Good-Faith Brothers Honor Their Debts

Sun Shuilin and Sun Donglin are brothers. Sun Shuilin died with his wife and three children in a car accident in February， 2010 while they were driving home to pay the last arrears of the annual wages to some workers in villages in his home province before the Spring Festival. After learning the deaths of his brother and his family， younger brother Sun Donglin took the mission over and settled all the accounts before the Spring Festival with rural workers who had worked in his elder brother’s construction projects in 2009.

After the story was reported on the national media， the whole nation was touched by the honesty of the two trustworthy brothers. It is more than a story about honesty. On one level， it also paints a picture of how， in the modernization of the country， rural workers have left home villages to seek jobs away from home and how some of them have made it.

Sun Shuilin was an ordinary farmer born in 1960 in a village near Wuhan， the capital city of Hubei Province in central China. Graduation from junior middle school meant the end of his formal education and he began to work. With his father’s arrangement， Sun Shuilin was apprenticed to a carpenter. After the apprenticeship， Sun Shuilin worked as a carpenter himself and earned money to support the whole family. Sun Donglin， 10 years junior， followed his elder brother’s footsteps after his graduation from middle school. The two brothers earned money and were able to build houses of their own in their home village and got married.

In 1989 Sun Shuilin was working at a construction site in Beijing when something happened which was to change his life. In the economic downturn that year， the developer had a temporary problem with cash flow and couldn’t pay an installment on a certain day as stipulated in the contract. The contractor was so frustrated that he quit with the project unfinished.

The developer came to Sun Shuilin for help， knowing Sun Shuilin had a prestige as a trustworthy guy among workers. Sun Shuilin called 40-plus fellow workers together and discussed the matter. The fellow workers said unanimously， “We trust you， brother. If you say we do it then we do it even if we can’t get payment.” They completed the project over a period of 40 days and the project was of excellent quality. The developer paid Sun Shuilin 400，000 as stipulated in the contract even though Sun was not a party to the contract. After paying all the wages to his fellow workers， Sun Shuilin found he was left with a fortune of 100，000.

100，000 yuan was indeed a fortune in 1989. With this bucket of godsend gold， Sun Shuilin was able to organize a construction team of his own and became a construction contractor. His younger brother Sun Donglin also became a contractor and had his own construction team. The brothers treated their fellow workers well. As construction contractors， they would pay regular wages to their workers and would pay up the arrears of the wages before the Spring Festival. Paying all the money you owe before the Spring Festival is a tradition in China. The brothers stuck to the tradition. They made it a point to pay all the money as they promised. They took their promises most seriously.

Their reputation as trustworthy contractors spread. Sun Shuilin’s construction team grew to over 200 people. Over the past 20 years， he never owned a cent to his workers when the Spring Festival came. They could get advance payments if their families run into financial problems. A generous man， he helped his fellow workers when they had trouble. Many stories relate how Sun Shuilin helped his workers in bad situations.

In 2009， Sun Shuilin had contracted projects in both Beijing and Tianjin. As Spring Festival approached， he began to pay out all the arrears of the wages to workers from other provinces. The rest of the money was going to be paid to workers in his home village and villages nearby. As usual， he planned to distribute all the money before the eve of the Spring Festival， which fell on February 14， this year. On February 9， Sun Shuilin drove to Tianjin to pick up his wife and three children. He had planned to have a reunion of his family and his younger brother’s family. But after learning from online weather forecast that there would be a snowstorm that might shut down the Tianjin-Wuhan expressway， Sun Shuilin changed his plan. He decided to leave for Wuhan overnight. He left with his wife and three children and 260，000 in cash in the trunk of the car. He didn’t want to be delayed by the snow.

Sun Donglin called home next morning and found they had not arrived. After dialing the phones of his brother and sister-in-law more than 100 times and got no answer that morning， he realized with a sinking heart that something bad had happened. He immediately called friends for help and he himself drove following the route Sun Shuilin had taken in order to find out what had happened. In the afternoon， he was informed that the owner of the phone was now in the morgue of a county hospital in Henan Province. It turned out that more than 20 motor vehicles had crashed in an expressway pileup. Eight bodies were in the morgue of the county hospital. He reached the hospital around midnight. The morgue opened at 8:30 in the morning. Sun Donglin saw the five bodies of his brother’s family.

After the worst moment of his life， he began to look for the car his brother had driven， for he needed to find out the whereabouts of the cash. The traffic police didn’t know anything about the cash. He finally located the car in a parking lot and found the money in the trunk of the car.

As it would take days before the police would make decisions and do the paperwork about the accident， Sun Donglin decided to take the cash and come to Wuhan first. He didn’t tell their 70-year-old mother of the accident and discussed the payment issue with his sister. She suggested waiting till after the Spring Festival and after the funeral.

Sun Donglin reasoned， “We can’t celebrate the Spring Festival this year. But these fellows have been with our brother for nearly 20 years and we can’t allow them to have a bad time for Spring Festival with the last year’s wages unpaid. We pay every cent before the Spring Festival and we have done it for the past 20 years!”

Sun Donglin’s proposal won the family support. When the news of the accident reached these fellow workers， many of them thought they would not be able to collect the unpaid wages as they all knew this tradition that debts die with the dead debtor. Some had written the unpaid wages off in their hearts， for after all， the whole family of the five had died.

A few fellow workers who had been friends with the Sun Brothers came over to stay with them and help out with anything that needed to be taken care of. Sun Donglin asked them to make calls to other fellow workers and ask them to come to get their wages before the Spring Festival. The friends didn’t want to make calls， thinking it was most inappropriate. Sun Donglin said， “My brother is dead. How can I leave him dead with all these debts unpaid?”

The friends took the point. After a short silence， they started making calls.

On February 12， a day before the eve of the Spring Festival， dozens of workers who had worked under Sun Shuilin in 2009， showed up. Sun Donglin didn’t know how much he should pay as his brother had left no accounts. So he let these fellow workers say how much was owed and paid out accordingly. That day， Sun Donglin paid out 260，000 yuan， and needed 66，000 of his own money from the bank. And his mother， who had finally learned about the deaths， chipped in 10，000.

In 2009， the Sun brothers had altogether paid more than 3 million as wages to their workers. The amount they paid on February 12 was the arrears.

On February 23， Sun Donglin drove 500 kilometers to the accident spot where his elder brother had the fatal accident. The younger brother wept and said aloud in tears， “Brother， I paid up every cent before the Spring Festival. You now can rest in peace.”

The honesty of the Sun Brothers won hearts and respect all over China. The local government of their hometown sent special envoys to Henan Province to help with funeral arrangements. The local government in Henan also sent officials to make things easier. The national media including CCTV and People’s Daily and Xinhua News Agency covered the story. The People’s Daily even published an editorial discussing the matter.

The national media focused on the Sun brothers for a special reason: that migrant workers do not get paid in full and on time is a serious problem in China.

Sun Donglin does not think he did anything extraordinary. He says， “We brothers have done what we should do.” After getting their pay， the fellow workers all vowed， “Brother， we will work for you next year.” □