Repaying family debt in full, a matter of honor

Lying on the bed in her utterly destitute home, 74-year-old Wu Yulan heaves a sigh of relief. She has finally paid back the last part of the 54,000 yuan ($7,883) debt she has owed for nine years.

To reward herself, the short and thin old woman spends eight yuan on a pair of cloth shoes, the first new thing she has purchased in years. "I've finished repaying the money I had borrowed for my son," she says.

Life was poor but happy for Wu after she and her husband settled down in his hometown in Urumqi, capital city of northwestern China's Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, 30 years ago. However, the working couple faced the biggest challenge of their life in 1991 when their 29-year-old son was diagnosed with uremia. To make matters worse, her husband died of liver cancer in 1995, leaving the unemployed Wu alone to do odd jobs to scrape together money for her son's operation.