At the CCTV Touching China 2018 Person of the Year Awards Ceremony, such an elderly pair appeared. Dressed in camouflage uniforms and with a pair of worn-out but clean sneakers, they are over 80 years old and still energetic and powerful.
They were reluctant to buy new shoes for 40 years, but in their later years they donated 10 million savings!
CCTV Charity Night commented on the couple as follows:
That's all you have
Comes from the simplicity of the years of simplicity
A table is sewn repeatedly
A lifetime of horseback
The kingdom is the soul of your guardians
The township is your way home
Trickle into a river that flows to that homeland
The sunset glows dazzlingly
The couple has been industrious and simple all their lives, living in a house of more than thirty square meters for more than twenty years, winning numerous awards in their lives, but never for fame and fortune, even if they retire, they have always contributed to the country's scientific research cause, they are Ma Xu, Yan Xueyong and his wife.
What kind of legendary life did these two old people have?
Donated ten million to attract the police
On September 13, 2018, a pair of white-haired elderly people came to the Wuhan Airport River Branch of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China to handle banking business. When the bankers called for their numbers, two elderly men walked to the counter with each other's support, followed by two tall middle-aged men.
The bank staff looked at the two old men and asked them what business they were doing, and the two old men said, "Let's transfer money to an account in Heilongjiang." ”
The staff was taken aback after a detailed inquiry. The old man said: "We want to donate 10 million yuan to Mulan County in Heilongjiang Province, transfer 3 million yuan today, and then transfer the rest next year." The staff looked at the identity information of the old man, her name is Ma Xu, who is 85 years old this year.
The staff member's name is Pan Yuan, and she thinks of the fact that many old people have been cheated out of their pensions in recent years, and the two middle-aged men behind the old man do not look like the old man's relatives. Pan Yuan did not dare to make her own decision for a while, so she called the deputy governor who was on duty.
After the vice president learned about the situation, he called the two elderly people to the office alone and verified the situation with them. The old woman took out her ID card and said to the president: "My name is Ma Xu, I am a retired old cadre, I want to transfer donations to my hometown of Mulan County, Heilongjiang Province, and the two people outside are cadres of the Mulan County Education Bureau, who came to Wuhan to dock the donation." Next to him was Ma Xu's husband, Yan Xueyong.
The president saw that the old man was talking neatly and energetically, not like he had been deceived, but because the amount was huge and he was afraid of what would happen, the president decided to ask the police to intervene to investigate the matter.
Soon, the local police arrived at the bank. After understanding the situation, the police quickly verified with the retirement unit before the old man left his job, and after confirming that there was no mistake, he called the Education Bureau of Mulan County in Heilongjiang Province to verify the situation, and then determined that the two men in the hall were indeed cadres of the Mulan County Education Bureau, and the transfer of money by the elderly was also true. So, with the help of the police, the two old men completed the transfer on the same day.
But why do two seemingly ordinary old people have so much savings, and do the two old people have any special identities, which has to start from Ma Xu's early years.
Ma Xu was born in 1933 in Jianguo Village, Jianguo Township, Mulan County, Heilongjiang Province. At the time of Ma Xu's birth, his hometown of Northeast China had been completely occupied by Japanese devils, devastated, and the people were not happy, and Ma Xu's family had a very difficult life.
At the age of 4, his father died, and his mother lived alone with her young Ma Xu and her brother. Although the days were hard, the mother never forgot to tell the stories of the previous heroes to the two children to inspire them, Hua Mulan joined the army for her father, Mu Guiying was the commander, and the stories of these heroes were deeply engraved in Ma Xu's mind since childhood.
Before 1945, the Ma Xu family often ran out of food and relied on the help of the villagers to fill their stomachs. After the victory of the War of Resistance Against Japan, their lives gradually improved. At the age of 14, Ma Xu decided to join the army to serve the country, he saw too much of the tragic situation of his hometown being ravaged by Japanese devils, and decided to make his own contribution to the motherland.
The mother didn't say anything when she knew what she was thinking, but sewed a copper plate into her daughter's pocket late at night. The next day, Ma Xu embarked on a journey of slow military service.
In 1947, Ma Xu joined the People's Liberation Army, she and Huang Jiguang were in the same unit, successively participated in the Liaoshen Campaign and the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea, and were awarded many meritorious service awards, and met her lover Yan Xueyong on the battlefield.
After returning to China, Ma Xu served as an excellent health soldier. She was sent to the First Military Medical University for further study, and in 1961, she was assigned to the former General Hospital of the Wuhan Military Region with full honors as a surgical military doctor. At that time, the doctors were basically men, and most of the girls were nurses, but Ma Xu, who was less than one meter six in height, actually became a surgeon.
When ma Xu first went to the army as a health soldier, Ma Xu was still a particularly timid little girl, when the military health department in order to let the health soldiers carefully understand the human body structure and improve their medical skills, they sent a human skeleton to each hygienist and let them go back to study.
At the beginning, Ma Xu, facing this skeleton, thought in his heart whether it would suddenly speak, whether it would bite people and so on. Later, in order to practice his courage, Ma Xu actually put this skeleton under his bed. After many battles and treating countless flesh-and-blood warriors, her medical skills have become more and more sophisticated and skilled, and her courage has become more and more powerful.
After returning to China, Ma Xu was told that she had the opportunity to study at the First Military Medical University, and she was very happy and thought that she must seize this opportunity.
After entering the military hospital, she made extensive use of books and resources in the school, and worked hard every day to study how to alleviate the pain of soldiers after they were injured, she studied hard, and her skills in the examination could surpass some doctors, and after several years of study, she graduated with the first grade in the school and was assigned to Wuhan General Hospital as a surgeon.
In 1961, the Central Military Commission ordered the formation of Chinese People's Liberation Army airborne troops, and Ma Xu served as a military doctor as a guard for parachute training. At this time, Ma Xu wanted to be a military doctor of the parachuting unit, and if he did not keep up, he would not be able to play too much role, so he applied to participate in parachute training.
After receiving his request, the leader said to her: "You are a doctor, and you are a girl, less than one meter six in height, completely up to the standard of skydiving." You better go back and eat more and nourish your body. But Ma Xu did not dispel this idea.
"Since you won't let me train, I'll train secretly myself."
After returning home, Ma Xu dug a large pit more than three feet deep next to the dormitory, filled it with sand, and then used a table and chair to build a parachute training platform. Every day after working during the day, she secretly practiced skydiving by herself at night, and she stood on a chair every day and practiced five or six hundred times, even if she fell and insisted on gritting her teeth. In this way, she persisted for nearly a year.
In the autumn of 1962, when the parachute jumpers were simulating training, Ma Xu told the leader that he also wanted to go up and try it.
The leader felt incredible when he heard it, "You are a weak girl, you have never practiced skydiving, what are you going to do when you go up", the leader said disapprovingly.
"Just let me try it, I'm sure I can." Ma Xu said, "I have seen parachute training many times, and I can definitely do a good job. After the soft grinding and hard bubble, the leader was still reluctant to let her go up. At this time, Ma Xu deliberately provoked and said, "Then I will compete with your male soldiers to see if I can dance as well as them, if your male soldiers are not as good as me, why do you stop me?" ”
After some struggle, the leader was finally willing to let him go up and try it. I saw her put on her clothes, put on her umbrella bag, climb on the jump platform, jump down from the 500-meter-high hot air balloon, and land steadily.
The parachutes next to them were stunned, and after the stunned, there was a burst of applause. After a later layer of testing, Ma Xu was finally allowed to join the paratrooper unit, and like the boys in the team, began her parachute journey.
At this time, There had never been a female parachute in China, and Ma Xu became the first female parachute in China.
In the more than two decades since, she has skydived more than 140 times, and her athletic posture has appeared in the mountains and jungles, the snowy plains, the blue sea, and the desert Gobi. When she was in her 50s, she left the blue sky she loved, and during this period created three of China's bests - the first female parachute jumper, the female soldier with the highest number of parachute jumps, and the oldest female soldier to carry out parachuting.
Based on more than 20 years of experience in parachuting in the army, Ma Xu also invented a patent for the ankle protection of parachute jumpers. She found that in the process of jumping down, in the moment when the soles of the feet were about to land, the impact on the ground facing the soldiers was particularly strong, and a little carelessness could lead to ankle fractures or other injuries.
So Ma Xu based on her many years of medical experience and parachuting practice, she consulted a large number of materials, did a lot of experiments, depicted multiple drawings, deliberated out a number of schemes, and finally invented an ankle protector to protect the ankle and reduce the impact, called "inflatable ankle protector". After testing, it was widely used in parachute jumpers and was patented for it.
Devoted to the later years of scientific research
When Ma Xu married her husband, she was at the peak of her medical career, and she did not decide to have children when she wanted to devote herself to medical care and skydiving.
She thought that if she wanted to have a child and need to breastfeed after giving birth, she would have to be unable to work for three years, and after three years, she didn't know if she could still follow the troops, nor did she know if she could still skydive, and the child also needed to be taken care of. After a series of questions appeared in her mind, Ma Xu decided not to have children, and after consulting with her husband, her husband also respected Ma Xu's decision, so the two did not have children.
After the 1990s, Ma Xu and her husband Yan Xueyong retired from the army, and they refused the house provided by the army and moved to a small house of more than 30 square meters in the suburbs. After retirement, the couple did not quietly enjoy their old age, but turned around and devoted themselves to scientific research.
In 1995, Ma Xu and his wife invented the "single soldier plateau oxygen vest", which filled the gap of parachuting oxygen supply for the parachute of the airborne soldier plateau. After that, the couple also co-authored "Physiological Pathology of Airborne Soldiers" and "Basis for Physical and Psychological Training of Airborne Soldiers".
Over the decades, they have made countless innovations, and they have published more than a hundred academic papers in newspapers and periodicals inside and outside the military, and the couple's inventions have attracted widespread attention at home and abroad.
The elderly Ma Xu was known as the "Marie Curie" in the military. In order to engage in scientific research, the 78-year-old Ma Xu also went to graduate school with his wife and lived to learn.
In their small courtyard, the couple grew many vegetables, used decades-old furniture in two low brick houses, and the cabinet next to them was filled with books and newspapers and decades of study materials. The two of them hardly buy clothes, do not go to the mall, usually very thrifty, have the conditions do not know to enjoy, and even joked as "the most slammed door".
And the two people who cut the door like this suddenly donated 10 million yuan to subsidize poor students.
In an interview, the host asked: Why don't you two improve your lives by saving so much money in your lifetime? Ma Xu said with a smile: "After we retire, we can eat enough, dress warmly, and do the scientific research work we like is the biggest pursuit, and we don't have to spend so much money on enjoyment." ”
At the CCTV award ceremony, the elderly Ma Xu said: "When I was a child, it was my father and fellow villagers who fed me with a hundred meals, and when I grew up, it was the party that made us live a good life. Those old furniture is very good with this, we are very satisfied with life, and we have always wanted to do something for our hometown. As soon as these words came out, the audience instantly clapped, and everyone was in awe of the old man.
Such a spirit of selfless dedication is worth learning from everyone, not only the strength of the courage to serve the country when you are young, but also the spirit of exerting residual heat in your later years. Our descendants should look up to Ma Xu and his wife, take the ancestors as an example, and contribute their strength to the motherland.