The great-loving mother Zhao Gaixiang has raised 17 abandoned babies over 22 years

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????Zhao Gaixiang (front row, first from left) playing with the children.

Xinhua News Agency, Shijiazhuang, November 7 (Xia Zhenxing) Gorky once said: "All the glory and pride in the world come from mothers." However, there are some children who, because of disabilities, were abandoned by their parents from a young age. They are unfortunate, but they are also fortunate. Because they met their "mother" Zhao Gaixiang.

For 22 years, Zhao Gaixiang, a farmer woman from Shuangjing Town, Wei County, Hebei Province, has overcome family difficulties and, with the help of society, successively adopted 17 abandoned babies with disabilities, enduring hardship to raise the children and giving them love and happiness. Today, the oldest adopted disabled child is already 22 years old, and the youngest is more than 4 months old. Among them, 4 children are attending kindergarten.

One morning in the winter of 1994, the weather was freezing cold and the wind was biting. Zhao Gaixiang, then 39 years old, went to Shuangjing Town for a market fair. When she walked to a place less than 1 li from the market, she found many people gathered together. Out of curiosity, she walked toward the crowd and heard the onlookers discussing: This child is really pitiful; on such a cold day, he will freeze to death before nightfall. The child was wrapped in a thin blanket and placed on the ground, his face blue, his breathing very weak, and he could not cry aloud.

Zhao Gaixiang panicked and quickly picked up the child and sent him to the town health center. When she learned that the child was a congenital cerebral palsy patient and that the chance of a cure was almost zero, Zhao Gaixiang said to her somewhat hesitant husband: "No matter how disabled the child is, he is still a life. I cannot ignore him. If I do, I will feel miserable for the rest of my life!" Later, with approval from the civil affairs department, Zhao Gaixiang took the child home. She named him Zhengxiao, hoping that when he grew up, he would be grateful to society and understand filial piety.

????Zhao Gaixiang feeding the child milk.

One day in April 1995, on her way home after visiting relatives, Zhao Gaixiang picked up another abandoned baby with brain disability, about 1 year old, by the roadside. Because these two children were both very young, with underdeveloped brains and low body immunity, in order to get medical treatment for the children, she often pedaled a tricycle to the home of a barefoot doctor more than 10 kilometers away. She pedaled that tricycle for more than 10 years.

In this way, starting from picking up and adopting the second child, Zhao Gaixiang developed the idea of building a nursery. In 2008, she persuaded her husband, who was in business, to take out all the family savings and borrowed money from relatives and friends to build a nursery at her own expense to high standards. After the nursery was completed, the number of disabled children living there increased to 10, including 6 infants under 3 years old. Facing infants crying for feeding, Zhao Gaixiang got up at 5 a.m. every day to change each child's diapers and urine pads, feed them milk powder in turn, and make breakfast. Several children had severe cerebral palsy and had almost lost their chewing ability, so she crushed the food with a blender and fed them bite by bite. Only after settling these children could she eat a bite herself. Every day she was busy until 12 at night before she could go to sleep.

At the end of 2011, the government department of Wei County established at her nursery the only children's welfare home in the county, where abandoned babies could find shelter. At present, the nursery has adopted 17 disabled children. To a mother, a child is the continuation of her own life, and she will silently devote all her efforts throughout her life. For the elderly Zhao Gaixiang, each of the 17 adopted abandoned babies is the continuation of her life, and she has poured all her efforts into them.

"My greatest wish is to see, while I am still alive, that among the children I have raised, more can become university students!" said 61-year-old Zhao Gaixiang with a simple smile.

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