(YANG GUANG)

Wang Aifu, 72, a retiree in Shanxi Province, the original inspiration for the hero in famous director Feng Xiaogang's hit movie Assembly in 2007, touched Chinese people with his selfless deeds.

One day in 1996, Wang discovered an old book in a flea market in Taiyuan, capital city of the province. In the book, he discovered 84 unsent death notifications during the Taiyuan Campaign of the civil war in China from 1945 to 1949. In the next 10 years, Wang spent lots of time and money on finding and sending these certificates to the relatives of the dead soldiers.

In 2009, Wang invested 100,000 yuan ($15,650) of his personal savings in establishing a memorial about the war of resistance against Japanese aggression (1937-45) in Zuoquan County of Shanxi. More than 3,000 items related to the war he had collected over the years are displayed there.