On June 15, 2025, along the coast of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, a local woman was swept into the waves and began to drown. Among those who heard her cries for help was Dr Zhang Junqiao, leader of the 27th Chinese Medical Team to Tanzania and Associate Chief Physician of Anesthesiology at the Affiliated Hospital of Shandong Second Medical University. Without hesitation, he jumped into the sea to rescue her. The woman was brought safely back to shore. Zhang, exhausted by the effort, was caught by a powerful surge and disappeared beneath the water. Despite urgent rescue attempts, he died at the age of 38.

"I'll be a doctor my whole life, and I'll do it well." Zhang had said this many times and held to that promise until the very end. In August 2025, he was named one of China's "Most Beautiful Doctors." Two months later, he was posthumously recognized as a martyr.

On January 29, 2026, China's National Health Commission held a memorial event to share stories from Zhang's life and work. Five speakers from Shandong Second Medical University and other organizations looked back on his journey – from medical school and clinical practice, to frontline public-health work and overseas medical aid.

A promise made, a promise kept

"I will study hard, master my skills, and serve at the grassroots level wherever my country needs me most. That is my life's pursuit." More than a decade later, Jiang Zhonghua, Zhang's former college counselor and now Party Branch Secretary and Director of the Library at Shandong Second Medical University, can still picture the determined look in his student's eyes as he said those words.

Zhang was born into a teacher's family in Weifang City, east China's Shandong Province. At work, he had a simple principle: "Save whoever I can." Colleagues recall him kneeling on the floor for nearly an hour performing CPR on a patient with no vital signs. When the rescue failed, he went home and cried, blaming himself for not being able to do more.

"He was my classmate, my colleague – and for 21 years, my brother," said Yao Fuwang, associate chief physician of anesthesiology at the Affiliated Hospital of Shandong Second Medical University.

The "Heartbeat Mission": CPR on the plaza

Years of clinical work had shown Zhang how often lives were lost simply because people around a patient did not know basic emergency skills. After returning from his COVID-19 relief work in Hubei Province, he decided to do something about it. He launched a community CPR training program he called the "Heartbeat Mission," and began teaching in public squares.

"At first, I honestly was not sure it would work," said Yin Jinjiao, a core member of the volunteer team. "Medical staff are already exhausted. Would they really spend their rest time teaching more? And would residents actually want to learn?"

Her doubts quickly disappeared. "Just a few days later, he had already set up a simple training stall in the plaza with his wife and two daughters," Yin recalled.

The summer ground was scorching, but Zhang insisted on kneeling to demonstrate chest compressions so that learners could clearly see his posture and technique. During each session, he repeated the same motions dozens, sometimes hundreds of times. By the end, colleagues often had to help him stand up. The bruises on his knees would heal, then return; new injuries layered over old ones, but he never mentioned the pain.

Once, after a long day of training, Yin ran into him in the stairwell. His mother was helping him upstairs. "He had been kneeling for so long that his knees were badly swollen," she said. "He couldn't bend them enough to climb the stairs by himself."

A healer's heart across mountains and seas

The same sense of responsibility guided Zhang when he went abroad. As leader of the 27th Chinese Medical Team to Tanzania, he and his colleagues worked thousands of miles from home, providing clinical services and training local medical staff.

"When the team departed for Tanzania, he was the youngest member," said Yang Shijia, a reporter who has long followed China's overseas medical aid. "But when floods washed out roads in Mkuranga District, he was the first to step forward to help deliver supplies to an orphanage."

Facing limited resources and tough living conditions, Zhang set a quiet example. He encouraged his teammates to live simply and used his own money to help cover medical expenses for sick children.

Yang also recalled a line Zhang once shared about his motivation for working with children in China and Africa: whether at home or abroad, he believed, "these children are worth our efforts, because we share one world, one ocean and one health dream."

Colleagues say that in his 38 years, Zhang tried to live up to the ideals many Chinese doctors aspire to  – revering life, healing the wounded and rescuing the dying, being willing to give, and showing boundless compassion, in the words of China's medical ethics pledge.

His own heartbeat has stopped, but the "Heartbeat Mission" he created continues in plazas and classrooms, carried on by the volunteers he trained. Though his life ended on a beach in Dar es Salaam, the bridge he built – between doctors and patients, between China and Africa, between those who can help and those who need it – still quietly links people to another chance at life.