According to the Xiaoxiang Morning Herald, a city daily with the largest circulation in Hunan province, the episode had also left him unable to speak or walk.

To help her husband recover, Wei created a small handwritten manual to teach him some basic Chinese characters and numbers, and gradually managed to teach him to recognise some words and speak a little.

“He can already say his name and write some numbers by himself,” Wei said.

Lost for words: dealing with aphasia and its related conditions

The teaching process was difficult and very stressful for her at first, recalling that it was a physical struggle to hold her husband’s much bigger hands as she guided him through writing exercises.

“Whatever I taught him one day, he would just forget the next day, so I need to teach him again,” Wei said.

Wei said she guided her husband’s recovery in the same way she would a child.

The stroke had left Tang unable to recognise members of his family, so his wife had to teach him who they were again, as if she was introducing him to strangers.

Next came the painstaking process of teaching her husband how to walk again.

Finally, after more than three months of practice, Tang could express himself coherently and could get out of bed and walk slowly holding her hand.

“He knows in his heart that I put a lot of effort into taking care of him, even if he cannot express it,” Wei said. “We are each other’s best company as we grow old, and I’ll take him wherever I go.”

People in mainland China were moved by the couple’s story, with many commenting that it made them “believe in love again”.

“Those who say taking care of people is exhausting do not understand the joy of opening your eyes every day and seeing your beloved by your side,” said one post on Weibo, China’s Twitter-like platform. “It’s as if the entire world is presented to you at that moment.”

Another wrote: “He forgot all but loving her.”