BEIJING: A woman who raised 38 small children who were dumped in various places, including the streets, has been nominated for the highest award in China. Tang Qiang, 88, used to work as a hospital cleaner and saved the lives of 38 children by adopting them during the 1980s and 1990s, according to private TV Geo News. The woman, from the southeastern Chinese province of Jiangxi, worked at a hospital in Xinyu. In the winter of 1982, when he was 46 years old, he found a little girl hidden in a cloth, which had been abandoned by the railway tracks. He brought her home and cleaned her and fed her. Feng Feng is a Chinese word meaning fragrance. At that time, Tang Qiang had 5 children of his own, the youngest of whom was 12 years old. Tang Qiang was assisted in caring for Feng Feng by one of his daughters, Appiang, who had completed her education but was unemployed. A few years later, Tang Qiang discovered another little girl who had been abandoned at his hospital and named her Zen Zen, a name meaning precious gift. In the years that followed, he created 36 more such babies. Saved the lives of children who were abandoned at different places. Some of these children were found in garbage cans while others were left outside her hospital, all of these children had died due to cold or other reasons whose lives this woman played a role in saving. Tang Qiang kept the children in a room that was not being used. There she fed them daily as well as monitored their health. Her husband objected to his wife’s behavior. Her husband said that our income barely supports our children, so how can we take care of the other children. But Tang Qiang is determined to save the children’s lives. To begin with, she used it to buy milk and food for the children. They called the children Tang Qiang Grandma. With the passage of time, her husband also began to love the children who came to be called Dada. As Tang Qiang grew older and his physical energy began to wane, he began to select families for children who could adopt them. The last children they adopted were twin brothers, one of whom was named Zeng Jigang. Zeng is now 27 years old and works as a firefighter. Zeng Tangqiang is 88 this year. He came to his house to celebrate his birthday. Like all the other adopted children, he often meets Tang Qiang and gives her part of his salary. According to Zheng, ‘If it wasn’t for Grandma Tang, I don’t know what my life would be like’. On 16 December Tang Qiang, 88, was nominated for the National Moral Model, China’s highest award for ordinary people. The final list of nominees for the award has not yet been released.
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