“When homeland is far away, the roads are blocked and long. The angel folded her wings and stayed at the village…” At the end of the concert, the band Miserable Faith played the live performance of the original song “For Their Sunshine” composed and written by Gao Xiaosong for the 1.44 million rural doctors for the first time. “People have been bustling through the grassland and the mountain. You bring light for their sunshine.”

On 22 May 2021, Shanghai Fosun Foundation  and China Population Welfare Foundation jointly organized a special concert “Walk with the Doctors: Charity Concert at the Pasture” at Jemeney Awdanı, Altay Wilayiti, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, which is 24 kilometers far from the borderline of Kazakhstan. The concert was held specially for the rural doctors and herders under the grassland, stone city, sunset, and the clouds. 

The special concert “Walk with the Doctors:  Charity Concert at the Pasture”

The concert started with the songs “Song of the Highway” and” Goodbye Jack” played by the electric guitar. The crowd was passionate, and the fans of Miserable Faith sang along with the music. Apart from the rural doctors and the herders, there were 117 Miserable Faith fans who participated in this charity event, with half of them came from nationwide. It took four hours for them to arrive at the concert by bus from Altay Airport. They did not come with bare hands, but with tons of medicine for the local herders.

There are Bovine Bezoar Toxin-Resolving Tablet, Compound Formula Salvia Droplet, Diosmectite, Strong Loquat Paste, Pain Relieving Plaster, medical gauze, cotton swab, hydrogen peroxide… etc. Every medicine represents one ticket, and one Miserable Faith fan.

There were such a lot of medicine because the concert organizer, Fosun Foundation, had a special arrangement. The ticket was free, but the participants had to bring medicine from list provided by the organizer to join the concert. The 100 tickets sold out within 34 minutes online. For those who could not join the live concert, they chatted at the WeChat fans group delivered the medicine by other fans.

The concert started from 18 May and ended on 22 May. Until 27 May when the concert had ended, different medicine was kept being sent to this border area which has less than five people per square kilometers.

Jenny Jinyuan Wang, the Honorary Chairman of Fosun Foundation (organizer of this event), and the President of Fosun Foundation Art Centre (Shanghai) said, “Originally the activity requires one small box of medicine per person, but everyone brought tons of them which is very surprising.”

Rural doctors riding horse at Jemeney

The concert was performed for the 1.44 million rural doctors who protect the health of the grassroot in China. In Jemeney, there were 160 herders, 10 village doctors and three directors from hospital who joined the concert.

Below the stage, Arshen Guri Colizati (阿尔申古丽•协力扎提) was very focus listening to the music.
 
Because of the geographic conditions and climate, nomadic herding has been adopted by the herders until now. Around 20 March every year, the herders move to the spring-autumn pasture for herding and move again at around 20 May to the summer pasture. The 41 rural doctors ride their horses every year to convoy the 300 relocating herders. Arshen Guri Colizati is one of the rural doctors.

Five years have passed since she joined the rural doctors in 2016 and travel from door to door. In many times, the roads were too tough that she could not ride the horse. She had to tramp over hill and dale by herself with the medical kit. When there was emergency case in midnight, she had to walked through roads that were four to five kilometers long in complete darkness, hearing the wolves deep inside the grassland. Winter is the toughest season for her, as the weather could be so bad that the snow on the road could be two meters thick.

“It really tough. But when I realize that there are herders waiting for me to care and treat them, the toil becomes nothing to me.” Arshen Guri Colizati smiled like a flower blossomed in the grassland.

Gulinar Bahatibai (古力娜尔•巴合提拜) is another female rural doctor at the concert. “My father is a teacher, and he was a ‘barefoot doctor’ at that time. He has high blood pressure, so I became a doctor mainly to taking care of my father.”

Gulinar Bahatibai has been also taking care of a high blood pressure patient whose family have adverse conditions. She pays RMB20 every month for the patient’s Anti-hypertensives (medicine for high blood pressure) that cannot be reimbursed from the medical insurance.

The rural doctors and the herders rely on each other for living, help and move forward together.

Jenny Jinyuan Wang said, “The nature of Fosun’s Rural Doctors Program is to protect and care for every rural doctors. No matter it is the rural doctors protecting project, the ability training for them, or this unprecedented charity concert, we hope to deliver a message that these health personnel at the grassroot level deserve being seen and respected.”

 Jenny Jinyuan Wang (the fourth person on the left of the last row) presented medical kit for the Jemeney herders.

Fosun’s Rural Doctors Program has been operating for four years. In December 2017, Fosun Foundation started this project with China Population Welfare Foundation and China Foundation for Guangcai Program under the guidance of the National Health Commission. The first phase of the program last for ten years.

To retain the strength of the 1.44 million rural doctors in China, Fosun Foundation sends corporate employees and initiates “University Students Volunteer Plan in Western China” Project. In these four years, Fosun’s Rural Doctors Program has sent 158 expatriate members to 72 national-level poverty-stricken counties (all removed from the poverty list in February 2021). There is one person in each county every year. Throughout these years, the program helped 22,192 rural doctors and three million households to have better health protection.

In February 2021, the State Council of China awarded the “Anti-Poverty Role Model” to Fosun’s Rural Doctors Program.

On 23 May 2021, the day after the concert ended, Miserable Faith woke up early in the morning and taught the Kazakh and Uighur children to sing the song “For Their Sunshine”.

In 2019, Miserable Faith acquainted Shanghai Fosun Foundation and knew about the Rural Doctors Program with 1.44 million rural doctors behind it. In the same year, Miserable Faith had become “Protectors of Rural Doctors".

Gao Hu, the main vocal of Miserable Faith said, “We hope to use our small influence to let more people know and care for the rural doctors through participating in the Rural Doctors Program and organize this charity concert. The concert venue might only accommodate five hundred people, but there are up to millions of people who will pay attention to this concert on the internet. Let the herders and rural doctors be seen and draw the attention of the public.”