An 88-year-old woman in China, who once worked as a hospital cleaner, has been nominated for the highest honor in China after saving the lives of 38 abandoned babies.
Tang Qiang, who worked at a hospital in the southeastern Chinese province of Jiangxi, took in 38 babies during the 1980s and 1990s, raising them as her own. In the winter of 1982, when she was 46 years old, she discovered a baby girl wrapped in cloth near a railway track. Tang took the child into her home, cleaned her, and fed her. She named the baby Feng Feng, which means “fragrance” in Chinese.
At that time, Tang had five children, the youngest of whom was just 12 years old. Tang’s daughter, Epiyang, who had completed her education but was unemployed, helped care for Feng Feng. Over the years, Tang Qiang continued to find and adopt abandoned children, including a second baby girl whom she named Zhen Zhen, meaning “precious gift.” She went on to save 36 more babies, some of whom she found in trash bins, while others were left outside the hospital. Many of these children were close to death due to cold or other causes, but Tang saved them all.
Tang cared for the children in an unused room at the hospital, feeding them daily and monitoring their health. Despite objections from her husband, who argued that their income was barely enough to support their own children, Tang remained determined to save as many lives as possible. After her retirement, she used her meager pension to buy milk and food for the babies.
The children began to call her “Grandmother,” and over time, her husband grew to love the children, who began calling him “Grandfather.” As Tang grew older and her physical strength diminished, she started finding adoptive families for the children. The last children she adopted were twin boys, one of whom, named Zheng Jigan, is now 27 years old and works as a firefighter. Zheng regularly visits Tang Qiang and gives her part of his salary. He says, “If it weren’t for Grandma Tang, I don’t know where my life would have been.”
On December 16, 2024, Tang Qiang was nominated for the National Moral Model Award, the highest civilian honor in China. The final list of nominees for this prestigious award has not yet been announced.
