When you become a multi-millionaire, you can virtually buy anything on the planet. You’ve worked hard throughout your life to get where you are, and now you can purchase multiple homes, the fastest supercars, a private jet, and more. But sometimes, it’s also important to give back and help others. While you could spend your fortune on yourself and your family/friends, you could alternatively use your money to assist those that are less fortunate. Plenty of wealthy individuals give money to charitable organizations, but how many would go as far as spending all of their wealth to help others? Well that is exactly what Li Lijuan did, as she has depleted all of her wealth to give something back.
Li Lijuan is a Chinese businesswoman and investor who spent the last twenty years of her life amassing a great fortune for herself. Li started out as an entrepreneur who went on to eventually purchase her own textile and clothing production company. Using the money she eared from that, she would eventually make her way into the mining industry. Since the 1980’s, she made multiple investments within the coal mining industry in China and eventually purchased her own mine. This earned her millions of dollars, effectively ensuring that she could live a comfortable life. However Li always wanted to help those that had absolutely nothing, specifically orphaned children. In 1994 she adopted her first child, and would go on to adopt many more. She took in dozens of orphans whose parents either died or abandoned them, and used her wealth to ensure they would have a better life.
Li Lijuan would continue to take in many orphans throughout her life, and eventually her adopted family would grow to around 75 members in total. That’s a massive family to support by any standard, and it certainly was not an easy feat. Various charities and other donors would help support Li and her massive family, as the costs to raise a family of this size is pretty absurd. Many of the orphans that she took in had health issues or birth defects, so Li would also cover their large medical bills along the way.
However in 2008, Li suffered a major setback. Her mine that was making the vast majority of her income was shut down due to the construction of urban developments. Now she had to rely solely on her garment business to provide for her orphans. Unfortunately, this was just one of many major obstacles to come.
Then in 2011, Li had felt another setback: she was diagnosed with lymphoma. Many people probably would have turned their focus on themselves in a situation like this, but not Li. While she underwent treatment in the hospital for her cancer, she continued to use her money to help her foster family.
Now at the age of 46, Li Lijuan finds herself in debt, as she has spent her entire multi-million dollar fortune to help her orphaned family. Her actions go above and beyond charity, as she sacrificed her great personal wealth to help others. However despite being about $317,000 dollars in debt, she continues to give to her family. Now she’s selling off her properties and her personal goods to ensure that her family has access to food, housing, and healthcare. Li Lijuan didn’t let cancer stop her, she didn’t let the closing of her business stop her, and now she’s not letting her financial woes stop her from continuing to help others.
Many people would have probably turned back after just one of these setbacks, but Li Lijuan is not your average person. A few people have tried to help Li by offering to adopt some of her orphans, but unfortunately they cannot. Li Lijuan did not go about the specific ways to adopt her children in accordance with Chinese law. As they are all registered under her name, and none of them were officially declared “orphans”, no other families can legally adopt them to help her out. Despite all of these setbacks, Li continued to give, and many of her orphans have gone on to earn degrees from universities and get jobs.
However this story is unfortunately not all positive. Apparently Li has not seen her own biological son, Xiaowen Lijuan in more than ten years. According to reports, her son was involved in an accident in 2004 that left him with a serious spinal injury. When he was sent to the hospital, his mother was not by his side, choosing to be next to one of her adopted children that was also in hospital instead. This left Xiaowen feeling neglected, and he was avoided seeing his mother ever since.
So the story of Li Lijuan is a fickle one. On the one hand she has helped 75 orphan children reclaim their lives, supporting them so much so, that it has caused her to go bankrupt. But then on the other hand, it seems that she has somewhat neglected her own biological son. So how do our readers feel about Li and what she has done? Is her story worthy of praise, or were her actions foolish because she is now in debt and seemingly has no relationship with her own biological son? It’s hard to say as her story contains a lot of good, that is unfortunately wrapped up with some negativity. Regardless, her actions have helped the lives of many that were less fortunate and she spent million to ensure that they had a better life.
Photo from uk.news.yahoo.com
