Praise for Life of Pei
"On one of my first visits to the UK office of the World Society for the Protection of Animals (WPSA), I was introduced to members of the international advocacy team, including Pei Feng Su. She was initiating a project called AsiaLink to build capacity in the animal welfare sector throughout Asia and she asked me to participate in the initiative.
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After multiple trips to a variety of countries, I thought I had come to know Pei quite well, but it wasn’t until I received a draft copy of Life of Pei: The Battle for Compassion that I realized just how much about Pei’s life I didn’t know. The challenges she faced while growing up, her family relationships, how her perspective about animals and animal welfare had evolved and changed, her growth as an animal advocate, how she founded ACTAsia, what influences her today, and so much more. I found Life of Pei: The Battle for Compassion a revelatory, inspiring and engrossing read.
Growing up under authoritarian military rule in Taiwan, Pei’s early years were spent with her mother, five siblings and her ailing father. Through those years, Pei watcher her mother struggling to keep the family housed and fed, while never complaining. She knew her mother had personal fortitude, had accepted responsibility for their situation and was doing everything possible to help her family survive and, hopefully, prosper. Pei’s mother became her role model.
As young adult in her early twenties, after Taiwanese military rule ended, Pei helped to establish the Life Conservationist Association (LCA), with Buddhist monk Wu Hung. For the next five years, Pei focused on both human and animal issues with an ever-increasing emphasis on animal advocacy initiatives and investigations. While not being an “animal lover” in the western sense, she firmly believed the mistreatment of animals was an injustice that had to be stopped. It was the right thing to do.
Several years later, Pei decided to further her education in the United Kingdom and, after obtaining a degree in sociology, she joined the WSPA as a professional animal advocate. That’s where I met Pei.
I had no idea at the time that Pei’s enormous empathy and compassion for individual animals had evolved later in life after acquiring a cat named Socks. While growing up in Taiwan, companion animal pets were not common and animals were viewed in a somewhat utilitarian way by most people, but that all changed with Socks. At the time Socks was brought home, Pei had a family of her own and Socks became the newest member of her family. Pei’s relationship with Socks profoundly changed the way she looked at all animals and was a catalyst for actions she would take on their behalf in the future.
One of those pivotal actions was Pei’s decision in 2006 to establish a humane education initiative, called ACTAsia, to promote compassion for animals, people and the environment in China and other Asian nations. In her book, Pei provides a gritty, hard-hitting account of the substantial challenges she’s faced in starting, maintaining and growing a UK-based charitable organization that works to help animals overseas. Having gone through the same process myself, her words resonated deeply with me.
For anyone interested in advocacy of any kind, Pei offers valuable insights into what makes an effective advocate, such as being smart, prepared, strategic and tenacious. She also delves into not only the high points of her lifetime of advocacy experiences, but the inevitable, soul-destroying low points that anyone trying to change the world for the better experiences. But she has battled through them, not only keeping ACTAsia alive, but also establishing the organization’s far-reaching, award-winning Caring for Life (CFL) Education programs and making an international impact.
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While Life of Pei: The Battle for Compassion offers a great deal of insight and wisdom about advocating
for making the world a better place, it is also a fascinating story about someone who has lived a remarkable life and has made, and will continue to make, a positive contribution to the lives of both animals and people. Thank you Pei Feng Su!"
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- Rob Laidlaw, Executive Director, Zoocheck Inc.
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"It is too seldom that we know the histories of most people we know. Having been an animal rights vegan activist for over 35 years, I have known hundreds of people who have designed their lives around those commitments and use their lives to do whatever they can to move us toward a world that works for everyone and everything with no one and nothing left out. I have known hundreds of amazing animal rights activists and have had deep respect for so many of them. And then there are activists like Pei Su. I have been impressed by and have admired and reveled in the accomplishments of ACTAsia for years now, but, I was stunned to learn about her history, what she endured, who she has invented herself to be, and what she has and will accomplish for a kinder, more compassionate planet. The direct translation of animal in Chinese is ‘moving object’ and given Pei Su’s past as the object of so much disrespect, pain and cruelty, it was entirely unpredictable that she could be a driving force behind an entire culture’s shift toward equality for and inclusion of all species. This book will astound, enrage and inspire you to be the best you can be for all of us."
~ Veda Stram, all-creatures.org
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"The world is in distress and urgently needs some good news. A long-term view includes educating the young to create future generations who care. Not only for family members, but also for disabled people, the frail elderly, neglected children, mistreated animals and the environment suffering from climate change.
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The health, well-being and happiness of future generations depend on populations saying NO to strife, instead valuing friendship and compassion as the key factors for life. Education that integrates humanity, alongside reading, writing and arithmetic, could be the catalyst for such change.
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Life of Pei, the Battle for Compassion, is a book that provides this type of long-term perspective.
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The book tells the story of Pei’s upbringing in Taiwan, where the first sixteen years of her life were largely filled with hardship and great sadness. The deaths of her parents and other family members had a detrimental effect on her behaviour, with dark thoughts regularly invading her mind. Eventually, Buddhism became her saviour and inspired her to do something positive with her life.
The book focuses on the indifferent and often cruel attitudes towards animals in Asia and describes how and why Pei decided she could help spearhead societal changes. In 2006, she founded ACTAsia, an international charity, to pioneer humane education in primary schools, under the banner of Caring for Life Education.
ACTAsia has now evolved into a One-Health project, integrating respect and compassion for humans, animals and the environment. This journey has taken Pei around the world, often alone and facing struggles, but fortuitously, kind and helpful people often crossed her path helping her to avoid emotional and economic collapse.
Pei eventually married a Scotsman and after two miscarriages, gave birth to a girl, while still sustaining a busy schedule, expanding the reach of ACTAsia. The family also adopted a homeless cat, whose intuition and friendliness provided comfort and warmth to Pei, something she had never experienced as a child. This made the human-animal bond real for her.
With many international awards and consultative status with the United Nations, Pei and ACTAsia have become a duo of exceptional societal value. The future is looking brighter, with Caring for Life Education taught in schools and universities in China and Pakistan.
Through ACTAsia, Pei is aiming to help future generations grow into friendly, caring, humane adults working towards a world without strife, flood or drought. Her recent frightening and disabling struggle to beat breast cancer has spurred her on to make good use of every opportunity, in her battle for compassion."
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- Emeritus Professor Terence Ryan
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Pei Feng Su's paths and mine have crossed for decades and, throughout these years, I have always felt blessed to know and admire this outstanding activist, my friend.
And now even more so reading just a snapshot of this incredible woman's work and achievements.
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Resolved and resilient, determined and driven, Pei has led so many remarkable changes for animal welfare and education in Asia that have set both a fundamental standard and an ever-increasing ripple of opportunity and progress. She is unstoppable. In life you meet people that you wish you could just know and be with more. And so it is with Pei. Whenever our paths have crossed we have known an extraordinary affinity and I remain deeply respectful of all she is and does. Along with so many I celebrate Pei and ActAsia's powerful success, and love that her tenacious spirit has educated and inspired hundreds of thousands of people in this great and diverse and often complicated Continent of Asia.
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Pei and her ActAsia team have set an audacious pace of progress. Today, through pioneering educational vision and campaigns, even in countries with few or no welfare laws or regulations, we are looking at advances in welfare of wild, domestic and endangered species in a whole new light. We are looking at spotlights shone on the cruel fur industry, on improving animal agriculture, and we are looking at advances in pain management, training of veterinary students, of harmony with nature and the interconnectedness of all life in a world that urgently needs help.
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I think, most of all, I admire Pei's honesty in this visionary book, because her life's experiences, her transparency, her vulnerability, have shown the reader tremendous courage and determination in overcoming what must surely sometimes be demons of unmanageable ferocity in her mind and her heart. And this has translated into action and campaigns that are seeing the animals of Asia recognised as the sentient beings they are - as supporters and advocates join Pei and ActAsia with a new set of eyes and kindness.
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Whoever said in the book;"Perseverance has another name, it's called Pei" was right. Pei I hope to see you and join you again here, where your heart remains, as mine does, in Asia.
With love, gratitude and never ending respect. Oh, and a big bear hug, Jill
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- Jill Robinson MBE, Dr med vet hc, Hon LLD, Founder & CEO Animal Asia Foundation