Nantong report A5Friday, June 24, 2016

Photo gallery documents lives of elderly couples in local communities

Dedicated heart surgeonsheros to their patients

The cardio-thoracic surgery department at the Nantong No 1 People’s Hospital has been awarded the Jiangsu provincial medical scientific award.PHOTOS PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY

By Ding Congrongand Feng Hongxin

An album featuring the lives of 100 elderly couples in Nan-tong, Jiangsu province, was published last week after 77 photographers captured the love stories of the city’s aged community.

The photo book was released at the Hepingqiao Street Office of Chongchuan district in Nan-tong, with some of the couples and photographers taking part in the ceremony.

The special photo collec-tion was produced by a team of 77 photographers called “Xinjingjie”. The majority were elderly volunteers.

The team was established in 2013 and has since focused on

the lives of Nantong’s elderly, migrant workers, left-behind children and disabled people.

In 2015, the photographers decided to take a series of pho-tos of local elderly couples who had been married for at least 50 years.

The photographers got to know the couples, conducted interviews with them and used their cameras to record their love stories.

In addition to taking photos of their family lives, the photog-raphers would accompany the couples to parks and green areas nearby to ensure the photos depicted their daily lives.

The initiative won support from the Amity Foundation, a Chinese non-government char-ity organization, and the civil

affairs authority in Chongchuan district.

For many of the elderly couples, the project provided

them with a rare opportunity to have a romantic photo of themselves.

“We did not take wedding

photos when we got mar-ried, and we do not even have a group photo we really like,” said 87-year-old Cao Guanx-iang. “We did not expect that we could have such a nice photo of ourselves 59 years after we got married.”

Even though he is not a war veteran, Cao was invited to the epic V-Day parade in Tian’anmen Square in Beijing on September 3 last year in rec-ognition for his efforts to help

the Chinese army during the Chinese People’s War of Resis-tance against Japanese Aggres-sion (1937-45).

Cao and his wife, Liu Kelan, appear on the first page of the photo collection, wearing tra-ditional Chinese clothes.

Another couple, Shi Min and Huang Xiuying, who are both 90, decided to wear in one of their photos the golden badge of honor awarded to them for the 70th anniversary of victory in that war.

“It was delightful for us to be able to have photos like that taken now. When we were mar-ried, those sorts of photos were unimaginable,” said Shi, who married Huang in 1952.

Some of the photographers themselves are featured in the

collection, as several are in their 90s.

The book has photos of 81 couples from the Hepingqiao Street community, 11 war vet-eran couples and eight other couples from other streets in Chongchuan district.

The project was organized by Jia Gentao, honorary chairman of the Nantong Photographers Association and former pub-lisher of Nantong Daily.

“It is a window to demon-strate the lives of residents in the city,” said Jia, who was one of the photographers. “It can also promote the culture of filial piety in society.”

Contact the writers through dingcongrong@ chinadaily.com.cn

A medical team in Nantong saves lives with its surgical prowess,Ding Congrong and Feng Qirong report.

A thoracic and cardio-vascular medical team in Nantong, in East China’s Jiangsu

province, has won trust and gratitude from patients and released many families from desperation.

The cardio-thoracic surgery department at the Nantong No 1 People’s Hospital has been named in recent years a key surgery department in the city and been awarded the provin-cial medical scientific award.

Zhong Chongjun, Party chief of the hospital and direc-tor of the department, has sub-stantial experience in diagnos-ing and treating a number of diseases, including congenital heart disease, valvular heart disease, macrovascular disease and malignant tumors.

Zhong, a standing commit-tee member of the Jiangsu Car-dio-Thoracic Surgery Com-mittee of the Chinese Medical Doctor Association, has been given several honorable titles, including a model medical worker in China, a leading innovative talent in Nantong

and a model scientific worker in Jiangsu.

In recent years, Zhong has undertaken 12 provincial or city-level research projects and published more than 40 the-ses in major medical journals. Four of his medical achieve-ments won scientific prizes in the province.

Li Liang, a patient who underwent a heart transplant at the hospital when he was a junior at a local university 13 years ago, has a checkup at the hospital on September 17 each year, which is the facility’s Car-ing Heart Day.

“Your love and care liter-ally renewed my life,” he told Zhong and other medical workers who came to his home to celebrate the birth of his son in 2013.

After Li was diagnosed with dilated cardiomyopathy and heart failure 13 years ago, he refused to have a heart trans-plant even though that was the only way his life could be saved.

But the heartfelt care and encouragement of the medical

workers moved him so much that eventually he made the right decision, he said.

“My biggest wish back then was that my son would sur-vive,” Li’s mother said. “I never expected he would live such a happy life.”

Zhong agreed with his mother. “It’s pretty good for

a person with a transplanted heart to live a normal life and even get married and have healthy babies,” he said. “The use of anti-rejection drugs after surgery usually results in abnormalities in babies.”

He Hongmei, a 32-year-old patient from Changzhou, Jiangsu, recently visited some of the hospital’s medical work-ers who saved her life 12 years ago.

He’s parents divorced when she was a child, and she lived with her grandparents. Although she had been diag-nosed with congenital heart disease as a child, she could not afford an operation.

When she took a bus to visit doctors at the hospital, hoping for a miraculous recovery, the hospital decided to operate on her, free of charge.

Now living a happy life with her husband and child, He usu-ally sends electronic greeting cards to Zhong.

“I was moved by her gifts, with the music and greetings as well as photos of me she has collected,” Zhong said.

The hospital has treated more than 500 children with congenital heart disease since it launched the service 16 years ago. A child is the biggest hope for a family and deserves the best care, hospital staff mem-bers said.

Xiaohao, a baby boy who was diagnosed with Tetralogy of Fallot, a congenital heart defect, became a focus of atten-tion for the nurses and doctors when he was treated at the hos-pital two years ago.

They recorded the boy’s recovery in their WeChat talk-ing group and brought him many gifts. They have also kept in contact with Xiaohao’s fam-ily after he was discharged after his successful surgery.

In 2010, the hospital launched a program of coop-eration with rural medical facilities and started perform-ing operations on rural chil-dren with congenital heart diseases.

Contact the writers through dingcongrong@ chinadaily.com.cn

Cao Guanxiang (right), a 87-year-old Nantong resident, and his wife Liu Kelan look through the photo book. They appear on the first page of the photo collection. LI BIN / FOR CHINA DAILY

Sun Chunmei, owner of Happy Farm, takes care of vegetables in a greenhouse. ZHAO YONGJIN / FOR CHINA DAILY

100elderly couples

featured in a photo collection produced by 77 photographers

in Nantong

Your love and care literally renewed my life.”Li Liang, a patient who underwent a heart transplant at the Nantong No 1 People’s Hospital

500children

or more with congenital heart disease have been treated at

the hospital since 16 years ago

By Li Jing, ZHao YongJin and SHen Liang

Sun Chunmei, who followed her husband to a small town in Nantong to establish a farming business in 2006, is now at the helm of a farming complex that features organic foods and an e-commerce platform.

The 12-hectare Happy Farm is located in the town of Dong-she in Nantong, at the end of a road lined with flowers and trees.

In 1999, Sun received her bachelor’s degree in horticul-ture at Yangzhou University and worked for several years as a civil servant in Jiangsu’s provin-cial capital of Nanjing.

“The complex is designed by experts from Yangzhou Univer-sity,” Sun said. “In the first quar-ter of the year, the sales of eggs, chicken and organic vegetables surpassed 800,000 yuan (about $122,000).”

Sun took the name of her farm from the video game of the same name in which users can plant crops in a virtual world. In 2011, Sun wanted to make the game a reality in Nantong.

Sun talked about the idea with her husband Cao Rong, a former salesman at a multi-national company in Nanjing and now a successful chicken farmer.

“I wanted to use what I learned at the university to start a business of my own,” Sun said.

With her husband’s support and 3 million yuan in funding, she began Happy Farm.

Chicken is the main livestock, but Sun also grows a variety of vegetables.

“We grow vegetables in a green, organic way. We don’t use chemicals, so it’s safe,” Sun said. “Last November, we coop-erated with Nanjing University of Finance and Economics and started to plant organic rice.”

Among more than 30 kinds of agricultural products at the farm, 19 products are autho-rized to be labeled organic.

At a corner of the farm, a new greenhouse was erected this year for picking vegetables.

“We are planning to set a classroom here to invite more people to learn about agricul-

ture and gain first-hand experi-ence,” she said.

Visitors to Sun’s farm are mostly young farming enthu-siasts. Sun organizes film and BBQ parties at the farm and also provides accommodation services. Every year there are around 30,000 visitors.

Sun also plays the part of chef and at times prepares family-style dishes for visitors.

In 2014, she opened an online shop at Taobao.com.

“People can order our farm products on smartphones or on computers and get the products in the following days,” she said.

Her farm services have expanded to WeChat, a popu-lar instant messaging platform in China.

Last October, Sun invested 160,000 yuan in setting up a visual monitoring system, with real-time videos of the vegetable and chicken farms.

“Our clients are able to con-nect to the system via their smartphones,” Sun said. “They can watch the growth of veg-etables, from seeding to har-vesting and also trace back to the growth of the products they ordered online.”

The number of Happy Farm’s online members reached 300 in 2015, with online orders worth 600,000 yuan.

A salesman from the farm’s online department said there are an average of around 20 online orders a day. The online business has extended to down-town Nantong and neighboring Shandong and Zhejiang prov-inces and Shanghai. Online sales reached 300,000 yuan through the first four months of this year.

Sun said innovation and gov-ernment support are the keys to her success.

“Local government puts for-ward favorable policies for our farmers and also helps us sur-vive bird flu with interest-free loans,” she said.

Chen Xi, a Dongshe town official, said Sun is a good exam-ple of a new-generation farmer who is offering a glimpse into the future of agriculture.

Contact the writers through lijing2009@chinadaily.com.cn

Nantong’s veryown, and veryreal, Happy Farm