Li Xuezeng: The 120 hotline that one man keeps going

"Ring-ring-ring" - a sudden, urgent phone ring startled Li Xuezeng, a good man of Lixian County, awake from his afternoon nap. The caller was Huang Cai, an empty-nest elderly person from Xinxing Village, Xinxing Town in the county. "Dr. Li, my pulled right hip hurts badly again after I walked too much today. Could you come and take a look for me?" After the call, Li Xuezeng slung his medical kit on his back and drove straight to Xinxing Village, 20 li away.

Li Xuezeng, now 64, was a cadre transferred from the military in 1983. He worked successively in township offices and the health department, and went through early departure procedures during the institutional reform in 2002. He was diligent and eager to learn, obtained a medical practice license, and is skilled at treating common diseases of the elderly through integrated traditional Chinese and Western medicine. Because he is glad to help others, he was named a "Good Man of Lixian County" by the Lixian County Civilization Committee in 2015.

In the first year after he left his post, many patients sought him out at his home for diagnosis and treatment. Li Xuezeng worried that the noise would disturb his neighbors' rest, so after the 2003 Spring Festival he rented a nearby place and opened a clinic. Li Xuezeng said: "I did not go into medicine to make money. For retired elderly people, disabled people, and elderly people on subsistence allowances, medical fees and physiotherapy fees are always completely waived."

Not long after the clinic opened, he wanted to make home visits to some elderly people with limited mobility, but he also had to take care of the clinic, so he consulted patients in the morning and made house calls in the afternoon. In urgent cases, he would rush over even at night. The people he served free of charge are spread across both urban and rural areas of the whole county. Of the 232 natural villages, nearly half have patients he has diagnosed and treated. At first, when he went out to diagnose and treat people, he rode a bicycle or motorcycle. Later, he felt it was inconvenient to carry medical equipment that way, and if a severe patient needed to be transferred to another hospital he would still have to find a vehicle, so in his fifties he began learning to drive. After getting his driver's license, he bought a sedan as a free dedicated emergency vehicle and put up a sign reading "Learn from Lei Feng 120." That sign has been up for 10 years.

Zhang Ying, 72, from Nancheng Community, is a household in difficulty. She herself suffers from severe rheumatoid disease, and Li Xuezeng treated her free of charge for 14 consecutive years, coming whenever called, day or night, in wind, rain, or snow. On a snowy night in the winter of 2009, Zhang Ying's son called Li Xuezeng and said his mother's rheumatoid disease had flared up again and the pain was so bad she could not even turn over. Li Xuezeng said: "Don't worry, I'll be right there." At the time the snow was half a chi deep. To be safe, he carried his medical kit and equipment on his back and walked more than 2 li through the snow to Zhang Ying's home to give targeted treatment, and stayed busy until 3 a.m.

Over these 14 years, Li Xuezeng could not remember clearly how many people he had treated or how much money he had spent, and only knew that he had used about 500 jin of disinfectant alcohol and more than 70,000 injection syringes. Everyone affectionately calls him "one man's 120."

Someone asked him: "Other people run clinics to make money, but you keep putting money into it. What are you after?" Li Xuezeng said with deep feeling: "I am a Communist Party member. My wife, my daughter, and I all have wage income, and we get by economically. I just want to help those who need help, because I too was saved by others and only then pulled back from the brink of death!" It turned out that in the early 1960s, when Li Xuezeng was less than 10 years old, he contracted a severe case of typhoid fever and ran a high fever for 4 consecutive days, unconscious and in critical condition. The medical team sent by the county treated him free of charge, staying by his bedside every day, using physical cooling, giving injections, and administering medicine. After careful treatment, on the fifth day he finally was out of danger. "People must learn gratitude! As long as I can still move, I will keep doing good deeds."

Liu Dongxing, He Hongze