Ceremony honours Long March trekkers

Seventy-one year-old Chan Hay received a medal from education chief Arthur Li Kwok-cheung in Kowloon Park yesterday, in a ceremony honouring the 21 people who retraced the more than 8,000km Long March route to raise money for schools in western China.

Ms Chan was the oldest person in the group to complete the journey, which she made with her 67-year-old husband. They walked 30km a day for 305 days, raising $25 million in the process.

But Ms Chan said the hardship of the trip meant nothing compared with the suffering of the children they encountered.

More than 1,000 people took part in the event, which started in October and ended on August 20. The odyssey took the hikers from Ruijin in Jiangxi , across Guangdong, Hunan , Guangxi , Guizhou , ending in Shanxi .