Desperate times

“I heard a bang, the wind on my face, glass fragments were flying toward me, into my mouth, nostrils and ears. Then I felt a deathly silence,” Sham said.

“I thought, would feel if world came’.

“I couldn’t feel my hand. I kept yelling out. It was the only way I could think of to stop things from getting ‘This is how it the end of the worse, though it really was no use at all.”

When he looked down, he saw the smashed bones of his left arm below the elbow.

“I didn’t mention the speeding to the police, though it might have helped me get more compensation,” he said. “The driver was about my age. My life was already ruined. I didn’t want him to become a victim, too.”

Sham’s left arm was amputated, and he spent the next two years in the hospital. For a long time he thought life would return to normal, but then he discovered he couldn’t tie his shoes, open a bottle of water or cut his fingernails. That’s when reality bit.

He was unemployed for seven years. He had no qualifications

PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY Sham and his daughter at play during a visit to Sun Moon Lake, Nantou county, Taiwan in April.