Take portraits for 5000 old farmers and send the masterpieces to the schoolbags of rural children
"Public welfare addict" Yan Zhiqiang's 26 years of charity life
Our reporter Chen Chunyuan
Twenty-six years, from subsidizing poor students, to caring for widows and loneliness, to caring for life, humanities, and soul...
He was addicted to public welfare, paid upside down, declined the opportunity to enter Beijing, and took root in the red land. It can be described as "no madness, no survival".
His name is Yan Zhiqiang.
When I first saw him more than 20 years ago, he gave people a "heterogeneous" feeling: thin, cold, eyes like torches, pointing directly at people's hearts.
Years honed, just in response to his word "Yanmo"-like Mount Taishan, standing silently.
Volunteers said that usually he grinned seldom when he heard that the sponsored child was admitted to university and the old man who was cared for was regaining his smile.
The student network created in Internet cafes allowed him to enter the Great Hall of the People to receive the award
The seeds of public welfare are hidden in Yan Zhiqiang's childhood memories.
In 1974, Yan Zhiqiang was born in a small village by the Gan River in Jiangxiang Town, Nanchang County, Jiangxi Province.
When he was 7 years old, his younger sister drowned in a small pond in front of his house, which became a pain he could never heal...
In 1993, Yan Zhiqiang, who graduated from normal school, worked as a class teacher at Aiguo Road Primary School in Nanchang City.
He discovered that the two orphans in the class receive an anonymous donation on a regular basis each month.
It took a lot of hard work to realize that it was a soldier of the People's Liberation Army who was silently giving his love.
Since then, he has also joined the ranks of funding and started a lifelong charity trip.
In 1999, Yan Zhiqiang served as deputy secretary of the Nanchang Donghu District Committee of the Communist Youth League.
That year, he began preparations for the establishment of a network platform to integrate social love resources to help poor children realize their dreams of going to school.
At the gloomy Xinggang Internet Cafe on Dieshan Road in Nanchang, he met Fu Dengji, an enthusiastic young webmaster.
The two studied while groping, and exhausted their efforts to establish the "Dongqing Online" education aid website.
This student network created in Internet cafes later became well-known in the national public welfare field.
Yan Zhiqiang clearly remembers that he once visited the poor at the bean sprouts alley in the junction of urban and rural areas in Nanchang and found Lao Guo, a poor householder.
Lao Guo Zheng used his legs damaged by varicose veins and dragged a tricycle to pull the goods alone to support his little daughter who was only 8 years old at the time.
In order to take photos of the solicitation report, Yan Zhiqiang accompanied Lao Guo to help people solicit goods.
Lao Guo kicked in the front, Yan Zhiqiang pushed in the back. They got along for a few days and they talked everything and became friends.
One day, when they passed a residential building, a bag of garbage suddenly fell from the sky and almost hit Yan Zhiqiang.
Old Guo, who is usually timid and timid, suddenly became violent and yelled at the tall building: "Do you know who the person downstairs is? He is my benefactor. If you move his hair, I will fight you!" Speaking of this, Yan Zhiqiang said with emotion: "Only parents can be so angry with those who hurt their children."
On the road to public welfare, it is those helpless eyes and grateful scenes that have supported him for 26 years as an ascetic monk.
In March 2003, the "Dongqing Volunteers Association" was awarded the "National Advanced Collective for Lei Feng Learning". Yan Zhiqiang walked into the Great Hall of the People to receive the award as a representative.
A small school bag full of famous books flies into the dreams of country children
In 2014, while looking for a student in the Wuning mountain area of Jiangxi Province, Yan Zhiqiang met a mountain girl who likes to read.
In the student's diary, Yan Zhiqiang once recorded such a passage: "The adults praised her like reading books. She bounced out of the "Chinese" book and told me that it was her favorite to read. I asked, Is there any fairy tale book or comic book that is your favorite? The child pursed his mouth unhappily and looked confused. He shook his head and said, she only has this."
This experience gave birth to the public welfare project "Masterpiece Small School Bag".
In order to alleviate the dual reading crisis of rural children's "lack of excellent reading materials" and "proliferation of bad pocket books", Yan Zhiqiang served as editor-in-chief, joined Jiangxi Fine Arts Publishing House, and together with national experts and scholars, carefully published the country's first series of "masterpieces" specifically for rural children "Little School Bag" series of books.
“The full set of 60 classic books, from elementary school to high school, is divided into 5'school bags' according to age groups, and each'school bag' has 12 books." Yan Zhiqiang said, “I hope that 5'master book small school bags' will gradually accumulate and become companions for rural children. A small family bookcase for healthy growth."
A book of exquisite masterpieces "flying to the children in the countryside" with "winged wings", each letter of gratitude replies and "flying to the volunteers with wings".
"I am a seed. I used to think that I was just an inconspicuous grass. I worked hard, and finally grew into a star tree. I realized a person’s wish, so I took a star and stuck it on mine. On the branches. Do you know? How much I like the small schoolbags you gave me.” Lin Yan from Jingkou Primary School, Fangtai Township, Xingguo County, Jiangxi Province, wrote excitedly in a letter to the "little schoolbags".
2007 was an extremely important year for Yan Zhiqiang on the road to public welfare.
A charity organization called "Jumei" emerged from the shell, aiming to discover folk old artists and preserve folk art materials.
Wan Hao, the second-generation Chinese oil painter, is the first old artist discovered in this project.
In 2007, Wan Hao was 95 years old and extremely weak.
Yan Zhiqiang went to great lengths to find him, and led the volunteers to devote themselves to the rescue excavation of Wan Hao's artistic career.
A year later, Wan Hao signed the "Wan Hao Art Chronology" compiled by Yan Zhiqiang, and died five days later.
Yan Zhiqiang wrote in a volunteer note: “A buried oil painting artist, in the last days of life, we are fortunate to have the old man’s voice and smile forever carved into a gleaming disc. I can’t forget that when I waved goodbye, it was already Mr. Wan Hao, who was struggling with speech, poked his neck, shaking his pale lips with a special look when he sent me..."
Use "life buoy" to save lives and "image photos" to soothe the soul
Yan Zhiqiang's drowning grief has been torturing Yan Zhiqiang.
36 years later, "Jumei Charity" and the Jiangxi Provincial Red Cross Foundation jointly launched the "One Person, One Lifebuoy" left-behind children drowning rescue project.
The project is mainly oriented to Jiangxi water towns, with households as a unit, free professional life buoys will be distributed to realize emergency sharing in the whole village.
"At around 7:30 last night, the lifebuoy we distributed successfully saved people at Jingshan Reservoir!" At noon on July 13, 2018, a text message from Li Junqun, a volunteer from Shanggao County, made Yan Zhiqiang, who had just lay down in the afternoon, jumped off. Up!
This is the first life saved by the project.
"We plan to raise and distribute 100,000 sets of lifebuoy equipment for free within three years to achieve village coverage around Poyang Lake and along the Ganjiang River. Not only can it prevent left-behind children from drowning, and when floods come, villagers can also find lifebuoys to escape and transfer. ." Yan Zhiqiang said.
He also set his sights on the left-behind old people in the village.
“When we visited the village, we found that many old people did not have a decent picture when they died. Some old people’s portraits were rephotographed with ID cards. This gave birth to the'Long Live Old Farmers' charity project.” Yan Zhiqiang said, “Old Farmers Long live "specially take high-definition photos for the ancient and rare elderly people over 70 years old in the countryside, and give free 16-inch art photo frames.
"Old farmers over 70 years old are the backbone of the earth. Life is already windy and rainy, and a smile is a sunny day. The content of the activity is based on the theme of'laugh'." Every time the volunteers take pictures, they become "happy fruits" and change various methods. , To make the old farmers with a dull expression happy, and shoot their bright smiles.
Since 2014, "Jumei Charity" has completed more than 5,000 elderly video records. They plan to spend another two years to complete the filming and production of 10,000 elderly people.
According to Dai Ying, the full-time vice president of the Jiangxi Red Cross Society, Yan Zhiqiang spends more than 100,000 yuan from his salary every year for public welfare, and repeatedly declined to work in Beijing.
He regards public welfare as a cause, and has a unique exploration of public welfare.
"Reward for assistance" and "salary for rescue" are Yan Zhiqiang's common charitable assistance methods.
In 2014, Nana, a 17-year-old girl with uremia, rented herself in Nanchang due to her weakness and family poverty. She has completely lost the confidence to overcome the disease.
Yan Zhiqiang recruited a teacher for her, bought sewing machines and fabrics, and set up the Women's Red Workshop to sell her works for charity. He also made donations through the Internet to raise treatment costs, so that Nana could regain the courage to live.
In May 2015, she had a successful kidney transplant and was reborn.
"Putting me in the ocean of public welfare is maximizing value." Year after year, Yan Zhiqiang is like "the man with the lamp on his back" in Tagore's poem, walking forward in the dark, illuminating the people behind him with light.
Today, fellow travellers follow his footsteps and walk side by side on the road to public welfare.