A more inspiring dedication to selflessness would be hard to find. Now encroaching on old age himself, a Nanjing man in the city’s Qixia District has been volunteering to assist vulnerable elderly residents with their daily needs every day for the past 46 years.
It all began almost half a century ago, when Sun Xuelin was just a young man himself. Working in a vegetable market, he would see many old people coming to the market to queue up early in the morning. On one occasion, when he saw an old couple queuing in such a cold wind, he offered to help them buy vegetables and send them home after work.
He’s been doing it ever since.
Shanshui Garden residential community in Maigaoqiao Sub District of Nanjing’s Qixia District is a security housing area in which there are 761 elderly residents, of which 204 are over 80 years old and 263 live alone in “empty nests”. It was Sun who led the establishment of a volunteer service team to take care of them.
“We are a team of two volunteers who are responsible for two to five households according to their living difficulties. Sun is responsible for 30 households alone, and he takes most of the difficult family care for the elderly on his own shoulders”, said Aunty Cai, a member of the volunteer service team to reporters for Nanjing Daily.
Among the residents, Geng Ling, 65, has been suffering from cerebellar degeneration for more than a decade. Sun took him under his wing as a key object of care. “Just come to see him every day and sometimes bring him breakfast. If I didn’t bring it, he would invite me to eat with him at home. We’re like good brothers”, Sun said.
Sometimes, when Sun was late, Geng would not blame him and instead sat at the door waiting. But if 1 or 2 days pass, he gets anxious and asks people everywhere, “What’s wrong with Lao Sun? Why didn’t he come?” For Geng, Sun is not only a little help in life, but also an emotional sustenance.
Just as he has done since 1974, Sun, now 69, gets up at 04:30 to start a day of volunteer life that can be described as a “continuous rotation”. He runs by the 18 high-rise residential buildings in the community one by one and knocks on each door to see if the elderly are in good health and ascertain their needs.
In the process, he can accumulate 30,000 steps in one day.
In addition to daily necessities, Sun felt he should do something to enrich the spare time of the elderly in Shanshui Garden, so he set up a Yangzhou Opera Troupe out of his own pocket.
Founded in 2016, Sun’s Yang Opera Troupe has since become the most influential such troupe in Qixia District. The oldest actor therein is 75 years old, while the average age of members is over 60. They perform for their 3,000 “fans” each Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.
Noting that he has the health which many others his age do not, Sun said, “I am an old man myself and I want to help others. I am very aware of the feeling of being helpless when I am old”.
