Chinese transplant patients’ band plays on in honour of Australian donor who dreamed of making music
- Five people who benefited from Chongqing teacher Phillip Hancock’s liver, kidneys and corneas after his death are making music in A Band for One to celebrate his life
- Group is expected to perform at annual national transplant memorial in March
Five aspiring Chinese musicians whose lives have been changed by transplants have honoured the Australian teacher whose organs gave them a second chance by fulfilling his dream of starting a band.
Before he died, Hancock’s parents, Peter and Penny Hancock, flew from Sydney to Chongqing in southwestern China to sign the organ donor’s pledge on his behalf, which, according to the Chinese Red Cross, made him the first foreign donor in his adopted hometown and the seventh in China.
At the end of last year, after hearing from his father that Hancock “loved music, loved playing the guitar, loved rap and performance and his dream was to build a band”, the five, who had no musical training, decided the donor’s dream would come true.
“We had no music sense in the past [but] now we have,” Mo Li, a 36-year-old woman who has one of Hancock’s kidneys, told Heilongjiang TV Station in a documentary about the group last month.