Yang Hui, who is retired from a hospital affiliated with Harbin Medical University, managed to save the lives of two men in the Songhuajiang River, on Aug 12, 2012, when she and friends were having a picnic alongside the river at Taiyang Island, and heard a cry for help coming from the riverside.

They all stood up and looked around and saw a hand waving up and down in the river about 20 meters from shore while several people were yelling loudly. Yang, who was born in 1950 and likes to exercise, especially swimming, immediately ran some steps and jumped into the river.

She reached out to the hand of the drowning person and tried to pull him up, then found another man beneath him. She got out into the river and managed to pull the two drowning men towards the bank, but when they go close they slipped back into the river because of some moss.

Even though she was exhausted from the exertion, the 62-year-old Yang didn’t give up and was able to swim back to the bank with the men and yell to the onlookers to give her a hand. Some astonished people leant a hand to get the three out of the river.

A large crowd of people had gathered to greet the three with cheers and applause. Yang, however, had no time to celebrate the victory because she saw that one of men had stopped breathing so she promptly made began resuscitation by pressing on him until he came back to life.

Then because she was so fatigued, Yang fainted there among the crowd but, with the help of passers-by, she and the two men were taken to hospital and emergency treatment.

For her heroic effort, Yang was given the "Advanced Samaritan Deed" award and was declared a "Female Pacesetter" for Harbin, the capital of Heilongjiang province.