Aging Well: News & Insights for Seniors and Caregivers
- Liu Defang learned to swim after retiring and plunged in to rescue a man who had jumped into the water.
- Given a rigid life preserver, she reached the man despite his resistance and dragged him ashore with local help.
- Reported by South China Morning Post, the video went viral; her brother scolded her, she slipped away and hopes the man values life.
From China’s Anhui Province comes a story that reminds us it’s never too late to learn.
71-year-old Liu Defang remembers chatting with her friends while out one day near a bridge in her hometown in Suixi County. She suddenly heard someone shout that a man had fallen into the water.
Social media footage showed that he hadn’t fallen from the bridge, but jumped off in an apparent suicide attempt.
That wasn’t for Ms. Liu to know, however, and without wasting time, the white-haired fitness enthusiast, who had only learned how to swim a few years earlier after retiring from her job, entered the water to try and save what she thought was a drowning man.
Someone quickly found a rigid life preserver and threw it to Liu, who used it to reach the man whom she tried to support. But to her surprise, the man resisted.
Despite being more than twice the man’s age, Liu got control of him and dragged him to the shore where locals were there to lend Liu a hand—who admitted she was exhausted from the ordeal.
Realizing the man and the rescue had created quite a stir, Liu “slipped away” as Alice Yan reported for the South China Morning Post, hoping not to be seen.
“It was not a big deal for me. I did not tell my family for fear that they would worry about me,” Liu was quoted as saying.
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Yet local police wanted to know who the Good Samaritan was, and so released the local traffic camera and other surveillance footage of the ordeal on social media, hoping someone would recognize the rescuer.
The video went viral on Chinese social platforms, with hundreds commending her in the comment sections. Sure enough, a relation did recognize her in the video: the very person Liu had most hoped to avoid alerting of her heroics: her brother.
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“My brother scolded me severely. He said, ‘You are already over 70 years old. How dare you jump into the river to save others? Why didn’t you think of the consequences?’” Liu said, adding that her daughter shared the same worries.
The yoga adept shrugged her brother’s rebuke off, but did wish she could have said something to the man she saved: that difficulties, whatever they are, always pass in time, and that life is a precious gift that should not be forfeited so easily.
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