Imagine a child that has never seen the blue summer sky, the green grass or the dazzling yellow of a ripe cornfield in August. Now imagine if that child were you, and that one day a train pulled into the local station carrying trained doctors and nurses that could bestow upon you the gift of sight. Imagine how happy you would be...

While it may seem a fable, this train is real, and it is run by Lifeline Express, a Hong Kong-based charitable organization supported by China's Ministry of Health and funded by the goodwill of the public and corporations in both Hong Kong and the mainland. Big Hong Kong corporations such as Hutchison have been key benefactors of the charity, and the goodwill runs right through the caucus of the mainland and Hong Kong public which, whether rich or poor, have provided Lifeline Express with the funds it needs to continue operating year after year.

From humble beginnings in 1997, Lifeline Express now has three trains that chug around China for most of the calendar year, stopping wherever they can and treating villagers that suffer from cataracts, an affliction that causes the lens of the eye to frost over, slowly turning the individual blind.

This is a serious and life-altering problem for anyone, but particularly so for farmers and workers, who rely completely on their hands and vision to provide food and shelter for themselves and their families. In China's vast countryside, home to an estimated 800 million farmers, cataracts would be devastating to any family, and with an estimated 4 million sufferers among the country's 1.3 billion population, it is a serious issue.

Fortunately for cataract victims, there are good people in the world, such as Marcia Aw, general manager of projects at Lifeline Express. Aw was living in Vancouver, Canada when informed about the charity by Nellie Fong, a key founder member of the charity, and a member of both the Hong Kong Executive Council and the China People's Political Consultative Conference.

Aw immediately packed her bags and moved to Hong Kong. To hear her talk about the charity one is shown the goodness that runs through her and throughout Lifeline Express, which has helped return sight to 36,000 people since it was founded in 1997.

She has so many moving memories of working on the trains, seeing how children, adults and the elderly react to having their sight either returned to them or given for the very first time.

One recollection in particular was that of a little 12-year-old girl called Xiu Mei, from southern Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, who was given the power of sight for the first time last year by Lifeline Express's fully-trained ophthalmologists.

"I gave a bunch of flowers to the little girl, who clutched them like a teddy bear," Aw recalls. "I told her she should be resting her eyes, and she said to me: 'I've never seen such pretty colours, I didn't know what flowers looked like, I've only ever felt petals before. I've never even seen the blue sky before'. It brought tears to my eyes."

She also mentions the story of an elderly man recovering from a cataract operation last year. Asked him what it was like to be able to see again after 10 years, he said with a warm smile that he just wanted to go home and see his grandson. The man had never set eyes on the little boy.

Such beautiful and moving tales only encourage Aw, Fong and the charity's committee members to generate more funds to help sufferers.

Lifeline Express holds fund-raising events virtually every month. Over the next few months alone, the charity is hosting a TV show in Hong Kong on June 11 followed by its Annual Gala on June 18, and then a concert performed by the Millennium Youth Orchestra from August 6-9. The year will conclude with a Walkalong for Light and the Annual Dinner in Beijing, both held in November.

Tickets for the Annual Gala, one of Hong Kong's big annual charity bashes, at which the SAR's best and brightest can dine, see, be seen and raise money for a worthy cause, can be purchased via the charity's website, www.lifelineexpress.com.hk.

A table costs HK$50,000 to HK$80,000 (US$6,140-US$10,256), and a single ticket is going for HK$5,000. Such 1960s luminaries as Joe Junior, Irene Ryder, Anders Nellson and Michael Remedios, as well as D-Topnotes and Teddy Robbins, will treat the lucky attendees to an evening of nostalgic musical performances.

"It's one of the biggest fund-raising events of the year and is held at the Grand Hyatt Hotel," says Aw. "When one looks at all the donations, you see that many of them are provided by ordinary people - people like you and me. It's a case of true people helping out the really needy people among us."

She adds that Hong Kong's wealthy elite have also been great supporters, having donated much money and assistance to the charity over the years.

Hong Kong's big corporations have also helped out in a big way. Hutchison Telecom, which sponsored a recent acrobatics-themed Lifeline fund raiser, puts requests for donations to the cause in its financial statements, as do several of Hong Kong's leading financial institutions.

"A lot of donations come through this source," Aw says.

As Aw points out, cataract operations are not cheap - it costs HK$2,000 (US$256) to operate on a pair of eyes, and sometimes pragmatic budget limitations restrict Lifeline Express doctors to treating just one eye, rather than both, particularly if the patient is a senior citizen. Babies, children and healthy adults are given the full treatment on both eyes.

Aw says the budget has to stretch to include everything - not just the operation itself. "The HK$2,000 includes the cost of picking up the individuals from their village, transporting them to and from the mobile hospital, and letting them rest up while they recover."

This is on top of the trains' upkeep. Lifeline Express' three trains, which are currently travelling in China's northwestern provinces of Gansu, Qinghai and Xinjiang. Aw says central and provincial governments have been enormously supportive of Lifeline's operations, and one local hospital recently even set aside one of its buildings to allow the charity's doctors space to operate on local patients.

Each train has four compartments containing hospital beds, surgical equipment and resting areas as well as a kitchen and living quarters for the travelling doctors and nurses, none of which comes cheap - keeping three trains on track all year round costs HK$24 million.

Looking ahead, Aw says the charity is looking to set up a "Microscopic Eye Surgery Training Centre" in every province where the train stops. These permanent centres would provide long-term, secure optical help where it is most needed.

Aw says the centres, which would provisionally cost HK$2.5 million each, would be a key part of Lifeline's future strategy.

"We have just started on the project and are looking to raise money for them," she says. "The central government has been a big help, and eventually we hope to have a network of centres spanning the country. We also have plans to link up our Hong Kong base with each mainland eye centre by satellite, which will help Hong Kong specialists and mainland specialists to link up with and help one another."

Central government help has been augmented by generous financial aid from mainland citizens, and Lifeline Express also has a Beijing office. The charity was provided with a fund-raising licence by the central government in 2002, and the next step for the charity will be setting up a special phone number on the mainland that allows Chinese to donate money to the charity.

And every day, Lifeline's trains continue to trundle around the mainland, providing hope and relief to thousands of Chinese a year - last year 9,153 people were successfully treated; this year the charity is on track to operate on around the same number.

Aw and her fellow workers constantly strive to raise more money and help more people - the work simply never ends, but she says she wouldn't give it up for the world.

"When I see HK$2,000 now, I see a pair of eyes. Some people may say 'what is one eye', but we are not simply talking about an eye, but a whole life, or several lives - perhaps an entire family," she says.

"When you operate, and give people sight, you are returning to them their sense of independence and sense of self-respect. They don't feel like a burden to their families any more. Through one simple operation you could be saving so many lives."

(HK Edition 04/29/2004 page24)