A 24-year-old woman in central China has given up her lucrative business to travel with her adoptive father who raised her by collecting rubbish after finding her abandoned by the roadside as a baby. Zhang Baige, an influencer and former online retailer from Luoyang, in central China’s Henan province, started travelling with her 74-year-old adoptive father, Zhang Shuangqi, in a motor home across the country last year to rekindle their relationship. Baige, who was abandoned by her birth parents in a field and found by Zhang, lifted her adoptive father out of poverty over the past seven years by selling goods online. Debate in China about why husband cooking for wife is considered extraordinary However, she sold her company last year to embark on a motor home tour around China with her father last May. She has been posting about their life on the road together ever since on live-streaming platform Douyin, attracting more than 4 million followers. It all started when Zhang found Baige by the roadside on his way to his farming village in 1997. She was believed to be just 4 months old, while he was already 50 but had remained single because of poverty. “He made 2 yuan (30 US cents) a day by taking care of a skip bin back then and he spent 1 yuan on a photo of me, the only photo of me as a child,” Baige recalled in one video she shared on Douyin. In the following years, they lived on a meagre income from farming and rubbish collection. “He collected and sold mostly valueless used plastic bottles and cardboards to support my schooling,” said Baige. They went to Beijing to see a doctor when she fell ill seven years ago, which was the first time they left their home province, she recalled. “Maybe it was then that the idea of taking him to travel started to grow,” she said. She didn’t know she was adopted until several years ago when she started sharing their life on social media and some people asked her if she was his birth daughter because they looked so different. She is 170cm tall while her father is just 148cm. “Dad is not good at expressing himself, but he has influenced me with his silent devotion,” Baige said. Their story became widely known in May last year when they were invited to a singing talent show on state television CCTV. “They all say my daughter is capable and filial to me. I feel very proud,” Zhang said on stage at the time.