70-Year-Old Woman Makes Living Delivering Water Bottles

A 70-year-old woman who lives in Beijing's Shijingshan District is perhaps the oldest water cooler bottle deliverer in the capital.

Gao Meiyun has worked full-time since 2006 delivering hundreds of 20-kilogram bottles of purified water to various apartments and offices in western Beijing each day, according to an article by China Foto Press.

Gao, who is a widow, lives with her physically disabled son and mentally disabled grandson. The money she earns from her water delivery job is their only income and must also cover her son's medical expenses.

Gao Meiyun's family lives in a 20-square-meter room with no air-conditioning, which is filled with water cooler bottles that she will deliver to homes and offices in Beijing's Shijingshan District.

Gao has become quite famous in the community since elderly people usually do not perform such a physically demanding job. But as long as customers continued to call, Gao said she would deliver water at any time regardless of weather conditions. She also said her family is her motivation to keep up with the job.

Gao believed her son would eventually take over her water delivery business, but he was unable to do so because of health problems. But now that Gao has health problems of her own, some volunteers assist her every Wednesday.

On the other hand, Neighbors have accused an elderly woman of exaggerating her difficulties to local media to exploit people's kindness for profit. Gao's neighbors have questioned her motives, as the family is not in as dire straits as some previous media reports claimed. According to them, Gao's family earns around 3,000 yuan ($450.50) per month, including pension and allowances, and public healthcare and the sub-district cover most of their medical bills.

Gao said the allowances were enough to cover daily expenses but not medical bills. She said she would donate extra money she received to the federation for the disabled. "I'm not trying to con people out of money," Gao told the Beijing News. "The neighbors may be slandering me because they are jealous of all the help we are getting."

Nevertheless, being old but still working hard, some people may have to live like that, whether they like it or not...