From Darkness to Sight

by Ming Wang

  In 2007, I founded the Tennessee Chinese Chamber of Commerce (TCCC) to help Tennessee businesses sell products to China. Later on I also became the honorary president of Tennessee-American Chamber of Commerce (TACCC). As an American business owner who was born in China, I know both the cultural perspective of the East and the business mindset in the West. I believe a vital part of selling a product—for any business—is understanding the customer. Hence, learning about other cultures such as that of China is no longer just the right thing to do as a citizen of the world today; it’s actually now an economic necessity, since if we want to increase our exports to China, we need to learn about our customers. Through educational forums, TCCC and TACCC tought Tennessee businesses owners about our potential customers—the Chinese—including the history, people, and culture of China.

  At a recent chamber meeting, I was asked by some local business owners what their next step should be in finding a way to work with Chinese businesses.

  “What’s your unique value proposition?” I asked. “If you want to collaborate with Chinese businesses to produce and sell goods in China domestically, what are you bringing to the table that your Chinese business partner does not have and most needs?”

  “I can offer capital,” responded one of the local entrepreneurs.

  “America actually owes China $2 trillion, and our annual trade deficit with China stands at $318 billion,” I said. “China doesn’t need our capital.”

  “Okay, if not money, how about technology?”

  “Well, China adopts technologies rapidly,” I said. “They have extremely smart engineers.”

  “Then how about management skills?”

  “U.S. business management is good, indeed, but China has reasonably efficient managers of its own, and they learn these skills very quickly.”

  At that point, the meeting attendees seemed to be at a loss for any other ideas, so I repeated and emphasized my initial questions.

  “What do the Chinese need from us? What is our unique value proposition? We have to have answers to those questions in any business collaboration. Although China doesn’t need our capital, technology or management, they do need something that they consider very important … something that can only be provided by us.”

  The room fell silent as everyone waited for my punch line.

  “What they need is our American brand,” I concluded. “The Chinese have historically regarded American products as being of a much higher quality than goods made in China. If a product in China has an American label, it might fetch three times the price in China’s market than a product made domestically in China. The next five to ten years will be a golden opportunity to do business with China and capitalize on the reputation of the American brand.”

  “Our unique value proposition is simply this … we are American!”

  As president of TCCC, I was invited to join a 2009 trade mission to China, led by former Tennessee governor Phil Bredesen. Beginning in late October of that year, our group of business and government leaders spent ten days visiting Beijing, Xian, Hangzhou, and Hong Kong, meeting with Chinese leaders in business, technology, and healthcare. The goal of the delegation was to do a follow-up visit to the 2007 founding of the Tennessee-China Development Center in Beijing. This economic development office was established to foster business exchange between the two countries with the hope of encouraging Chinese firms to relocate to Tennessee, which would create new jobs here. My involvement in the delegation was yet another step in my own personal vision to give back to America.

  * * *

  There remains a lot of room for improvement in our understanding of diverse cultures, not just overseas but also with respect to the immigrant groups living right here in America. To this end, I partnered with Galen Spencer Hull, PhD, an educator who has had a long-standing interest in uniting immigrant and minority businesses. We co-founded the Tennessee Immigrant and Minority Business Group (TIMBG), whose first meeting was held on September 16, 2013. The mission of TIMBG is to facilitate communication between immigrant and minority businesses, and to identify and discuss issues of common interest. One in four businesses in middle Tennessee is immigrant- or minority-owned, representing the fastest-growing sector of our business community.

  In recent years, I also began to sense a longing to reconnect with China. When I left China in 1982, I was twenty-one years old and had already endured more hardship and suffering than some people experience in a lifetime, and I wanted nothing more to do with communist dictators. I came to America for freedom, and I have loved and embraced its language, culture, and Christian faith. As I got older, however, I began to appreciate more of the values of my ethnic origin, such as the importance of family, education, and respect for elders. So I wanted to give back to China as well. On August 22, 2005, I performed China’s first bladeless, all-laser LASIK procedure, the first surgery of its kind in a country of 1.4 billion people! In 2006, I became the international president of the Shanghai Aier Eye Hospital, the flagship hospital of the Aier Eye Hospital Group, the largest private eye hospital system in China. Among the eight textbooks in ophthalmology that I have published, five have been translated into Chinese. Chinese eye doctors are also regular visitors and many fellows have been trained at Wang Vision Institute in Nashville. I have done these things throughout the past decades to help the country of my birth using knowledges that I have learned here in the West.

  Beyond medicine, I have also been interested in helping China spiritually. America gave me not only a world-class education, but also a life-changing belief and trust in God. As my Christian faith continued to grow, I wanted to do something worthwhile to help spread faith and belief in God to China. As material wealth has increased in China, corruption has risen significantly as well. This needs to change, but I do not believe the law alone is enough to solve this major problem. China as a society today needs more emphasis on individual accountability and ethics, attributes which are the cornerstone of the Christian faith.

  When I first arrived in America, I often heard people say, “You’re not supposed to do that.” As simple as the phrase sounds, it’s not one that is used in China very often because it is embedded with a moral compass, an intrinsic sense of right and wrong, which characteristically is heavily influenced by America’s historical roots in Christianity. China, on the other hand, is a country that is predominantly atheistic. At least half of American citizens profess to be Christians, and those who are living a truly Christian life are guided by their belief in God, and consider themselves accountable to His higher standards of personal conduct. Without faith and accountability to a higher power, a person may not hesitate to act corruptly as long as no one will find out. Though one can strengthen laws and legal system, but without faith, we could never hire enough police. I believe what China needs the most is for its people to believe in God.

  In 2008, I founded the Wang Foundation for Christian Outreach to China, which funds the China Bible Pen Pal Project. Our goal is to deliver ten thousand Bibles to China and to obtain email addresses from the Chinese people who receive the Bibles. We then disperse these email addresses to their Christian brothers and sisters in America, so they can become pen pals with these budding Chinese Christians in order to fellowship with them and nurture their faith. One person at a time, I want to give to the people of China the Christian faith that was given to me, a faith that has blessed my life richly. I am excited about the immense opportunity the China Bible Pen Pal Project has of recruiting a quarter of the human race for God’s kingdom!

  * * *

  My unusual transformation from atheist to Christian has also inspired many others because I have been able to share the lessons I have learned about the compatibility of faith and science. In recent years, I have travelled around the country giving lectures in the hope of bridging the gap between the two. I truly believe faith and science are friends, not foes. As my experience with the amniotic membrane contact lens shows, faith and science can indeed work together. I
t is in the uniting of the two, not splitting, can we find new, often unexpected and more powerful solutions to the problems in our lives.

  In the fall of 2012, Rice Broocks, pastor of Bethel World Outreach Church in Brentwood, Tennessee, approached me about including my story in his book, God’s Not Dead, which presents evidence for the existence of God. I was delighted to be a part of it. Following its publication, the book inspired a movie with the same title that illustrates the story of a freshman college student who challenges his philosophy professor’s atheist beliefs. One of the characters in the movie, a Chinese student who is considering Christianity, was inspired by my life story. At the time of the first print of this book, the film had grossed nearly $100 million worldwide, and more than 25 million Americans had seen it. Now the sequel to the original movie, God’s Not Dead 2, has also come out in which my Chinese student character decided to return to China to spread the Gospel, a story line modeled after our current China Bible Pen Pal Project. I believe the movie’s success is due in large part to the hunger many of us have for a connection with the divine, a longing that we were created with that runs through all mankind, and to every part of the globe from East to West.

  No matter where we have come from and where we are going, we all desire the same things—love, peace, and security—and we all appreciate the beauty of God’s creations. So we don’t have to be at odds with one another because, like faith and science, people with seemingly polarized perspectives can indeed still work together in creative, mutually beneficial ways. As a proud American with Asian roots, I hold a hand out to both the East and the West, in the hopes of bringing them a little closer together.

  President John F. Kennedy put it best when he said, “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”

  I have taken these words to heart, and I believe the idea of giving back is an ongoing mission of paying it forward to the next generation. This is a way of life for me, a lens, if you will, through which I see the world. I am not perfect and do not believe I have all the answers, but of this I am sure: the harder I work and the more my own actions inspire others—even those I have just met for the first time—to have a heart of gratitude for the freedom this great country has blessed us with, the greater chance we have to begin to lay a mighty foundation for change, and to appreciate much, much more the freedom we enjoy as Americans! With gratitude, our hearts will be primed and motivated to find ways in our own local, civic, religious, and family communities to help and to give back. This will undoubtedly build strength in our families, in our workplaces, and in our places of worship. This heart of giving back will effect positive change in our own spheres of influence and beyond, and it will lead to more fruitful and fulfilled lives.

  This sense of appreciation and the desire to give back has been the bedrock of my drive to build the Wang Foundation for Sight Restoration, the Wang Foundation for Christian Outreach to China, the Tennessee Chinese Chamber of Commerce, and Tennessee Immigrant and Minority Business Group, as well as the inspiration for all my social and community work over the years. I am honored and humbled to receive many awards over the years for my charity and community work, including NPR’s Philanthropist of the Year Award, the Outstanding Nashvillian of the Year Award from Kiwanis Club and an honorary doctorate degree from Trevecca Nazarene University. I want to do everything that I can to assist each person seeking to come out of darkness and go into the light, both physically and spiritually.

  Part Five

  I’m So Pretty!

  Chapter 21

  Maria, Part 2

  At noon on Thursday, November 7, 2013, friends and supporters around the world were praying for Maria … and for me. I was facing the most difficult reconstructive eye surgery of my entire career.

  It seemed like an impossible situation. At church the Sunday after I first evaluated Maria, I tried to listen to the sermon, but instead I kept going over the details of her upcoming surgery over and over in my mind. Her chance for healthy sight had been slim from the start to begin with, as Maria had been born prematurely, weighing only two pounds. Growing up in a Moldovan orphanage, she had also lacked access to basic medical care and essential nutrition. Maria had retinopathy of prematurity. The accompanying detached retina in her left eye was never treated, so she had lost all hope of any sight in that eye. She also had only light perception vision remaining in her right eye, but even that was compromised by the eye’s severe damage and chronic inflammation. So since her right eye was all we had to work with, we had only the slimmest chance of restoring any sight at all for Maria.

  I was honest with Maria and her host family and Steve and Lynn Hendrich, in explaining to them that the surgery on Maria’s right eye could fail, and if it did, she could lose even the little bit of sight she had left in that eye. And if there were any surgical complications—such as an infection—then we might have to remove her entire right eyeball altogether. That would be a disaster, since an eye that at least has light perception vision is still much better than facing the rest of her life in total darkness. Additionally, if the eye had to be removed, the tissues and bone structure around her eye socket would deteriorate, so her pretty, young face could be permanently disfigured.

  Furthermore, what if I opened up Maria’s eye and found even more damage, like I had with Kajal? Could I handle another heartbreak like that? I felt tense and unsettled.

  And to add insult to injury, my third marriage was unraveling as well. I had met Ye-jia Xue about five years earlier at a social gathering in Shanghai. She was beautiful, an elegant dancer, and one of the smartest people I had ever known. We fell in love, and Ye-jia moved to the U.S. to be with me. We were married a short time later, but the ongoing stress of work took its toll on our marriage over the next several years. As I spent more and more time at work, Ye-jia grew increasingly unhappy, and our marriage suffered as a result of each of us focusing on our own issues, instead of working to strengthen our relationship.

  The burdens I was carrying with another declining marriage, and the tremendous risks and high expectations related to Maria’s surgery, caused me so much stress that I felt like I was going to completely fall apart. I had nowhere else to turn but to God. Sitting in the church pew, I bowed my head and prayed.

  “God, why do I have to go through all these trials all at once? It is unbearable. With Maria’s upcoming surgery, if someone could create the absolute worst-case scenario regarding amount of intensity, risk, and uncertainty, this would be it! This is too stressful for me. Everyone has such hopes for her surgery, and on top of that, my own life is falling apart at the same time! Now God, this is really the time I need you, Lord … I need you desperately! You’re my only hope to survive through all of this. Lord, I am not scared or fearful of the failure for myself or how hard my situation is right now, I have seen stress and failures so many times in my life. Rather, I am scared and fearful of possibly letting down Maria, someone who is so innocent, precious and vulnerable. God, please help us!”

  On the day of Maria’s surgery, I had a moment to myself while I scrubbed in. Despite seemingly insurmountable difficulties, my earnest prayers over the previous few days had brought me peace. I finally sensed that God was with me, and I was able to put my personal stress aside long enough to focus exclusively on Maria, and on her surgery. Even though the surgery seemed impossible, I knew God had already carried me through other unimaginable surgeries—Francisco, Joel Case, Brad Barnes, and Kajal—so I was confident He would come through for me again with Maria.

  Perhaps God had allowed my personal and professional lives to be so stenuously tested so I would fall to my knees and be humbled enough to realize how much I need Him. Perhaps He wanted me to fully realize that even my best human efforts would not be enough to help these patients … or myself. I needed to listen to Him, and submit to His much greater power and will. Only through a combination of hard work and true faith in Him could I have a chance to persevere through these most difficult sit
uations.

  I walked away from the scrub station with my hands held high, feeling refreshed, at peace, and completely determined. Before I walked into the operating room, I told Steve and Lynn that we had arrived at the point of no return. We were all well aware by this time that the surgery was going to be very risky and in the end, Maria may regain some vision or she may lose her sight completely. We prayed for God’s guidance, strength, and wisdom. Because the chance for success was so slim, I prayed that God would help us all to accept whatever His will was with the outcome. I knew deep down that truly having faith doesn’t mean asking God for what we want and then expecting Him to give it to us, but rather faith is presenting your prayer request to God with a humble attitude of “not my will, but yours be done,” and then accepting whatever His decision is for our situation.

  I was going to give it my best … and the rest was up to God!

  Inside the operating room, the surgical team prepared the surgical instruments as I secured my gown and gloves.

  We were ready to begin.

  There were at least ten significant barriers to restoring sight in Maria’s right eye, and we had only overcome one so far—the ultrasound had indicated that her right retina was still intact. The next barrier was that her pupil wouldn’t dilate and would have to be manually pried open, which increased the risks of the surgery. The goal was to get behind her constricted pupil to break up the rock-hard, opacified cataract, excavate, and implant an artificial lens. All of that had to be accomplished through a scarred cornea—which gave me only a very limited view of the eye’s content—and a chronically inflamed eye with a distorted anatomy. In addition, I wasn’t sure whether I would encounter an unstable lens or the capsular structure would be firm enough to support the removal of the dense cataract and the implantation of the lens. Finally even if we were successful with all these steps, I would still have to face dealing with the distorted iris, trying to reconstruct her pupil, and after this surgery, managing potential retinal and optic nerve issues.