Nanny granny: Chinese woman who adopted toddler she was hired to care for 16 years ago is now using her pension to send teenager to university
- Selfless woman goes through hardship to take care of abandoned boy
- She walked 4km every day to drop off and pick up child at school because she had no money for transportation
A woman in China who was hired as a nanny for a toddler and adopted the boy after he was abandoned by his family 16 years ago is now paying for his university with her pension, moving many people online.
Liu Fang, 68, from central China’s Hubei province has been Zhou Jie’s “granny” for 16 years, despite having no blood relationship with him, CCTV reported on October 23.
In 2007, Zhou’s father paid Liu 800 yuan (US$110) a month as a nanny for his two-year-old son. Liu, a single mother of three daughters and a fruit stall owner, took the job to ease her financial situation.
Two months later, the man disappeared out of the blue and left the boy with Liu.
Liu’s husband died when she was 33, a year after she gave birth to her youngest daughter. They scraped by on the wages Liu earned from part-time jobs.
Liu found Zhou Jie’s mother, who suffered from serious illness and could not look after him, and his grandparents and other relatives, who also said they were unable to raise him.
Despite her family and friends trying to dissuade her, warning her about the high cost of raising a child and the risk of Zhou’s father returning to take him away when he grows up, Liu adopted Zhou and became his de facto grandmother.
Liu told the mainland media outlet Jimu News that Zhou’s first two years at primary school was the hardest time for her.
With no extra money to pay for transportation, the woman in her 50s walked four kilometers every day to drop off and pick up the child at school.
Liu also paid 5,000 yuan (US$680) a term for extra classes to improve Zhou’s test results when he was in secondary school, despite having only a monthly pension of 1,000 yuan.
Liu even rejected her oldest daughter’s request to send her own child for her to look after, to focus on Zhou’s upbringing.
Zhou became a freshman at Central South University of Forestry and Technology this year.
Liu said she planned to give all her monthly pension of 1,800 yuan to him as living expenses while she lives on the 1,400 yuan she earns every month from her cleaning job.
Zhou, who sees himself as a real member of Liu’s family, is filial to her. During the summer holiday, he worked at a restaurant to help her financially.
“What a good child. The granny’s love has paid off,” one person said on Weibo.
“It is not kinship that ties two people together, but love,” said another.
Last month, a father in China was reported to have been taken into custody for five days for faking a paternity test to officially adopt his daughter, whom he had been raising since birth but discovered was not his biological child.
