Ground-level view of Lonking Machinery Co Ltd headquarters in Shanghai Photos Provided to China Daily

Li Xinyan, a 60-year-old Fujian native, established a charity in his own name in April 2007. His idea was to help needy people - those who had dropped out of school, lost their parents when they were young, or had no money to see a doctor, or somehow just couldn't make a living.

Since then, the fund has given over 34 million yuan and has helped more than 4,300 people.

Aid to orphans

One major part of the Li Xinyan Fund has been to help children who have been orphaned in two Fujian province counties.

It has given 50,000 yuan to each county every year, since 2008.

Xiang Lihua, a cute teenage girl, was cast aside when she was just a baby and was discovered outside a temple. The nuns there raised her with the help of donations to the temple.

When they saw that Xiang was eager to learn and was good at drawing, they sent her to a key trade school to studying painting with help from the fund. It covers her tuition, fees, books and living expenses.

Now, after just one semester, Xiang is the top student in her class, and was singled out by the school as a "remarkable" student.

Over the past three years, the fund has helped 413 orphans, with a total of 360,000 yuan, with special attention being given to extremely poor, helpless orphans.

Medical treatments

In 2008, a girl named Li Yanping came down with a serious liver disease and was in bad need of a transplant.

The cost would be more than 400,000 yuan, far more than a poor rural family could ever afford.

Li's parents sold everything they owned to pay for her treatment, but still could not come up with enough.

Just when they were at the edge of despair and about to give up, the Li Xinyan Fund learned of their situation and immediately decided to act.

It provided 30,000 yuan for the operation and paid for the girl's medicines, donating 50,000 yuan in all for the treatment.

Today, Li has not only recovered, but has graduated from medical school and is headed for Shanghai to intern in a hospital.

By October 2010, the Li Xinyan Fund had helped 96 people, giving a total of 879,000 yuan.

The beneficiaries were mainly teenagers, some of them from extremely poor farm families or laid-off workers, and suffering from a variety of ailments.

Supporting education

Helping poor students continue their studies is another important part of the fund's work.

It has established a system of funding for primary and middle school students, and even college students.

In 2009, it gave 500,000 yuan in collaboration with Fudan University's School of Management, to establish a fund for a combined master's-doctoral program for needy students.

So, now, the fund covers just about every type of student, from primary school to higher education.

Disaster relief

In spite of all that, the fund has not forgotten areas that have been hit by disasters.

Only a day after the Wenchuan earthquake struck Sichuan province in May 2008, it had provided 5 million yuan in disaster relief.

In June of that same year, the fund sent people to the city of Pengzhou, Sichuan to help, and gave up to 2,000 yuan each to 33 high school students who had been affected by the earthquake.

In 2010, after the Yushu earthquake in Qinghai province, the fund gave 2 million yuan to help the people of the region.

The following August, when Fujian province was hit by serious flooding, it got 6 million yuan worth of help for disaster-stricken areas.

Serving the public good and benefiting people is still Li Xinyan's goal even after many years of service.

Among its other accomplishments, Li's fund has provided: 5 million yuan for building libraries, 1.36 million yuan for country roads, 700,000 yuan for bridges, 200,000 yuan for school buildings, and 300,000 yuan for medical facilities.

By the end of October 2010, the fund had given more than 11 million yuan to programs in the fields of education, culture, medicine, and sports.

"The Li Xinyan Fund has a complete set of regulations and legal procedures and its staff members are serious about their work," according to some business people who have felt encouraged enough to donate money to fund.

"We feel quite comfortable giving money to them," they said.

Li Xinyan, president of Lonking Machinery Co, giving 5 million yuan to earthquake-hit Sichuan.

The charitable fund gave 5 million yuan to Longyan College, in Fujian province, for its new library.