For the past two years, six-year-old Jia Jia is looking after her paralysed father. Before leaving for school, the young girl makes sure that she brushes her father's teeth and washes his face.
When adversity strikes, the strength of a family is often tested. After a man in China’s Ningxia Province was paralysed in an accident, his wife abandoned him and their six-year-old daughter, Jia Jia. Juggling between school and other household chores, Jia now takes care of her disabled father with help from her elderly grandparents.
According to local Chinese media report, Jia wakes up as early as 6 am every morning to give her father a massage for at least half an hour. Once done, she brushes his teeth and washes his face before leaving for school. After reaching home, Jia feeds him and helps him move around the house with the help of a homemade ‘mobility hoist’. Her grandparents, who are both farmers, take care of her father once she is away at school.
According to the report her father, Tian Haicheng, 40, became paralysed chest down after a car accident in March 2016. Soon after, his wife left Tian and took his eldest son with her. The two had been married for seven years. Tian said that his wife had told him she was going to stay at her mother’s place for a couple of days but has never returned or filed for a divorce.
Tian had set up an account on Kuaishou, a live-streaming application in China, to raise money for the family. The account, which shows the Jia nursing her father, has over 480,000 followers, according to a Daily Mail report.