Liu Hsia

This is a Chinese name; the family name is Liu.

Liu Hsia (Chinese: 劉俠; pinyin: Liú Xiá; 28 February 1942 – 8 February 2003), better known by her pen name "Hsinglintzu"(Chinese: 杏林子; pinyin: Xìnglínzǐ), was a Taiwanese writer. Suffering from severe rheumatoid arthritis from the age of twelve, she became a social activist, and went on to found the Eden Social Welfare Foundation, Taiwan's largest social welfare foundation. Her writing and community work led to her becoming an advisor to the President of the Republic of China. On 7 February 2003, she suffered severe injuries from her Indonesian caregiver, Mina, efforts to save her failed and she died in the early hours of 8 February 2003, she was sixty.

Pen name

Liu Hsia is best known by her pen name, Hsinglintzu, Chinese: 杏林子, literally "Child of the apricot forest", this is both an allusion to her ancestral home of Xìnglín Town (Chinese: 杏林, literally: Apricot Forest) in Fufeng County, Shaanxi province, China; and an allusion to a lifetime spent in and out of hospitals. "People of the apricot forest" (Chinese: 杏林中人) is a traditional Chinese epithet for physicians; especially for skilled ones. The epithet derives from the life of Eastern Han physician Dong Feng.

Legacy

A Ph.D. study of the Christian theology implicit in her writings was produced at the University of Edinburgh in 2006.

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