Love magic
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Eleven years ago, Zhang Yuhua, a Shandong Province native, came home one afternoon from a medical clinic where he had watched his wife get a routine injection. His phone rang. It was the clinic he had just come from, with news that would turn Zhang’s life upside-down.
His wife had become a vegetable.
More accurately, the half-bottle of herba houttuyniae Zhang’s wife, Song Yuhuan, received to help heal her inflammations had left her in a vegetative state. The herbal medicine has since been banned by the Chinese government, which called a halt to injections of it in 2006 after a spate of clinical “incidents,” presumably not unlike what had happened to Song.
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Zhang Yuhua (R) and his wife Song Yuhuan |
Zhang was so struck by the unbelievable news that he threw his phone on the floor, shattering the phone into pieces just as his own world had shattered.
"It was so hard to believe,” Zhang says now. “She had just been fine when I accompanied her to inject half a bottle of intravenous drip.”
But this is not the story of a vegetable. This is, rather, a story about love, the love a husband has for his wife. Zhang so loved Song that he has stayed by her side for more than a decade, and longer than that – he was there even before the accident. Everybody tried to persuade him to leave her, but he never did.
"I said I couldn’t because I really, really love her,” Zhang said.
Instead of leaving, Zhang sang to her. While uncaring relatives cast her aside like a rancid carrot, turning down Zhang’s appeals to borrow money, he sang love songs to Song every day. A promising local singer in their city of Liaocheng, he used to charge customers 100 yuan per song. But to his wife, he sang for free. He sang even when he had depleted their savings from his above-average income on her medical care. He sang even after he had sold all of his belongings. He sang “Can’t Be Without You” and “365 Days and Nights.” During the frozen winters, he held her. And he sang.
One day, while Zhang was singing, magic happened. It was the love, the one that brought Song love songs and embraces while she was in a coma for three-and-a-half years. Song was crying. Tears rolled down the corners of her eyes and splashed onto Zhang’s elbow. He totally felt them. Zhang got so excited that he, too, began to cry. Instead of singing that night, he cried.
Song is now able to sing along with her husband in her muted voice. While she must still use a wheelchair, she has recovered greatly from the vegetative state she was once in. She began talking again three years ago and was even able to have a baby daughter, who is now 2.
"The first thing she said to me was, ‘Dear, let’s divorce. I am a burden to you,’” Zhang recalls. "But I’ve never thought she was a burden or a vegetable. I love her so much, and love is so solemn that I cannot easily give it up. It’s my duty to take care of her.”
Zhang’s love is so sincere and so stubborn that people all over the country have been able to feel it. People are deeply touched, in their hearts and minds, by his devotion to his wife. Now, the once-lonely Zhang who made magic with his love may be able to get some magical love in return. Singers like Fu Disheng and Ren Jing, Cai Guoqing, Man Wenjun and Brother Chopsticks are planning to hold a charity fair for the couple.
As Yan Su, a senior lyrist, said, “The Shandong man is great.”
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