Gift from elderly woman warms hearts and soles

Esran Dawut, an elderly Uygur woman from the village of Hami in the eastern part of the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, dhas sent nearly 6,000 pairs of handmade shoe-pads as gifts to the local police over the past nine years.

It was in the winter of 2012 when she first decided to make shoe pads for police officers.

"I was sitting in a bus," she recalled. "It was freezing outside, and I noticed that these traffic police on duty were so cold that they were stamping to keep warm. I felt sorry for them."

At home she collected and washed old clothes and sheets and then used them as raw materials to make 300 pairs of shoe pads over the next 20 days or so. And then she personally gave them to the traffic police.

From then on, she continued to stitch shoe pads in her spare time.

"I'm glad to see that my shoe pads help them keep warm on cold days. My mind will be at rest if I can do something for them," she said.

On Jan 15, Esran Dawut visited a police station in Hami's Yizhou area, along with a pocket full of shoe-pads to officers and assistants there.

"We've already distributed the gifts to our colleagues," said Zhuang Zaiqian, a vice-director of the police station, when contacted later. "They all said the shoe pads have warmed both their feet and hearts."