Man Mei Cheung:
Disabled Chinese Woman’s Resilience
Nurtured by Supportive Friends

by Pamela Burdman



Man Mei Cheung’s name comes from the Chinese words man, or vine, and mei, or fern. "That means I have a lot of vitality and strength," she points out. It’s hard not to agree with that statement after an encounter with Cheung, who’s full of warmth and spirit with no sign of bitterness for the years she suffered from disability and discrimination.

Though her family was too troubled about having a disabled daughter to be truly sympathetic toward her, Cheung said her strength was nurtured on the kindness and affection of the many friends who supported and encouraged her.

Born in 1956, the second child of an intellectual family, Cheung contracted polio a year later. By the age of four, she was still unable to walk.

Around that time, China was undergoing a period of great political upheaval, and Cheung’s father, a scholar and businessman, was in danger. Telling authorities in his native Guangzhou that he was taking Man Mei for medical treatment, he escaped with her to Macao, where he had a close friend. The friend sent Cheung and her father to live with his sister.

"But handicapped people weren’t welcome," recalled Cheung. "The whole family would be looked down on. So my auntie said, ‘Put her in an orphanage.’ In the orphanage I cried for about one week straight. I was left in a room alone, and nobody paid any attention to me. They gave me food. They didn’t even care if I ate it or not."

Then one day a blind boy came to comfort her. "He told me, ‘This is our fate. Crying is no use.’ He really liked me. I was very moved. From that time on, I almost never cried. I’ll always remember that boy."

After more than a year in the orphanage, Cheung had received only one visitor–her auntie’s grandson. Nevertheless, the nuns running the orphanage discovered that she wasn’t a true orphan and sent her away.

Her father, who had left Macao for work in Hong Kong, promised to pay the reluctant auntie to care for his daughter. Man Mei was given a spot underneath the steps, a bed made from two fruit cartons, and a diet of leftovers. Completely unable to walk in those days, she was reduced to crawling on the floor like a dog. "It wasn’t much different from being an orphan," recalled Cheung.

She would stay with her auntie for most of the next twenty years.

One day, when Cheung was six or seven years old, an old woman from Shanghai took pity on her. "She said, ‘Nobody loves you. God loves you.’ She gave me a cross. It was precious to me. It demonstrated that somebody loved me." But soon after, one of the grandchildren took the cross.

When Cheung complained, her auntie yelled, "Who do you think you are? You’re father hasn’t given me a cent."

For the rest of the day, Cheung angrily refused to eat. "Even if I would starve myself, I wasn’t going to eat anything. If there wasn’t a share for me, I shouldn’t eat." Guests came over, and the auntie was embarrassed that the child wasn’t eating, so she confessed to Cheung that she was only kidding about not receiving any money.

But the incident convinced Cheung that she needed to take care of herself. "I thought I shouldn’t rely on other people," she said. "I even thought of going out and begging."

Around that time, Cheung began working at home making fireworks, wicker chairs, and beaded clothing. She wasn’t allowed to eat until she finished her work. "To this day I don’t eat breakfast, and I’m afraid to eat pumpkins. At that time, every meal was pumpkins."

When she began earning her keep, Cheung no longer felt ashamed of being disabled. "I realized very early on that crying doesn’t solve problems. No matter what you’re facing, fear doesn’t get you anywhere. So from a very young age, I wasn’t afraid of people laughing at me. Whether or not they laughed, I was still disabled. Since nobody loved me, I learned to love myself."

Her fondest memories are of her stay in a Guangzhou hospital, where she had eleven operations. She was around eleven or twelve years old.

"Even though there were no nurses to care for me after each operation, and no medication to ease the pain, those were the happiest days of my childhood," said Cheung. "There was a lot of love there. Everybody was disabled. There was no prejudice. If you had something to eat, you shared it. Life was worry-free."

By the time she was released two years later, she was able to walk short distances. When she went back to live with her auntie in Macao, she began attending school. Already around thirteen years old, she completed six grades in four years, graduating number one in her class. She worked in the evenings after school. She continued living with her auntie, but they became more like roommates.

During her years in Macao, Cheung recalls her father visiting only three times. She would visit her mother and siblings in China once a year over Spring Festival, but never stayed more than three days. "It wasn’t very warm," she recalled. "They were so afraid of me, so I had to learn to be strong and independent. It’s not that they didn’t love me, it’s just that they were uncomfortable about my disability."

Instead, she thought of her classmates and teachers as her family. They and others—the blind boy, the Shanghainese woman—gave her the love and support she needed. "The people I’ve loved the most in my life have been my friends," she said.

Cheung went on to finish high school, becoming a highly successful worker in Macao, holding three jobs, and earning more than anyone in her family. She worked as a special education teacher, an advertising layout worker, and a seamstress. At the sewing factory, she met Cheang Daisen, a cutter, but didn’t marry him for years.

"I had gotten used to my freedom," she said.

She opted to join her parents, who by that time had emigrated to the United States and were living in San Francisco. "My family made me feel very disappointed. Ten days after I got here, my mother said, ‘Don’t expect me to take care of you,’" recalled Cheung.

So, with almost no help from her parents, Cheung signed up for English classes, found a job, and located an empty room to live in. Then she agreed to go back to China to marry Cheang. Within a few years, they’d had two children—Philip, now ten years old, and Jackson, seven.

She supports her family with social security payments and her husband’s salary from janitorial work at Pier 39. She has served as a board member of Wu Yee Child Development Center, a community advisory board member for the Chinatown Public Health Center, chairperson of Disabled People for an Accessible Chinatown, and a volunteer for the Independent Living Resource Center.

She appreciates Americans’ open-mindedness toward disabled people. "Here, disability is just disability," said Cheung. "People say hello to me on the street."

"I think I’m pretty lucky. The difficulties I’ve faced I’ve had people to help me. I confronted a lot of prejudice, but I didn’t care. I just let people see my abilities. I’m pretty optimistic. This is still a good world."

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