With a will to donate cornea, Cong Fei, a well-known donor-cum-singer in China, died on Thursday in Shenzhen, south China's Guangdong Province.

 

Cong was popular among local TV viewers and newspaper readers, since he was hospitalized and confirmed to be a patient of stomach cancer at the advanced stage on April 22, last year.

 

While struggling for life at a local hospital in Shenzhen, Cong has never forgotten his recipients -- more than 100 students from poor families in the western part of the country who call him "Daddy Cong".

 

Cong, whose original name is Zhang Chong, was born into a very poor rural family in October 1969. The family was so poor that Cong had to drop out in the second year of middle school. He was an auditor at the Shenyang Conservatory of Music.

 

In 1994, Cong came to try his fortune in Shenzhen, the country's first specialized economic zone and a pioneer in economic reforms. And it is also the very year when the man began his decade-long odyssey to assist poor students.

 

Over the past 10 years, Cong had been working like a bee, traveling around to sing and raise money for his students. So far, he had donated over 3 million yuan (about US$370,000) for over 150 poverty-stricken dropouts and handicapped persons.

 

To mark Cong's virtue, Shenzhen Youth Fund has set up a special fund to help the Cong-donated students complete education.

 

(Xinhua News Agency April 21, 2006)