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Out of the Wreckage: A Crash Survivor’s Road to Recovery
In the early hours of May 9, 2010, a traffic collision at an intersection on Beijing’s central Chang’an Avenue caused by a drunken driver traveling at 120 km/h left Wang Hui with life-changing injuries and claimed the lives of her husband, Chen Weining, and one of their twin daughters, 6-year-old Zhuzhu, who had all been together in the family sedan.
The drunken driver, Chen Jia — who was 31 at the time and was arrested after fleeing the scene — was sentenced to life in prison after a high-profile trial in May 2011, the same month that China’s Criminal Law was revised to include the criminal offense of driving while under the influence of alcohol. While the verdict brought legal closure, Wang still faced a long journey in coming to terms with her immense personal loss.
After the crash, she underwent more than a dozen major surgeries, enduring constant physical agony, and was kept in the dark about the death of her husband and daughter for two months by family and friends, for fear it would affect her initial recovery. Having suffered permanent damage to her spine, Wang required years of extensive rehabilitation to be able to stand and walk unaided, and to this day still experiences chronic pain and has difficulty moving her left arm. Yet, her emotional recovery has been the most arduous.
In 2015, Wang began studying psychology in a quest for answers, and over the years has become a well-respected psychologist, going on to establish the Ruizhong Center for Holistic Growth, an organization that supports people working through trauma and grief. Here, she shares her experiences in moving past resentment and finding a way forward after that fateful night almost 15 years ago.
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Emotional recovery
In the first few years after the accident, I was completely closed off. I avoided contact with anyone outside of my immediate circle. My life revolved around seeking out hospitals, undergoing surgeries and treatments, sleeping, resting, getting massages, and doing physiotherapy exercises. That was my life. Everyone around me approached me with extreme caution. My family packed up anything in my home they thought could be triggering — photos, computers, all of it was hidden away. I was shielded from the past and had to rely on others to take care of me.
There were also people who later told me that they didn’t know how to behave around me, so they chose to avoid me altogether.
At the time, I seemed calm on the surface, but I was actually in a dissociative state. I didn’t know how I felt, nor did I understand the feelings of others. I was like a zombie, not truly living in the real world. I perceived things only as objects with no meaning; a blue sky was just a blue sky, a tree was just a tree. Nothing could stimulate any kind of emotional response or leave any impression. This was a coping mechanism. In the short term, it helped me survive, because everything I was experiencing was beyond what I could bear. If I had been able to feel it all, I’d have broken down completely, and all my rehabilitation efforts would have been in vain.
However, as a long-term strategy, dissociation doesn’t work. You can’t interact with people like that indefinitely. If you’re not connected to yourself, you’ll face challenges in your relationships with your children and other family members, and you’ll have difficulty getting along with colleagues.
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For a long time, I couldn’t cry. I saw others weeping, clearly heartbroken about what had happened, but I felt nothing. I’d sealed off my emotions. My mom passed away in 2015 from lung cancer, five years after the accident. I couldn’t cry. It didn’t seem right — I felt I should cry, but the tears just wouldn’t come. I was able to go on with my life and do all the things I needed to do, but I couldn’t engage mentally. It was also in 2015 that my physiotherapist told me I needed to re-enter society and begin interacting with people again; I couldn’t continue living in my imagination or in the past.
That year, I began studying psychology. When I studied the Satir method, a kind of systemic family therapy, I hit a wall. One of the core tools in family therapy is the iceberg model, which emphasizes understanding and processing feelings. If you can’t recognize the emotions behind your behavior, you can’t move on. But I felt no emotion, so I couldn’t progress. As someone with an academic achiever mindset, I felt extremely frustrated at my failure to grasp this.
Later, I began receiving hypnotherapy and slowly started reconnecting with my body and my breath. I practiced diligently every day, and my sensations gradually returned. I could smell the fragrance of flowers and started to feel alive again. Waves of emotion also began to emerge and flow through me. Eventually the tears came, and once they started they were impossible to hold back. On the outside it may have looked like I was falling apart, but this was a critical step in my recovery. Afterward, when I returned to studying family therapy, I found the subject matter much easier to understand and practice.
In 2015, I earned my national level 2 psychological counselor license. My mother’s lung cancer was quite advanced then, but I was still like a naive child, believing she couldn’t possibly die. When I learned that she had cancer, I refused to think about the possibility of her passing. She and my now-husband were the only ones who supported me in pursuing my studies. Everyone else criticized me, saying, “Your mother is seriously ill, but instead of staying by her side, you’re going off to study.”
Part of me was avoiding reality. I didn’t want to face my mother’s condition. Now, I regret it, but I no longer blame myself. I was overwhelmed and didn’t have the strength to handle it. I’m an only child, and my mother was a capable woman. She used to take care of everything, so I didn’t have to worry about much. Her guidance was always spot on. It was thanks to her that I got into Peking University after school, landed a job at a great company, and avoided many missteps in life.
When my mother passed, our family fell apart. My father, like me, had been dependent on her, and he had to learn how to be an adult again and take charge of the household. I was already in my 30s but in many ways still a little girl, having to start everything from scratch.
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Living for yourself
I didn’t cry when my mother passed away, and neither did my daughter, Zhenzhen. We were both in a dissociative state. I didn’t understand this and accused Zhenzhen of being ungrateful. “Your grandmother treated you so well,” I said. “She raised you from a young age, and now she’s gone, yet you don’t cry.” My father couldn’t understand it either and scolded her harshly, even saying he might as well have raised a dog instead. I caused my daughter a great deal of pain then. I believe that my father and I inflicted on my daughter a secondary trauma, perhaps causing even deeper damage than the car accident. We rejected her completely, on the deepest emotional level.
My journey into psychology was largely driven by my daughter. I realized back then I didn’t know what to do — years had passed, and things only seemed to be getting worse.
After the car crash, we sent Zhenzhen to live with her aunt in Nanchang, in the eastern Jiangxi province. Less than a year later, she insisted on coming back. She was just starting first grade. I was still in the hospital and required further surgeries, so I sent her to a boarding school. For a while, she didn’t want to go, but I had no choice and forced her to attend without providing any emotional support. I didn’t have the capacity to deal with what she was going through. Later, she became completely averse to attending school, frequently pretending to be sick. It got so bad she threatened to jump off a building if I forced her to go.
I decided to take her out of boarding school and enroll her in a school closer to home. By then, I was living at home and going to the hospital daily for physiotherapy. Zhenzhen finished primary school but didn’t want to move on to middle school. She said she couldn’t face strangers and would cry until her pillow was soaked. I tried everything — promising rewards, trying to reason with her, threatening her, even saying her favorite actor only likes girls who go to school. I tried every trick in the book, but nothing worked.
I was devastated. I went to Peking University and her father attended China’s equally prestigious Tsinghua University. She’s a bright girl. I thought, I’m working so hard to deal with this terrible thing that happened to us — why can’t she work hard with me? I couldn’t accept how she felt and kept pushing back.
Initially, after the accident, Zhenzhen was remarkably mature. At just 6 years old, she was shorter than my wheelchair, yet she insisted on pushing me — she wouldn’t let anyone else help. But when she reached adolescence at 11, she started questioning things: “Why does everyone tell me to take care of you? I’m just a kid.” People had grown accustomed to her caregiving and neglecting her own needs, but now all these feelings were exploding. Our relationship became incredibly strained. She was breaking down, and so was I. Her anger clashed with mine, and we were constantly butting heads.
It wasn’t until I started trying to put myself in her shoes that I realized how wrong I had been. I had failed to provide her with sufficient psychological support, and her condition had worsened. I decided to let her take a break from school. I realized I needed to grow up and accept reality, rather than cling to some idealized version of events.
I found her a psychologist, and things improved for a while. After less than a year, she returned to school. But new problems arose. She hadn’t truly processed her grief. In psychological terms, we all experience the grief cycle: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and eventually, acceptance. A grieving person must experience all of these emotions, completing the cycle — others can influence and support them, but cannot force them to move forward. One psychologist tried to push Zhenzhen too hard, and she broke down. After that, she refused therapy. Her condition deteriorated, leading to anxiety, depression, and obsessive-compulsive behaviors. To this day, she still can’t handle seeing an insect.
Recognizing Zhenzhen’s situation, I adopted a more humane approach, allowing her to progress at her own pace. This made everything smoother. I now understand that this is the best she can do. Once I accepted this, there was no more resistance between us. She began to live by her own rhythm. This year, during a counseling session, I realized I wanted to tell my daughter, “You can live for yourself now. You don’t have to live for me anymore.” I owe my psychology career to my daughter. She has been, without a doubt, my greatest motivation.
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No regrets
Another struggle on this journey was remarrying. I’ve known my current husband for a long time, but after the accident I was hesitant about taking that first step. I still carry traditional beliefs, and a part of me felt that remarrying would be shameful. I had a great relationship with my late husband — so why would I want to find someone else now that he’s gone? It felt like a form of betrayal.
When I finally did start seeing my current husband, I didn’t want others to know. That was part of my emotional trauma. I was also afraid of potential marital problems — like infidelity or financial disputes. No one knows what the future holds, and I didn’t want to go through another accident or put my new partner in the position of enduring such misfortune. After all, in any relationship, one person always leaves first.
All of my worrying made it difficult for me to take the plunge. My husband brought up the subject many times, but I kept writing it off based on hypothetical problems. I was also concerned about whether my daughter would accept it. She hadn’t come to terms with her father’s death and was not willing to accept another man getting close to me. All I could do was take it step by step and tackle each issue as it arose.
I had two counselors working with me. One asked, “If you could be sure that none of the things you worry about will happen, what would you do?” I said I would marry him. The other counselor asked, “If you could be sure that all of those things will happen, what would you do?” I initially wanted to say I wouldn’t marry, but then I realized that even if they did happen, I loved this man and still wanted to marry him. So I set a date to register our marriage.
After all my surgeries, I saw the scars on my legs and thought I would never wear skirts again. But later, I stopped caring what people thought — I now wear skirts and shorts whenever I want. I realized that few people paid attention anyway; it was just me not accepting myself.
Now, when things happen, I accept them and focus on doing whatever I can in the present moment. I only engage with the things that are within my control; for the things I can’t change or control, I accept them. I accept that everyone has their own fate, and I don’t attempt to change what the universe has decided. I take life as it comes.
I’m hospitalized almost every year for one reason or another. The people in my ward often wonder why I’m always smiling — how I can still work as a teaching assistant, give lectures, or even return to work so soon after an operation. People see how quickly I return to normal life and ask, “Aren’t you in pain?” Actually, I am in pain, but I’m not suffering. Once you accept pain, it simply becomes a physical sensation; when you don’t, you’re inevitably in psychological pain too.
Over the past 14 years, I’ve shared my story on many occasions. In the past, I might have said that sharing was helpful because it functioned as exposure therapy — repeatedly confronting this traumatic experience helped me accept it. But now, it sometimes brings up shadows from the past. I catch myself thinking, “I’m a hero, I’m amazing, and I deserve to feel proud. I’ve been through something so terrible, and yet I’ve still been able to accomplish so much. Why can’t others?” I’ve realized that recounting how I overcame everything can reinforce a sense of conceitedness.
In recent years, my main focus has been honesty — being truthful with myself and others. I’ve been trying to live with authenticity and intention. I used to do what I thought was “good,” “right,” or “necessary,” and I equated happiness with having certain things. Now I see life as experience. True freedom and joy come from within; they are independent of external circumstances.
You can pursue external things, but they shouldn’t be your focus. As soon as external things become your focus, you’re trapped and will experience mostly suffering with only occasional moments of joy. External things are inherently uncontrollable, so they will always cause frustration. The key is to embrace all of the flavors and seasons of life.
We’re prone to thinking we’re the only ones suffering, but we’re not. Everyone is carrying some burden. All people experience these things, just at different stages.
One reason I’ve pursued a career in psychological growth is my own regrets — my family isn’t complete. I didn’t get to see my daughter Zhuzhu grow up, fall in love, and start her own family. Those regrets are with me. I want to help reduce the burden of regrets like mine in the world.
When my mother was ill, I wasn’t mature enough to handle the idea of losing her. This is one of my regrets. Later, when my grandmother was near the end, I went back to my hometown and spent every day with her, taking good care of her. One reason was that I wanted to make up for all the things I didn’t do when my mother was dying. So I made a point of spending time with my grandmother, smiling with her, kissing her, and doing everything for her.
Now, I don’t have many regrets. When it’s eventually my time to go, I’ll feel ready.
As told to reporter Ba Rui.
A version of this article originally appeared in Oh Youth! (36Kr). It has been translated and edited for brevity and clarity, and is republished here with permission.
Translator: Carrie Davies; editors: Wang Juyi and Hao Qibao.
(Header image: VCG)