Most of the time when we hear about wealthy 20- and 30-somethings in China, it’s when fu’erdai — second-generation rich — are doing shitty things like stabbing women and running over construction workers before shouting Yayaya at the camera.
This is not that kind of story.
In Yongkang, Zhejiang province last Friday, a 31-year-old millionaire named Du Guanghua had dinner with an employee who got a bit too drunk and fell into a river. Du dove after his colleague, 20-year-old Zhao Shengxi. Only one of them came out of the water alive.
Du has been remembered as a man who was always willing to help others. He took on his cousin, An Shibao, as a business apprentice in 2000 and An went on to run a similar business,with financial support from Du.
Du’s neighbor, Hu Yueqing, runs a kitchenware shop and used to rely on Du’s help to deliver goods.
Although Du operated a steel wire business, he was frugal and never went to mahjong gamesor karaoke bars. He always remembered to send holiday gifts to neighbors and employees, Husaid.
The employee who almost drowned, Zhao Shengxi, 20, expressed remorse for his careless behavior and blamed himself for Du’s unfortunate death.
It’s a sad story made ever more so because it seems we never hear about these good guys until something tragic happens.
A video from the scene appears to show rescue workers fishing for Du’s body on the night of the accident:
Authorities in Yongkang awarded Du and Xu Junfeng, a cook who saved Zhao, a Good Samaritan award.
Businessman drowns trying to save a drunk employee (China Daily; pictures via)
Heartbreaking news for his family and friends. Such a compassionate young man, obviously with a bright future, sacrifices himself for someone so unworthy of the ultimate gift of life.
God bless Du Guanghua’s family.
The right side of the quote from China Daily has been cut off.
Damnit, China Daily has this weird formatting thing where if you copy and paste from its site, the text bleeds off the edge, forcing bloggers like myself to rewrite excerpts.
I’ll fix this later. Maybe.
Probably can avoid this by pasting the text into notepad (not word) which will strip out whatever code is going along with, then copying from notepad into the blog page.
Trust me, I’ve tried. Even pasting into HTML doesn’t work.
Wow that’s bizarre, I got to take a look at that. Pretty interesting.