By Du Wenjuan (chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2007-08-24 09:19

Nowadays residents in Qingdao, East China's Shandong Province don't need to worry being caught without an umbrella in public areas when rain starts falling. That's because the "Love and Care Umbrella" campaign provides free umbrellas in places like banks, shopping malls, and even buses and taxis.

This is all started after a series of pictures were posted on the picture blog website on July 1 accompanied by a touching story.

The actual event happened in only two minutes and was captured by a Qingdao photograph enthusiast last month. But the pictures quickly spread through the Internet.

In the series of pictures, an old woman is stumbling to cross a street when she was caught in a sudden rain shower on that Sunday afternoon. Minutes earlier it was sunny and clear.

A man in a green T-shirt was in a nearby restaurant waiting for the rain to stop when he saw the elderly woman. He rushed into the street with an umbrella and escorted her by holding her arm.

A few minutes later, a girl who was with her mother in the car idling, rushed out with an umbrella to help the man and the senior.

In the end, the 84-year-old woman was safely taken back home.

Guo Jianliang, an associate professor with Qingdao Agriculture University who lives on the seventh floor of a building facing the street saw all this unfold. He immediately grabbed his camera and snapped the pictures.

"It happened all of a sudden and I was heartened," Guo recalled. "And simultaneously I wanted more people to know about this."

Days later, the series of pictures were posted on many websites, blogs, and forums. They were published in local newspapers and even got coverage on CCTV.

The young man, Qiu Jianfeng, who first helped the elderly woman, remembers being soaked through from the rain.

"Everyone would not hesitate to give a hand to help the old," Qiu said.

"There is love, care and warmth everywhere!" a Qingdao resident exclaimed reading the story in the local newspaper.

"Good deeds are everywhere all the time, and people see them, record them and remember them," Guo said. "Good news travels fast, and it's not just because of the Internet."

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