It was 1999, and in late November, volunteers at the Ningbo Charity Foundation in eastern China received a strange letter from an anonymous donor (who identified himself as Shun Qi Zi Ran, which roughly translates as “let nature take its course”) who had sent money.
By Chinese standards at the time, it was a large sum.
Inside was 50,000 Chinese yuan, or about $7,000 in remittances, payments typically sent by people who had left to work in another country.
The following year, another letter came from “let nature take its course,” and the year after that, and the year after that; each one came with checks/transfers.
In mid-November of that year, another letter arrived for a total of 1.08 million yuan ($150,000) on 100 different certificates (checks). This brings the total donations to 15 million yuan – more than $2 million – over 25 years of anonymous donations.