Huang Yuanfeng sitting at construction site
A 45 year-old native of China is being hailed as a hero around the world after being diagnosed with terminal liver cancer but who chose to invest his life savings in building a road that will finally link his isolated and impoverished village to vital trade routes.
The Daily Mail is reporting on the incredible story of Huang Yuanfeng of Xiaojiangtun which is located in the nearly impassible mountains of southern China. Last spring, Huang was diagnosed with liver cancer and told that he was unlikely to survive, even with costly medical treatment.
Instead of spending his life savings on himself, he decided to use it to help others and immediately hired a team of workers to start building a road that will finally allow the residents of his village to trade with the outside world.
Only those who live in Xiaojiangtun know just how much this road means. Hemmed in by towering cliffs and rivers, generations of inhabitants have struggled to get in and out of the village to work or trade their goods with other towns. As a result, the village has always been poor.
Huang says he had to move out of the village as a teenager to work as a migrant worker in Guilin, a popular tourist destination. It was here that he acquired his life savings.
Almost all of it has now been invested in the road building project.
“I had the choice of either wasting my money on attempting a cure pretty much everybody agreed wouldn’t work, or spending the money on something really useful,” he told the Mirror.
Huang was on the site every day in spite of his ill health which kept him confined to a chair most of the day. He would sit on the work site with a supply of fruit, vegetables, a special herbal drink and an assortment of medicines, and watch the project proceed.
Thankfully, his father, wife, and daughter have been beside him every step of the way, making sure he takes his medicine and helping to keep him as healthy as possible during the building process.
After two months, the construction is done, the road to Xiaojiangtun is now completed and he’s being hailed as a hero both locally and abroad.
But the fame hasn’t moved him. “I built this road for the villagers who can now transport and sell products to the outside,” he says, and hopes it will also bring tourists to his hometown.
Thanks to his selfless gift, an entire village will be lifted out of poverty and generations to come will enjoy a better life.
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