A woman and her 38 children.

**Editor’s Note**

A name that has remained largely unnoticed has appeared on the public list of candidates for the 9th National Moral Model. Her name is Tang Caiying, 88 years old, a retired cleaner from the People’s Hospital of Fenyi County, Xinyu City, Jiangxi Province. Alongside Tang Caiying is another name, Zhang Jiagang, 27 years old, the fire rescue team leader at the Lingbei East Road Fire Rescue Station in Fenyi County. He is one of the 38 abandoned infants adopted by Tang Caiying.

Now, Zhang Jiagang has grown up, and the other children have also become adults. Tang Caiying has aged, but their story has not been forgotten; it still shines like a treasure.

Tang Caiying appears to be the most common and unremarkable elderly person in life, with her forehead, face, and chin covered in fine wrinkles, noticeable light brown age spots on her face and hands, and her palms rough and cracked from years of hard work, with calluses on her fingers. As she approaches her 90th year, her husband, two brothers, friends, and former colleagues have passed away, and she lives with the children, leading a repetitive life.

Between the 1980s and 1990s, Tang Caiying adopted more than thirty infants. Initially, her actions of “picking up” babies were questioned; if her intentions were to gain financial benefits, the children would become tools. The elderly woman never argued back, simply focusing on what she believed was right.

It has been proven that these children have all survived well. With her meager income, she meticulously managed to maintain a basic living, dedicating her efforts to raise them and find them good homes, asking for nothing in return. At that time, her simple intentions were finally understood.

As she enters old age and recalls those little-known past events, she pauses for a few seconds, her thin lips curving into a crescent-shaped smile, her eyes squinting, before she begins to speak. Those distant memories unfold before her like high-definition movie scenes.

Tang Caiying poses for a photo with her husband, her biological children, and the adopted children. Photo by He Kai, The Paper.

**Saving Lives**

If you ask her, she can accurately tell you the year and day.

In 1982, on a winter morning at four o’clock, 46-year-old Tang Caiying got up to work as a cleaner at the Fenyi County Hospital. Passing by the nearby railway tracks, she heard the sound of a baby crying. Startled, her heart raced. She returned home to grab a flashlight, following the sound until she discovered a baby lying in a cotton coat. Her heart raced even faster.

Upon closer inspection, the child’s face was dirty and red from the cold. She immediately picked the baby up and took it home, placing the child in an empty room, cleaning its face, and feeding it until the crying stopped. The little one stared wide-eyed at Tang Caiying, motionless.

The next day, she took the baby to the county civil affairs bureau. The child was too small, and the staff asked if she could help take care of it for a while, providing formula. She took the baby back home. When the child was five months old, the staff asked Tang Caiying if she wanted to continue raising the child, and by then, she couldn’t bear to part with it. Thus, the child stayed with her, and she named her Fangfang.

That year, Tang Caiying was already a mother of five, with three daughters and two sons, the youngest being twelve. Her second daughter, Aiping, had just graduated from high school and was not yet working. Aiping helped her mother care for the first child she “picked up.” She remembered the child’s eyes, round and bright, resembling little bells, very similar to her mother’s light brown eyes, which gave a sense of tranquility.

A few years later, Tang Caiying “picked up” her second child at the hospital, a girl who rarely cried, with fair skin and bright, round eyes, much to the family’s delight. Tang Caiying named her Zhenzhen. From then on, she continued to “pick up” 36 more infants at the hospital.

Some newborns were choked by amniotic fluid, unable to breathe, and were thrown in trash bins; others were left outside in winter, frozen and barely alive. Every morning before work, Tang Caiying would rise early to check on the children in a vacant room at the hospital, where they were still sleeping. After caring for these children for a month or two, they gradually regained their health and survived.

At first, Tang Caiying worried about her husband’s opposition and hesitated to bring the children home. After work, she would feed the babies and return home late at night. Aiping remembered her mother coming home late every day, but she was unaware that her mother was caring for other children.

Tang Caiying recalled that her husband initially thought they had just managed to raise their own children, and their income was not high. Without these children, the family could afford better clothes and food. The children she “picked up” were not objects or pets; they were lives. Tang Caiying listened but said nothing. Her thoughts were simple: a discarded child is a life, and since she saw them, she had to save them.

Even her biological children did not understand their mother’s actions. Aiping recalled her eldest sister telling their mother that the family had just improved financially, yet she was spending money on the “picked-up” children, leaving little for themselves. Aiping told her mother that since she earned her own money, she could raise them as she pleased. Aiping firmly believed that if her mother had ten yuan and met someone poorer, she would give all ten yuan to that person.

Once Tang Caiying devoted her energy to these children, she found herself unable to part with them, and the children felt the same. By then, she had retired from the hospital, receiving a monthly pension of a few hundred yuan, which was enough to ensure the children had enough formula. To increase her income, Tang Caiying began collecting scrap to sell. She usually went out at night to avoid being seen by acquaintances.

Zhang Jiagang was one of the children she “picked up.” At that time, he could not understand his situation. In his vague memories, his grandfather seemed fierce, telling his grandmother that if she brought these children home, she should not return, or she could take them elsewhere. The couple even quarreled over this, and Zhang Jiagang was just starting elementary school.

Later, his grandfather gradually became accustomed to the presence of these children and even grew fond of them.

Zhang Jiagang’s childhood photo with his grandmother, Tang Caiying. Photo provided by the interviewee.

**“He Treats the ‘Picked-Up’ Children Better”**

Zhang Lin was a girl who was picked up before Zhang Jiagang. She remembered that her grandfather had already retired and stayed home to take care of her. Zhang Lin had a fair, round, and lovely face. He took her everywhere, and she gradually became dependent on him. In his old age, surrounded by grandchildren, he enjoyed ample companionship.

In the 1990s, Aiping was already working in a neighboring county, returning home once a week. One weekend, she returned to the hospital to find Tang Caiying feeding four infants lying side by side on the sofa, patiently ensuring they were well-fed. Tang Caiying filled empty saline bottles with hot water and placed them in the children’s cotton clothes. Only when the children were sound asleep did she return home.

Later, her parents contracted the hospital’s cafeteria, living and working there. In a storage room in the back kitchen, four infants lay on the floor. With so many children, they needed to relieve themselves, and when someone saw it and found it dirty, they complained. The couple decided to stop running the cafeteria and took the children home. They spread several layers of tin foil on the cement floor, where the children slept in neat rows.

Aiping inexplicably liked these children. Every time she visited the hospital, one of the children would always wake up and smile at her with watery eyes. She felt a connection with that child and bought formula for her, accompanying her as she grew up. After a year of caring for this child, Aiping gave birth to her own daughter.

But she would tell everyone that she had two lovely daughters.

**Hard Times**

Among her biological children, Aiping understood her mother the most. She felt that for her mother, doing a good deed was not driven by a sense of morality but was simply what she believed should be done, an instinctive kindness. Neighbors described Tang Caiying as low-key, always helping the weak.

Tang Caiying said that helping others does not necessarily require money; it can also be through effort. One day on her way to work, she saw several people jumping out of a train window, injuring themselves and lying on the ground unable to move. She called a few people with carts to help take them to the hospital.

One person had a severe head injury, and the hospital refused to admit him. Tang Caiying, being bold, took him home, shaved his head, applied medicine, and the wound gradually healed. She even gave him money for his journey home. After dealing with the injured, she rushed to the railway police station to have the police handle the matter.

Having spent years in the hospital, Tang Caiying learned some basic first aid methods. Once, a neighbor’s six-month-old child choked on milk and was having difficulty breathing. The neighbor hurriedly came to find her. She borrowed a suction device from the hospital at six in the morning and carefully removed the phlegm from the child’s throat, saving the child’s life.

In the children’s collective memory, Tang Caiying was not talkative and preferred to work quietly. She first worked