BEIJING (SCMP): Millions of social media users in China have been moved by a 74-year-old man who has spent the past 36 years directing the traffic in his home city after car accidents took the lives of his wife, sister and four children.
The tragic deaths in Zhang Aiqing’s family took place in Kunming, southwestern China’s Yunnan province.
His efforts in the years since their deaths has led him to be dubbed Kunming’s Good Samaritan by locals.
Many people grew up watching him voluntarily directing the traffic on the street outside the city’s Yan’an hospital. The traffic police knew him and let him help.
Zhang’s story went viral on social media, receiving 4 million views after key opinion leader (KOL) @yizhiguazier shared it.
A car accident took Zhang’s sister’s life in 1990. Six years later, another car accident killed his wife and their two pairs of twins.
Zhang said he could not stay at his shabby home, which remained the same for three decades, as he could not get over his loss.
He decided to become a volunteer traffic police officer.
Every day around 6am, he caught a bus to the hospital, and helped direct the traffic during rush hours.
An online observer said Zhang told her he began directing the traffic in front of the hospital because it did a varicose vein surgery for him for free.
The second habit he had developed, was asking his friends to report their safety to him once every 10 days.
“Mind your safety!” He told @yizhiguazier every time she left his place.
Zhang often had leftover rice and instant noodles for meals. He could only afford to eat meat once a month.
When he was not directing the traffic, he begged for money on the street, carrying a wooden board that carried a message warning people about human traffickers.
Zhang reportedly caught more than 300 thieves and people traffickers.
He also collected empty bottles on the street for money, spent little on himself and saved up to help impoverished students.
The elderly man with defective hearing, wrote the two characters for “deaf man”, on his cap and had become a local landmark.
Many social media users from Kunming said they remembered him yelling at drivers and pedestrians. Some said he was not always right, but the traffic police just followed behind him without stopping him.
Of the many slogans he wrote on his walls, one read: “It is never too late to serve the people.”
“He is stuck in 1996, but tries his best to help others move forward,” one online observer said.
“The world has kissed his soul with its pain, but he returned with songs,” said another citing Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore’s famous saying. - South China Morning Post
