Death of 'iron woman' leaves village poorer

Thousands of people in Dongtou, a village in Changzhou, Jiangsu province, got up early on March 3 to bid 85-year-old Xu Qiaozhen a final farewell.

They stood silently on both sides of the main road, holding flowers, some with tears in their eyes.

Xu, the former Party chief of the village's Diaoqiao Road community, was loved by almost everyone.

On every Army Day, she visited soldiers who were far from their families, taking them homemade food and shoes.

On Children's Day, she took toys and stationery to orphans living in the welfare institution, and at Mid-Autumn Festival, each senior with no family members received mooncakes from her.

As head of the community board for 21 years, Xu liked to dress in red, and was a woman in a hurry. After retiring from a spinning factory in 1994 as an excellent worker, she was asked by the community to help with its work.

She made village waste disposal her first task. Xu borrowed a pedicab and removed garbage 10 times a day. Some of it had piled up in the community for years.

She bought newspapers and magazines, and set up a reading room for residents. She asked professionals to give fashion lessons and transformed elderly women into models. She also arranged diamond wedding ceremonies for couples to show their love for each other.

Zhang Xuezhen, a member of the community board, said each poor family received a box of milk, cakes and eggs. Each senior with no family members was given extra cushions.

"Most of the gifts were paid for by Xu," the 74-year-old said. "Nobody knows how much she spent on people in need during the years she worked for the community."

Xu also arranged for seniors in the community, who numbered more than 100, to travel to neighboring cities. She handled all the bookings and any emergencies that arose during the trips.

"She said that as a senior she knew what the elders wanted - companionship and care," Zhang said. "After hearing that a 90-year-old woman living alone was not used to wearing new shoes, she made several pairs by hand for her."

Before Spring Festival in February, Xu could hardly eat or drink after being diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer, but she still asked her son to drive her to the office.

Even after being hospitalized, she kept phoning community workers to arrange new year's visits to seniors and poor families.

Wei Shundi, an80-year-old resident, described Xu as an "iron woman".

"I knew her for many years and always told her to enjoy life," Wei said. "But she liked to keep busy, visiting every hospitalized child and comforting depressed people.

"Xu asked us not to visit her after she was hospitalized, because she didn't want us to spend money on presents and didn't want to bother us. She kept helping people for more than 20 years. Maybe that was her way of enjoying life."

Contact the writers through cangwei@chinadaily.com.cn