Lee Hill-hei (李曉曦), a Hong Kong painter with muscular dystrophy, was honored the Fervent Global Love of Lives Medal on Jan. 21 by Taiwan's Chou Ta-Kuan Cultural and Educational Foundation (周大觀文教基金會) in recognition of his passion for life.
The award was bestowed during the opening ceremony of a special exhibition co-organized by Chou Ta-Kuan Foundation and the Education University of Hong Kong. The exhibition will show how Lee tackled the disease and expressed his positive attitude through paintings.
Lee, a distinguished alumnus of the Education University of Hong Kong, suffers from symptoms developed from hereditary motor sensory neuropathy, and has been confined to a wheelchair due to the increasing weakening of muscles since early childhood.
Despite his afflictions, Lee never yielded and has shown impeccable courage and perseverance in his pursuit of art. He seizes every moment and experiments with many ways to hold a brush and light up life with art. Lee also travels around the world to inspire others by sharing his personal experiences.
Established in 1997, Chou Ta-Kuan Cultural and Educational Foundation holds many charitable events in loving memory of Chou Ta-kuan (周大觀), a young poet and late author of "I Still Have One Leg (我還有一隻腳).” He died at the age of nine from Rhabdomyosarcoma, an aggressive type of muscle tissue cancer.
The foundation has been the driving force behind the "Fervent Global Love of Lives” movement for the past two decades by sending aid to Kenya and 33 other countries. With the help of roughly 430,000 volunteers, over 190,000 children with cancer have been sponsored for receiving treatment or fulfilling their dream of going to school.
The Fervent Global Love of Lives Medal has been given to 380 people from 53 countries across five continents in the world. This year, a total of twenty inspiring people from around the world joined the list of laureates, including Japanese autistic pianist Kohya Suechika (末近功也), Australian teen pilot Lachlan Smart, British swan conservationist Sacha Dench, and Colombian peace proponent José Miguel Sokoloff.
By assisting the foundation in its public benefit activities and awards, the Ministry of Culture hopes to bridge the gap between Taiwan and the international community through love.
Apart from organizing the Lee Hill-hei exhibition at the Education University of Hong Kong, volunteers and past laureates will also visit over 1,000 child cancer patients at nine children's hospitals in Hong Kong and Guangzhou, including the First Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University.
Artist and "Fervent Global Love of Lives" laureate Lee Hill-hei is pictured in the middle of the photograph.