the afternoon on march 21, a retired worker named yan was in urgent need of a blood transfusion because of a sharp decline in blood platelets. when the news spread on the qq instant messaging service at the nantong xingchen synthetic material co, workers responded by volunteering to donate blood. yan was diagnosed with leukemia back in 2011 and nantong xinchen officials visited yan several times and arranged for treatment. workers also donated money for further treatment. and, within just a few minutes, 18 workers had volunteered to donate blood. after initial testing, xu fei, ren shunliang, wang ling and zhai feng were sent to a hospital in suzhou to make the donation, but further testing showed that only zhai feng was suitable. even though zhai was told to rest after making the donation, zhai showed up at work the following day.