Chen Shu-chu

Chen Shu-chu was born in 1950 in Taitung, a quiet county on the east coast of Taiwan, into a family that sold vegetables in the central market. When she was thirteen her mother went into a difficult labour, and the hospital would not admit her without a deposit the family could not raise in time. Her mother died. Chen left school to help her father at the stall, and not long afterwards a younger brother died of an illness the family also could not afford to treat properly.

She has worked the stall ever since, opening before dawn and closing late, sleeping on the floor beside it in the early years, and eating, by her own account, mostly rice and whatever vegetables were left over. What she earned she saved, and what she saved she gave away: to a fund at her old primary school so that no child would go hungry, to a children's home that had helped a relative, to a scholarship fund, and to the hospital that had turned her mother away, so that other families could get emergency care without a deposit. Her largest single gift, several million Taiwan dollars, built a library at the school.

By 2010 her giving had passed ten million Taiwan dollars. That year Forbes named her one of Asia's heroes of philanthropy and Time put her on its list of the hundred most influential people; in 2012 she received the Magsaysay Award. She found the attention embarrassing and went back to the market.