Yang Yumin, a farmer from the suburbs of Harbin, capital of northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, has been living a full life with a transplanted heart for the last 15 years.
He is the longest survivor of a heart transplant in China.
A celebration was organized on Thursday at the No. 2 Clinical Hospital attached to Harbin University of Medical Sciences, where the operation was performed 15 years ago.
Yang contracted ectatic myocarditis in 1989. Before the operation he could neither walk, sit nor lie down, and was at constant risk of heart failure.
Xia Qiuming, a well-known cardiac surgeon, performed the transplant on April 26, 1992.
Already in his 50s, the easy-going Yang now has a 14-year-old daughter and operates a small catering business with his wife inside the hospital canteen.
Yang is now in charge of purchasing fresh vegetables for the hospital canteen.
"See, I'm in good health," said Yang gleefully, patting his chest. "Every morning, I go to the market on my motorbike to buy all the vegetables we need in the canteen."
Yang said he still needs to take medicine each day but that is a small price to pay for a renewed lease of life.
Approximately 50,000 patients all over the world have received heart transplants. About 76 percent of them survive for five years, with the longest recorded survival being 30 years. The first heart transplant operation in China was performed in Shanghai in 1978.
(Xinhua News Agency April 28, 2007)
