An unexpected accident struck Chung when he was 20 years old and still a student filled with dreams and ambition. “I didn’t feel any pain, but I couldn’t move”, he recalled of the afternoon that changed his life. Many thought he was joking when they saw him lying motionless and slowly sinking to the ground. They only realized something was wrong when it was too late to rush rush him to shore. After hitting a rock at the bottom of the lake, Chung was left quadriplegic and classified as severely disabled. From eating and bathing to every daily activity, he depended entirely on his family. The path ahead was far harsher than anything he had ever imagined. “My body deteriorated, with bedsores and countless complications. I had arms and legs but I was unable to use them. Even when mice or cockroaches gnawed at my feet, I was helpless”, Chung recounted.
What pulled him back up were his aging mother and his own willpower. “I thought, there are people who have never seen the light of day or set foot on the ground, yet they still live with strength. I had 20 years of health, which already makes me luckier than many.” When the accident happened, survival was the only thing on his mind. Once he managed to survive, he truly realized: “Dying is easy, but living - that’s the hard part”. To live well and to live usefully, Chung believed that people with disabilities must have a profession. He called it a “happy profession.”
Chung tried starting a business twice. The first time, he raised pigeons. “I thought it would be easy, but it wasn’t at all. I couldn’t do it myself, and my mother didn’t know anything about livestock.”This failure taught him his first lesson: no matter what you do, knowledge is essential.
Unable to move and with his fingers refusing to obey him, Chung decided to approach entrepreneurship differently by learning IT. He borrowed books from his nieces and nephews, asked for an old computer, and slowly immersed himself in the world of technology. “On the first day I used a computer, people scoffed: ‘You can’t even feed yourself. What can you do?”, he recalled.
But Chung found a way to literally “touch the keys”. He cut a piece of plastic to splint onto his hand and attached a pencil or chopstick to press the keyboard. Using this “pencil”, he took online classes, experimented with sales, and even tried being a YouTuber - jobs that demanded creativity and perseverance, and that fit someone with limited mobility.
“My dream is to build a YouTube team”, Chung shared. “Many people with disabilities have time on their hands and only a phone, but they don’t know how to use it to earn money. If they had someone to guide them step by step, they absolutely could do it”.
The story of Tran Ngoc Chung will be featured on Station of Love at 10:00 AM on Saturday, October 4, on VTV1.
