Back home in China

Eunice Moe Brock, 91, should by rights be living a contented, idyllic life on her 40-acre ranch, south of Denver, Colorado.

Back in her US home, the retired medical expert owns a big, comfortable house nestled in a quiet, picturesque valley.

She could be looking after her horses, bee keeping and tending to her garden. But only when she is not doing charity work for the local community and writing medical books in her spacious personal library.

Yet a strong emotional attachment to China brought Brock to Liumiao, a small, obscure village in Liaocheng, Shandong province, in 1999.

In China, Brock, who is qualified in nursing, pediatrics, and psychiatrics, splits her time between her humble Chinese style home in Liumiao and the Shandong Liaocheng International Peace Hospital where she acts as honorary president.

Over the past years, Brock has written regularly to her family members and friends in the US, describing her life in China and the notable changes she has observed.

Upon hearing about the devastating earthquake in Wenchuan county, Sichuan province, Brock struggled out of her sickbed on May 14 to participate in a rally to raise donations at the Liaocheng Branch of the Red Cross.

The rally reportedly raised 2 million yuan ($300,000) for earthquake victims.

"I have followed the news about the Wenchuan earthquake very closely. The Chinese government's ability to organize and provide very quickly for the needs of the victims has won much merited praise," Brock tells China Daily.

"The Wenchuan earthquake is terrible and destructive. These are the hard times for China. But I believe that when united, Chinese people can overcome any difficulties," she adds.

Brock has become both a local celebrity and a respected member of the local community.

Children affectionately call her Grandma and villagers address her as Mu Lin'ai, the Chinese name her missionary parents gave her in 1917.

"I spent 13 years in China as a child with my parents over half a century ago. Now I am back," says Brock, in obvious satisfaction.

Her father, John J. Moe, paid his first visit to China in 1902 as a Christian missionary.

Two years later, he met Martha Laughlin of the UK on an ocean liner heading for China. They fell in love, got married, and had four children.

Eunice was their youngest child, born on Aug 11, 1917 in a one-story, beachside house in Qinhuangdao, Hebei province.

Brock spent 60 years away from China, but her childhood memories of China ravaged by war, poverty, disease and hardship, "were deeply engrained in my mind."

When traveling with her father, Brock was shocked and saddened at tragic scenarios of impoverished Chinese parents selling their daughters, people dying of hunger or from gunshot wounds and young girls forced into prostitution in order to survive.

"I was very distressed because I couldn't help. I lived in a warm home and people froze in the temple next to where I lived," Brock says, sad at the memory.

"I felt very badly about this, so I determined as a child that I would go back to China and live a simple life in a poor home like the Chinese lived in, and that I will try to help them while living at the same level as they do."

But Brock did have some good memories of her early years in China.

She remembered her first encounter with a loveable donkey and her fondness for rabbits.

She also cherished memories of a childhood friendship. A Chinese boy named Zhou Renjie left her with the deepest impression, she says.

Zhou taught her the local children's games, gave her Chinese lessons, repaired a clock for her and insisted that she have her photo taken with him and his mother.

Brock had to part with all her Chinese friends in 1930, when her parents decided to end their missionary work in China and go back to the USA.

"I promised my friends that I would come back soon and I meant what I said. However, I never imagined it would take more than six decades for me to fulfill my promise!"

Although she left China for such a long time, Brock admits that her love for the oriental nation never ceased .

She majored in nursing at college in hope that one day she might come back to China to help the poor and needy.

"All the time I was preparing for my return to China," Brock says.

In the intervening years, Brock lived with her husband Edwin L. Brock and four children in Colorado where she was head of a hospital for children.

Asked why it had taken her so long to return to China, Brock admitted that her husband was concerned about the culture and language barriers.

"If you love someone, he or she is undoubtedly the center of your life," Brock explains. "So I had to put aside my dream, although it lived on in my heart."

That explains why Brock always kept an eye on changes in China when reading the newspapers and watching TV news.

She felt immensely relieved at US president Nixon's visit to China that led to normalized relations between the two nations; she marveled at the rapid changes in China, particularly in the new era following the opening up and reform in the early 1980s.

In 1982, Brock moved to Oregon for a while to live with her children, and became a member of the US China Friendship Society.

She wrote a letter in 1992 to the Shandong local authorities, inquiring about her childhood friend Zhou Renjie.

The same year, the Brocks went to Liaocheng to meet Zhou Baoluo, eldest son of Zhou Renjie, and his family, before traveling to Guilin, the Three Gorges, Hainan and Tibet.

Brock now considers the Zhou family her Chinese relatives.

After her husband's death in 1999, Brock sold her house, car, 16-hectare forest and other possessions and went to China. "I am not in China simply to live out my life in retirement," Brock says emphatically. She is, to the contrary, highly respected for her charitable endeavors and love and care for Chinese people.

Over the years, Brock has donated thousands of dollars that have helped to build a computer room for the village's primary school, pay the medical bills of senior villagers in Liumiao and buy new medical equipment for the Liaocheng International Peace Hospital.

Brock also teaches local children English at the English corners she regularly holds.

Brock is very popular with her fellow villagers, and often invites her neighbors to her small garden, where she plants vegetables, fruit trees and flowers, to have their picture taken with her, says Yu Huaiqing, 60, a local villager whom Brock hires to do the gardening.

At Christmas, the American granny loads a donkey cart with greeting cards, cakes and sweets that she distributes to primary school pupils and teachers in the village.

Brock is, "the most welcome guest" of local residents, who often invite her over to eat the dumplings she enjoys so much.

"She runs a tight ship, and is always looking for opportunities to help others. She never stops working unless she falls ill," says Wang Yuqing, 27, Brock's carer and interpreter.

Brock's contributions to local communities earned her the honor in 2003 of being named one of China's philanthropic ambassadors, and she was elected one of the "Ten People Who Moved Shandong" in 2006.

"I'm an American, but I have a Chinese heart. I hope I can work till the very last day of my life in China," says Brock, who has decided to donate her organs to Chinese patients that need them after her death.

(China Daily 06/06/2008 page18)