A soldier for all time

In life, he was an everyday hero to those who knew him, but in death, stories of Fu Lizhi's extreme commitment to the military are a source of inspiration to people far and wide, Deng Zhangyu reports.

Fu Lizhi was 500 meters from the finish line of a 5-kilometer race, an annual military drill, when he collapsed, exhausted. His colleagues tried to help him stand and his superior suggested he quit, but Fu, a military man whose single-minded dedication to his work was the stuff of legend, brushed them away.

With the scorching June sun beating overhead, Fu, whose favorite saying, peppered throughout his diaries, is "never stop fighting the battle", pulled himself to his feet and staggered to the finish line, where he collapsed.