As 59-year-old Li Yunli remembers, the water in Dianchi Lake in Kunming, Yunnan, was so clean that local people could drink from it directly when she was a child.

But the lake was greatly polluted in the 1980s. Local people avoided it, even though they had once depended on its fish for their living. Many chose to change jobs and go elsewhere to make a living, but not Li. Instead, she set up her mind to clean the lake.

She has been cleaning the lake for 35 years now. And her hard work has made her be chosen as one of China’s 100 model environmental protection volunteers this year.

In 1987, local government started a volunteer program to deal with the growing number of water hyacinths（水葫芦）. Li attended it shortly. The following year, an all-woman salvage（打捞）team was built to do cleaning in the lake. Li was the leader of the team.

Since then, she and her team can often be seen starting work at 7 am. braving sunshine and rain. The hardest period runs from June to August, when the water hyacinths grow fastest. Plants and rubbish during this period are blown in many different directions and rain sometimes makes the work harder.

“I grew up near Dianchi. I’m cleaning it not only for the lake, but also for myself and for future people,” she said. “As long as I am hard-working in taking the lead in the cleanup, more people will join us to protect Dianchi, and the lake will return to its best condition with water that can be drunk directly,” she said.

There have been positive（积极的）changes to the lake thanks to the team’s work and also to the increasing attention from the local government.

When somebody is in need,will you give them a hand? Do you make any judgments (判断) about them before you help them?

There was a woman who inherited (继承) a clothing store after her sister passed away. The woman already had a job of her own, but she decided to run the store on weekends.

The first day she opened, an old woman came in and looked at things here and there. However, she didn’t buy anything. When the woman asked why, the old woman said, “Well, I like these things, but I don’t have enough money.”

“I already have a job. I can afford (承担得起) to give some clothes away,” the woman thought to herself. So she let the old woman have the clothes for free.

Word soon spread about the “free clothing store”. People started coming in. They told the woman that they didn’t have enough money. She would simply give them clothes. But one day, she went in to open the store and found that there was nothing left inside.

It’s a good thing to help others when they’re poor or in need. But we must also be careful. Not everyone is nice—some people will cheat others whenever they can. Use your best judgment to decide who really needs help.

On her second or third day behind the counter, Cynthia received a phone call from her nine-year-old son, Jessie. He needed a baseball glove for Little League. She explained that as a single mother, money was very tight, and her first check would have to go for paying bills. Perhaps she could buy his baseball glove with her second or third check. When Cynthia arrived for work the next morning, Patricia, the store manager, asked her to come to the small room in the back of the store that served as an office. Cynthia wondered if she had done something wrong or left some part of her job incomplete from the day before. She was concerned and confused.

Patricia handed her a box. “I overheard（无意中听到）you talking to your son yesterday,” she said, “and I know that it is hard to explain things to kids. This is a baseball glove for Jessie because he may not understand how important he is, even though you have to pay bills before you can buy gloves. You know we can’t pay good people like you as much as we would like to, but we do care, and I want you to know you are important to us.”

The selflessness（无私）and love of this convenience store manager proves that people remember more how much an employer cares than how much the employer pays.