张桂梅对自己近乎苛刻的节俭，却把工资、奖金和社会各界捐款100多万元全部投入到贫困山区教育中。她长期义务兼任华坪福利院院长，多方奔走筹集善款，20年来含辛茹苦养育136名孤儿，被孩子们亲切称呼为“妈妈”。后来，她作为人大代表去去北京开会，有记者发现张桂梅穿着寒酸，洗得发白的衣服上甚至还有两个破洞，其实当时县里给她拨了7000块钱的置装费。但她没有用这笔钱打扮自己，而是用这笔钱买了电脑，她觉得学校孩子们用一台电脑看看这个世界，要远远比她自己拥有光鲜靓丽的服装重要得多。

Zhang Guimei is extremely frugal in her life, but she has donated her salaries, bonuses and social donations, which added up to more than a million yuan, to the education of poor mountainous areas. She has been volunteering as the head of Huaping County Children’s Welfare Home for a long time, and always on the go to raise funds from various sources. Over the past 20 years, she has nurtured 136 orphans and been affectionately called “mother” by them. Later, Zhang Guimei was found poorly dressed with two holes and the clothes turned whitish from much washing when she went to Beijing for the National Congress of CPC as a deputy. In fact, although the county had allocated 7, 000 yuan for her to buy clothes, she didn’t use the money to dress herself up but to buy a computer. In her mind, it was much more important for school children to see the world through a computer than to own her fancy clothes.