Lou
Xiaoying, now 88 found and raised
more than 30 abandoned Chinese babies from the streets of Jinhua, in the
eastern Zhejiang province where she managed to make a living by
recycling rubbish.
She and
her late husband Li Zin, who died 17 years ago, kept four of the
children and passed the others onto friends and family to start new
lives.
Her youngest son Zhang Qilin - now aged just seven - was found in a dustbin by Lou when she was 82.
'Even
though I was already getting old I could not simply ignore the baby and
leave him to die in the trash. He looked so sweet and so needy. I had
to take him home with me,' she said.
'I
took him back to our home, which is a very small modest house in the
countryside and nursed him to health. He is now a thriving little boy,
who is happy and healthy.
'My
older children all help look after Zhang Qilin, he is very special to
all of us. I named him after the Chinese word for rare and precious.
'The
whole thing started when I found the first baby, a little girl back in
1972 when I was out collecting rubbish. She was just lying amongst the
junk on the street, abandoned. She would have died had we not rescued
her and taken her in.
'I realized if we had strength enough to
collect garbage how could we not recycle something as important as human
lives,' she explained.
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