China mum, inspired by son’s heroic death, has handcrafted shoe pads for soldiers for 20 years

2026-03-29 - 10:02

A Chinese mother has handcrafted more than 1,000 pairs of shoe pads for new army recruits in memory of her soldier son who died rescuing his comrade two decades ago. Zhang Xinghui, from southwestern China’s Chongqing municipality, is affectionately nicknamed “shoe pad mum”. In 2005, her son, 19-year-old Gu Nu, died while patrolling a mountain in Tibet and rescuing his teammate from a landslide. Gu became a frontier guard in 2003 and was promoted as his squad’s deputy leader. When Zhang learned...