Devoted daughter-in-law attracts State media spotlight

    LI CHUANMEI, a woman who made the Shenzhen media spotlight two months ago for taking care of her paralyzed mother-in-law for 15 years, is becoming a role model for China’s daughters-in-law with State media organizations like Xinhua News Agency, CCTV and China Central Radio covering her story yesterday.

    National newspapers and Web sites, including the People’s Daily, Guangming Daily, Economic Daily and China Youth Daily are also covering Li’s story in detail in today’s issues.

    Li, 37, from a village in Southwest China’s Chongqing Municipality, has never left her invalid mother-in-law unattended since her marriage into the impoverished family in 1992.

    In 2003, Li was forced to come to work in Shenzhen to pay off a large debt incurred by the family for the medical treatment for her father-in-law, who died from cancer. Her husband Xiang Jiapei was working in Yunnan Province then.

    Li left her young daughter with her relatives at home and brought her mother-in-law to Shenzhen instead. She said her mother-in-law had been totally dependent on her for the past 11 years, and this made it difficult to leave her behind.

    Li’s mother-in-law is blind, deaf and mute; she cannot move herself either. “She is just like a child that needs my love and care all the time,” said Li.

    Li worked for a grocery store in a Xuexiang wet market in Bao’an District for three years while taking care of her mother-in-law. But she was forced to leave Shenzhen in early 2006 when her rent was increased, making it difficult for her to survive on her meager income.

    With the help of a Bao’an school which offered her a job and a low-rent dormitory room, she came back to Shenzhen with her mother-in-law in 2006.

    In fact, when Li got married in 1992, she started to look after both sick parents-in-law as well as her 80-year-old grandmother-in-law.

    Li’s story was first reported by the Shenzhen Special Zone Daily in November 2007.

    Central Government leaders were impressed by Li’s dedication, and called on people to learn from her deeds.

    “All I’ve done is just what I should do as a daughter-in-law, and it is nothing special,” Li always said when media interviewed her.

    Li was named one of the “top 10 devoted sons and daughters” in Wanzhou in Chongqing in October 2007, and she is also one of the 20 candidates for “2007 Guangdong Top 10 People in the News.”