Meet the Chinese kidney patient selling a smile to survive
Art teacher decided a happy face would help her raise money to pay for her dialysis
When 26-year-old art teacher Zhu Ya was struck down by a potentially fatal kidney disease in May her prognosis appeared bleak.
With no realistic prospect of receiving a transplant and faced with the prospect of prohibitively expensive medical bills for the dialysis needed to keep her alive, she initially despaired. But then she decided there was a better way to fight her illness – with a smile.
To raise money to fund treatment her family cannot afford, Zhu has taken to the streets of her hometown of Chongqing, a megacity in the country’s southwest, selling smiley stickers and offering passers-by a smile at the rate of one yuan a minute.
She has spent the summer sitting in a wheelchair outside a local railway station, defying the oppressive heat and humidity, next to an introductory board that has the slogan “selling smiles to save myself”.
She has also stuck her medical records on to the board to convince passers-by that she is genuine, along with a text that says: “Only a kidney transplant can save me … I long to survive, I hope I can smile everyday, and I wish I could repay my mother.”
Her bravery and optimism moved plenty of people and her story gained widespread attention across the country with many social media users expressing their sympathy and admiration.