Sun Meng, a 23-year-old graduate, recently resigned from her job in an electronics company in Wenzhou, east China's Zhejiang Province, and has since been raising funds for her former primary school teacher's child who has leukemia.

During this Spring Festival, Sun visited her maths teacher, Chen Sibiao, and learned about the family's condition. Chen lives in rented accommodation and her partner is a farmer with a low income.

Chen's son, Peng, is an unmarried blue-collar worker with a monthly salary of 3,000 yuan (U.S.$ 460).

Sun was greatly shocked when the news that Chen's youngest child was ill. The family was anxious over treatment costs, which are more than 600,000 yuan (U.S.$ 92,000), far beyond their capacity.

Sun knew her teacher's strength is limited, so she called on all her schoolmates to raise charity fundsthrough the internet.

It took Sun just one day to hand over her work and submit a resignation letter to her boss. Within a week, she raised around 100,000 yuan (U.S.$ 15,400) through her efforts.

Her charitable act has sparked heated debate among students on her old campus.

Sun said many of her schoolmates used their study time and have stayed up late to help her. They used social media apps such as Weibo and WeChat, and called on their relatives, friends and charity-minded persons to donate.

Sun told reporters that why she helped her teacher was because of her good virtues of educating and gentle character had affected her.

Sun remembered when she and several classmates were preparing for an arts performance, they did not have a DVD player. When her teacher heard about this, she let them rehearse in her home.

Chen Xuerui, one member of the fundraising group, said Sun was a very passionate university student, and she often took part in events helping to clean nursing homes.

The platform for raising funds shows that 2,800 charity-minded people have donated 137,000 yuan totally in 12 days – still a long way to go from the 600,000 yuan (U.S.$ 92,000) treatment fees that are needed.

Sun continues to step up her efforts and is hoping more and more people across the country can help Chen's family overcome the difficulty.

(Source: China Youth Daily/Translated and edited by Women of China)

By Zhu JuanjuanEditor: Jane Wang