

During the twenty years the hospital was in operation, Fr. Jaschko saved countless people who would otherwise have been killed in the war. “Near Daming, Hebei Province, we managed to save lives among the Japanese army, the Chinese Communist army, the Chinese Nationalist army, and local bandits.” But to his complete astonishment, after mainland China fell into the hands of the Communists, the vice superintendent of the hospital rose up to “struggle” against him. He reported to the authorities that Fr. Jaschko had beaten a boy for climbing a church wall and entering the vegetable garden of the church. Fr. Jaschko was consequently imprisoned.

He said with a smile that the accusation was completely unconvincing. Everyone who knew him knew that this priest never beat children. He really couldn’t figure out why the vice superintendent did this to him. Later he discovered that he had done so in order to save his father’s life–the Communists had seized his father in order to force him to say things against Fr. Jaschko. As soon as he found out about this, he immediately felt relieved.

“At that time, what the Chinese people did really touched me,” Fr. Jaschko said. “As we all know, it is unavoidable that people die in hospitals. But when the Chinese Communist government asked families of patients who had died in the hospital to testify against me, nobody came forward. I was greatly touched.”

In 1953, the Communist party sent Fr. Jaschko to a reform-through-labor farm in the countryside of Changyuan County. During the three years that he was there, he did nothing but feed cows and weave ropes. But he said that he did not feel lonely or depressed at all at that time, because God was in his heart.

In October last year, Fr. Jaschko returned to mainland China to see the men who had once served as his acolytes. At their tearful reunion, they hugged each other and cried in each other’s arms. “When I saw them cry, tears filled my eyes too.”

Together, they reminisced about the past–Father’s vegetable garden, the Changyuan hospital during wartime, and how they couldn’t bring themselves to yell “Bring down Yeh Yu-ken” when Fr. Jaschko was arrested. The men who used to be so young had all grown old. The priest and his acolytes had missed each other terribly during the forty years they had been separated. Now they were finally comforted at the sight of each other.

A center for the mentally challenged

When Fr. Jaschko was released from the labor farm in 1955, he was deported to Hong Kong. From there he came to Taiwan and settled down in the coastal area of Chiayi, south-central Taiwan.

Most people who lived in the coastal villages of Tungshih and Putai bred and sold oysters for a living, and life was not easy for them. Feeling that these poor fishermen were in urgent need of a small medical center to take care of their health, Fr. Jaschko raised money from overseas and built a two-story reinforced-concrete hospital in one of the villages. He then took up his lodgings in a small bamboo hut halfway up a mountain.

During rainy days, he had to fasten an umbrella to the back of a chair so that he could continue typing letters on his old typewriter to ask for financial aid. As time went by, Taiwan’s economy gradually took off and the local medical environment also improved. When fewer and fewer people came to the charity hospital for medical care, Fr. Jaschko closed it down and went to serve as pastor of a Catholic parish in Hsinchu.

There he decided to devote his life to the education and cultivation of mentally disabled children. “There was a street urchin whose parents refused to claim him and take him home. I have him to thank for my decision.” Fr. Jaschko brought the retarded child back to his place, and made up his mind to start an educational institution for children like him.

Although he had neither money nor people to help him, he did not balk at the task. He never waited until there was enough money to start doing things. An American patron donated US$100 to start his charity work, and with this money Fr. Jaschko set up the Jenai Center for Mentally Challenged Children.

During the initial phase of the center, more than ten retarded children were taken in. Because Fr. Jaschko could not find qualified teachers to educate them, he did everything himself, including feeding them. Once he started feeding these children, his hands would never stop.

The Jenai Center is now under the supervision of another Catholic priest. Fr. Jaschko has shifted all his attention to the development of the Catholic Hua Kuang Center. The number of teachers working at the center has grown from under ten to more than seventy. Every teacher is responsible for taking care of three or four children.

Fr. Jaschko worked very hard to obtain benefits for mentally deficient persons. At a time when Taiwan was still under martial law and the democratic movement was still considered taboo, he led five hundred retarded children and their parents to the Legislative Yuan to petition for their basic rights. They hoped that the government would provide more assistance for families with retarded children and pay more attention to these children’s rights to receive a better education and live a better life.

Fr. Jaschko’s petition received a warm response from the government. From that time on, educational centers for the mentally deficient sprang up one after the other all over the island. Parents no longer needed to keep their retarded children, who used to sit in despair at home waiting for a hopeless tomorrow, within the bounds of their households. Considering the grim political atmosphere on the island before martial law was lifted, what Fr. Jaschko did–going into the streets to protest for the rights due to the mentally deficient–made him a “radical” priest.

Over the past eighteen years, the Catholic Hua Kuang Center has brought up hundreds of retarded children and others with multiple handicaps. In addition to providing the children with daily care, the center also teaches them to take care of themselves and gives them job training. With their education, some of the students are able to go out and earn a living by themselves and even make plans for the future.

Standing on their own feet

After more than ten years of strenuous effort, the Hua Kuang Center can finally offer a more adequate and refined education to its students and enable them more or less to stand on their own feet. The excellent performance of these children has made Fr. Jaschko really proud of them.

The teachers at Hua Kuang like to tell a story. “One day a hunter was walking on the road when he saw a sparrow lying on its back with its feet pointing towards the sky. Curious, the hunter approached the sparrow and asked why it kept its feet that way. The sparrow answered, ‘Someone told me that the sky was going to fall down. I’m learning to hold up the sky with my feet.'” The children at Hua Kuang are like the little sparrow–they want to contribute their little efforts to society. Even though their contributions might be insignificant, they should still be given the chance.

At present, about forty or fifty Hua Kuang residents work at jobs in Taipei and Hsinchu. A team of nine residents led by a teacher pack toys at a toy factory in Hsinchu. Teacher Li Jui-yun, who assists the team members with their work, remarked, “It’s not hard to cultivate their working abilities, but when it comes to interpersonal communications problems often arise.”

Li mentioned a Hua Kuang resident who worked at a rice-flour noodle factory. He envied people who were able to give their own business cards to others. One day he took his boss’s card to a printing company and asked to have his own cards printed, replacing the boss’s name with his own. After the cards were printed, he distributed them to everyone he met. The teachers at Hua Kuang had to put their heads together and think up a title for him to put on his cards. Finally they came up with one–President of the Hua Kuang Alumni Association.

For those residents who are less independent, the center often arranges for them to work as a team. When we visited the residents working at the toy factory, they seemed excited at our coming and began to work even harder. “Why are you suddenly so hard-working? You weren’t like this just a minute ago,” Li teased them.

The factory foreman voiced his opinion of this group of workers. “When I first met them, I found them different from the mentally challenged children we usually see on TV. When I got to know them better, I realized that as long as they’re properly trained, they can become very good workers.” But since most of the factories that employ retarded persons are categorized as sunset industries, they are in danger of losing their jobs when these factories close down or are relocated abroad.

Because many Hua Kuang residents have to work during the day, Fr. Jaschko can only see them two nights a week when he teaches catechism classes at the church. One evening at seven o’clock, he found that some of the children were just having their dinner because they had had to work overtime at the factory. He felt so sorry for them that he even went to the factory to find out about their working conditions there.

The staff at the Hua Kuang Center revealed that Fr. Jaschko is very strict with them. No matter how busy they are, whenever he sees children who are not clean or tidy, he starts to sulk. “After coming so far on the road, we should realize that the most important thing is the quality of our education, not the number of teachers we have.” Thanks to his insistence, the education offered at Hua Kuang is of the best quality in Taiwan. This helps put the anxious minds of parents at ease.

Fr. Jaschko usually gets up at four in the morning. He makes a point of not having breakfast because he wants to experience what it is like to suffer so that he can sympathize better with other people’s pain. “As for my body, I have already signed a donation contract with a hospital.” He plans to donate his body to the National Taiwan University Hospital. In this way he may be able to save even more people.

The old veteran and his retarded wife

Ever since it was established, the Catholic Hua Kuang Center has been growing with each passing day as more and more people are taken in. Currently there are two hundred and two residents. With a floor space of 64,800 square feet, the center was obviously far from big enough to accommodate all these residents. There was an urgent need to expand.

Because Fr. Jaschko cannot bear to see Hua Kuang students end up with no place to go after they grow up, he allows them to stay on at the center. As a result about two-thirds of the residents are over twenty years old. It is not uncommon to see whole families living there. Once the center even took in a family of six. The place is full of sad stories.

Mrs. Wang, more than fifty years old, is one of the older residents at Hua Kuang. If you ask her how old she is, she answers with a vacant smile, “I don’t know.” The answer saddens her husband, who is many years her senior, and makes him look even older.

Mr. Wang is a veteran of the Nationalist army that came to Taiwan in 1949. When he was younger, he worked for the government forestry department in the mountains of the island. Life was easy and carefree. But his life took a sudden turn when he was found to be afflicted with mountain sickness. According to the regulations at that time, married personnel were to be sent out of the mountains first. Anxious to leave, Wang looked hard for someone who would marry him.

A matchmaker introduced a young retarded girl to him. Of low social status and no longer young, Wang knew that he couldn’t afford to be too critical or picky. He quickly married the girl, and the two of them moved down to the plains and began to live a peaceful and uneventful life.

Not long afterwards, their son and daughter were brought into the world. Unfortunately, they were both retarded like their mother. Shouldering this heavy burden, Wang worked in a road crew for the highway bureau by day and as a janitor at a university by night. Yet even more misery was in store–a gravel truck killed his beloved son while he was riding his bicycle.

Hua Kuang director Wu Fu-mei said that every time Wang talked about his life, tears always streamed down his wrinkled face. “What awful things have I done that I should have to work like a beast for them all my life?” he would say. Old and feeble, he decided to settle his wife and daughter at Hua Kuang so that they won’t be left helpless when he leaves this world.

Unable to see his mother again

When Fr. Jaschko was little, his father made a living by selling typewriters and books. They were originally quite well off, but when World War I broke out, his father’s business slumped badly and their life became very hard. For a period of time, his mother had to help support the family by begging from the army. “Although life was hard at that time, my mother was as tender and loving as ever. She really was a great woman.” When he talked of his mother, his eyes showed profound gratitude.

Fr. Jaschko believes that after one dies, God delivers a fair judgment on one’s life. “What did you do in your life?” God will ask him. “I don’t know, just look at my conscience,” he will answer. He does not in the least fear the coming of death. He believes that he will see his mother again in Heaven. He was once so laden with responsibilities that he missed the chance to see his mother one last time.

Fr. Jaschko’s only wish is to establish a permanent home–the Hua Kuang Welfare Establishment–for the children at the Catholic Hua Kuang Center. Only after he has fulfilled this wish can his mind rest at ease. The eyes of the ninety-year-old priest look so bright and magnanimous. He makes those who are near him feel warm and peaceful.