Well-educated and strengthened by hardship, premier has a soft spot for laborers

He Shaoqiang, 60, is one of thousands of porters in Chongqing, the metropolis in Southwest China. With a rope and a bamboo stick, he can still carry 100-kilogram loads through the hilly streets of the city.

On April 27, He's bamboo stick, which has been worn smooth and shiny by his hands and shoulders over many years, attracted the attention of Premier Li Keqiang.

"It's become very smooth and polished. You must have been in this business for a long time," said Li, as he rubbed the meter-long pole.

"You people are great. You earn every penny by your hard work. You represent the diligent Chinese people," Li told He and other workers during his visit to a Chongqing port.

As he handed the stick back to He, Li asked him about his health, saying that carrying heavy loads can cause lower back injuries.

"Please take care of your back. Being a porter isn't easy."

Li checks crop planting in mountain areas in Enshi, Hubei province, in 2012. Huang Jingwen / Xinhua

Li, 58, knows the hardship of physical labor. From 1974 to 1978 he worked in the countryside in East China's Anhui province, herding cattle, planting rice and carrying rocks on his shoulders, like He, to help build a reservoir.

"He was a city boy. He carried rocks on one shoulder and didn't know how to transfer the load to the other shoulder. The shoulder pole bent with the heavy loads," Cheng Yuming, who worked with Li in Anhui, said in an interview with Blog Weekly.

"I told him that he was a group leader and didn't have to do the manual work, but he said: 'No, no. I can do it. I can carry rocks.'"

Born in Hefei, capital of Anhui province, Li grew up in a good educational environment. Not long after he entered one of the best middle schools in Hefei, the "cultural revolution" (1966-76) began. All schools in China were suspended and college admissions cancelled.

His father, Li Fengsan, still put high value on his son's education. Li Fengsan asked Li Cheng, an expert in Chinese studies at a culture and history institute in Anhui to be his son's home tutor.

Li and his teacher lived in the same "small, noisy and crowded" area, as Li Keqiang wrote in an article in memory of Li Cheng. The only "sacred place" in the area was a small library Li Cheng managed. The article was published in Anhui Daily in 1997, when Li was the chief secretary of the Communist Youth League central committee.

Teaching Li Keqiang history and ancient Chinese literature, the humble intellectual later became the most important influence in the early life of China's future premier.

"Mr Li let me stay in the library after school. The books were mostly ancient Chinese literature, which I didn't understand, but I enjoyed the feeling of being surrounded by more than 10,000 books," Li Keqiang wrote.

After the library was shut down during the "cultural revolution", Li Cheng taught Li Keqiang ancient Chinese poems in his study.

"Mr Li cited an idiom: 'The rise and fall of the nation concerns everyone,'" Li Keqiang wrote. "In his eyes, I had a hazy feeling that the chaos was going to end and the era of a prosperous China would begin."

After Li Cheng died, his ashes were poured into a river, as he wished. "Running water never becomes putrid," Li Keqiang said, quoting a saying to praise the moral values of his teacher. "Mr Li was a pure intellectual and he felt responsibility to his nation."

In 1974, at the age of 19, Li Keqiang went to Anhui's Fengyang county as one of the sent-down youths - the young people who were sent from urban areas to live and work in the countryside during the "up to the mountains and down to the countryside" movement, which began in the 1950s and lasted until the end of the "cultural revolution".

As the hometown of the founder of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), Fengyang is called "the emperor's hometown", but it was a quiet rural backwater when Li Keqiang arrived. Because of lack of food, pumpkin leaves were blended with rice as the local staple food.

"Li ate everything, good or bad. He wasn't picky at all," Zhang Chuanfu, Li's co-worker in Fengyang, said in an interview with Blog Weekly.

Despite the tough living conditions, Li Keqiang worked hard and joined the Communist Party of China in Fengyang in 1976.

After the college entrance exam was resumed in 1977, Li ploughed the farmland during the day and prepared for the exam at night. Eight months later, he entered Peking University, one of China's leading colleges, to study law and embrace a new stage in his life.

After 10 years of study at the university, he gained a bachelor's degree in law and master's and a doctorate in economics. In addition, he was the head of the student union and the school's Communist Youth League of China committee for a year after he graduated.

His doctoral dissertation, On the Tri-structure of China's Economy, won him the Sun Yefang Prize, the top honor for economics on the Chinese mainland.

Li also co-translated The Due Process of Law by the great British judge Lord Denning, which is available in bookstores in China.

In an article recalling his life at Peking University, Li Keqiang wrote: "I went to Peking University not just for knowledge, but also to cultivate good taste and to learn how to study."

He retained his taste and penchant for study after he left Peking University and eventually reached the center of China's inner political circle. He continues to read and has a passion for reading original English works. His wife, Cheng Hong, is an English professor at Capital University of Economics and Business.

At a meeting in 2012, Li said he was reading the biography of Steve Jobs, the US entrepreneur and co-founder of Apple Computer.

"It is a very interesting book. Steve Jobs devoted himself to the high-technology industry but also was interested in the arts," Li said to officials at the meeting, adding that technical innovation and humanistic spirit are equally important.

In 1985, during his tenure at the CYLC central committee, he chose the site for the country's first primary school of Project Hope in Anhui's Jinzhai county. Co-launched by the central committee, the project has become China's biggest charity dedicated to helping children in poverty-stricken areas gain access to education.

In 1998, Li was deployed to Henan province and became the province's governor in 1999, at the age of 44. He was the youngest provincial governor at the time and the first with a doctorate.

Li Keqiang with villagers during a visit to Xinxiang, Henan province, in 2003. Guo Yu / Xinhua

During his tenure there, Henan, the most populous province in China with more than 100 million people, was stricken by poverty and the spread of HIV/AIDS.

Li visited the worst-hit villages to see patients. Gao Yaojie, a retired doctor and AIDS activist, was invited to his office to report on the situation.

In February 2004, Li Keqiang went to Henan's Shangcai county, where 22 villages had people living with HIV. This was the third time in a year that, as provincial leader, he had gone to the area to survey the difficulties patients were facing.

Wearing a red ribbon, the symbol of the fight against AIDS, Li shook hands with and chatted to patients.

"We need to take care of them," Li told officials during the visit. "Talking to them and shaking their hands helps them to build confidence."

Yin Yin Nwe, then representative of the United Nations Children's Fund for China, said Henan was a model both for China and the world, and what happened there should be more widely known.

In a congratulatory letter sent to Li on his reelection as a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee in 2012, UNAIDS Executive Director Michel Sidibe recognized the progress China had achieved in AIDS prevention and thanked Li for his leadership in this regard.

In an article published in 2012, Xinhua News Agency called Li Keqiang "a man who puts people first".

"His toughness in advancing complex reforms, as well as his social warmth and scholarly temperament have made him a major figure in China's political arena," the article said.

On Jan 27 this year, Li visited the home of Yang Kang, a 12-year-old girl in a poverty-stricken village in Shannxi province.

Li asked her if the house was warm in winter and if she had to go far to school. Knowing her parents were working in another city, Li, who has a daughter, called Yang's father to ask if he could come back home for the festival.

Hearing the voice of her father, the girl started to cry. Li patted her and said: "Don't worry. Your father is coming home for New Year's Eve."

Li Keqiang visits Gao Junping, in Baotou, the Inner Mongolia autonomous region, last year. Gao and people from his community moved into new apartments a year later. Xie Huanchi / Xinhua

Gao Junping, a 56-year-old laid-off worker in Inner Mongolia autonomous region, also received a visit from the premier.

Last year, Li visited Gao's home, where Gao and four family members were crowded into a 20-square-meter room. A year later, Gao and people from his community moved into new apartments at a housing project developed by the local government.

To express his gratitude, Gao wrote a letter to Premier Li and received a reply two weeks later.

Li wrote he was happy that Gao had moved into a new home, and said the government would continue to improve people's living conditions.

"Happy New Year to your family, and send my greetings to other residents," he wrote. "If I had a chance, I would visit again."

The date on the letter was Jan 30, Chinese Lunar New Year's Eve, Gao said.

"I never expected him to write back, not to mention writing back on New Year's Eve," Gao said in an interview with a local newspaper. "I really appreciate what he has done."