Zhang Dingyu, the director of Wuhan Jinyintan Hospital, leads over 600 doctors and nurses fighting against the Novel coronavirus pneumonia(新型冠状病毒肺炎), which has caused hundreds of deaths in central China’s Hubei Province. As Zhang led over 600 doctors and nurses fighting the disease, his strange way of walking shocked his colleagues. He finally admitted that he had fallen ill with ALS (渐冻症) since October 2018 after constant researches. ALS is a disease that gradually blocks the connection between brain and body. People with ALS become partially paralyzed (瘫痪的) leading to respiratory (呼吸系统的) failure.

While working with handicapped (瘸的) legs, his wife was confirmed to get infected with the virus after working in another hospital. The bad news brought him to his knees, and he cried for the first time after the virus broke out. Zhang could only find time to visit his wife until three days after she got admitted to the hospital. Even then he could only stay for 30 minutes. Fortunately, the good news came that his wife had recovered ten days after treatment.

Zhang, 57, has offered medical services along with Chinese medical teams to Algeria and Pakistan. Three days after the earthquake hit central Sichuan Province in 2008, Zhang entered the city with his medical team members to offer help.

“Life is always short. I need to do more to finish the things that I might leave behind, then I would leave without too many regrets,” Zhang said. “We are at the center of a storm, so we need to give all we have to protect our city, and our Wuhan people,” Zhang said.

Over the past 6 years, Zhang Chaofan has given away 1.35 million yuan and raised 5.2 million yuan from the public to help more than 400 people with health problems-including teachers with cancer(癌症)and disabled children in poor families-learn traditional Chinese culture.

Zhang, 29, was born without a left arm in Changchun, Jilin, but her hard work to become stronger has encouraged many people. She was chosen along with 67 other honorees(领奖人)to receive the Eighth National Ethical Role Model award(第八届全国道德模范提名奖)at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on November 5th, 2021.

In 2015, Zhang set up a handwriting and painting school in Changchun. When she found that some parents were unable to pay for their children’s education, she made the lessons free and began providing 300,000 yuan every year to help them.

In early 2020, her school was made to suspend all courses because of COVID-19(新冠肺炎), but it didn’t stop her from helping the poor families. She raised more than 8.9 million yuan and gave them away to Hubei hospitals.

“Women in the new times should have the courage to create value and also have a sense of social duty,” she said. “ It is my great honor to be chosen as a model. This will become a driving force for me to move ahead and keep helping the poor and the disabled.”

When Zhang Dongdong, from Beijing, arrived at Sanbao Street in Qinglong, Guizhou in August, 2019, he found that most of the children there lived with their grandparents. Their parents moved to large cities to work. The families were poor, and there were no else books for the children to read except textbooks. Zhang felt sorry for the children. He tried his best and got 3,000 books from all over the country. Half a year later, he set up Sanbao Children’s Library.

After several months, Zhang went to Zhanma Village. He visited the village primary school. Zhang found that the school library was a small room with old books and there was no place for children to read. So Zhang planned to build another library, and on June 1st the following year, World Children’s Day. Zhanma Village Library opened its door.

“I’m not the only one that has built a library for a village,” Zhang, 38, said, “In fact, most secretaries(书记）choose to build village libraries as a very important part of our work. Books can be good friends for the children, enriching(充实) their childhood and maybe their lives.”