The unsung heroes

A mother, a baby and a soldier - ordinary people who have found themselves in not so ordinary places and situations. Not people who are film stars or famous names. Not the people who appear on television or in gossip magazines.

These three are people you would never notice on the street. But they each have a story to tell that sets them apart from the rest.

The Global Times looks at these lives as they were captured in a series of stories in the Oriental Morning Post and on DragonTV.

The sound of love

Xu Xianqin is an ordinary woman. She comes from a humble background and was raised in a rural village. But the way she has changed the lives of over 200 children is far from ordinary. All of these children suffer congenital hearing loss. Xu Xianqin is the director of a training center in Yiwu, Zhejiang Province that helps deaf children learn to speak.

Earlier this month Xu met Chen Jingwen in a village 50 kilometers away from Yiwu. Chen was to become the 221st child she has helped. The cute 8-year-old was abandoned by her parents when she was 4 and has been brought up by her grandparents.

With candies in hand Xu tried to introduce herself to the girl. "Come here, Jingwen. Give me your hand. I have some candies for you," she smiled. But Jingwen was shy, hiding behind her grandfather, her big eyes staring at the stranger in front of her.

Xu was the family's last hope. "I just hope that Ms Xu can help this little girl so that she can talk one day and take care of herself when we can't," Jingwen's grandfather said.

Teaching an 8-year-old who has never spoken how to talk is not easy, but Xu agreed to give it a try. She could see the desperation in the old man's eyes.

In 1995 Xu gave birth to a lovely boy, but a boy who could not speak. Although an old wives' tale has it that a boy who begins talking later will be very clever, Xu and her husband Ding Jianjun took the 4-year-old boy to see a doctor. They learned that their son had been born deaf. "Upon hearing this my wife collapsed in shock," Ding said.

The couple took their son to hospitals in Beijing and Shanghai where they consulted leading specialists. They tried various treatment including acupuncture and spent all their savings, but nothing changed. In the end they took a doctor's advice and bought a hearing aid - with 6,000 yuan ($951) borrowed from friends and relatives. They hoped this could help the boy learn to hear and speak.

Xu was just a high school graduate and knew nothing about deafness, but she was determined to help her son speak. Every day after she woke up she would help her son put on the hearing aid and then talked to him for hours. She repeated simple sounds thousands of times until the boy could repeat the sound. Four years later he could speak nearly as well as any other child.

Word of Xu's achievements spread and became an inspiration for other parents of deaf children. From 2002 families began visiting her asking her to help them. Hoping that she could help other children the same way she had helped her son, she built the training center with help from the local disabled people's association.

One week after Xu met little Jingwen, Jingwen was sitting in a class with another 59 children, who, like her, had been born deaf and dumb. Some of these children still cannot hear or speak fluently, but others, after training, have learned to make some basic sounds. A number of them have learned to read lips and are beginning to speak. They are almost ready to return to their homes and go to normal schools where they can start new lives.

The center now has 12 teachers on staff and is training children aged from 18 months to 8 years. Although some of them cannot afford the 1,000 yuan fee, which covers their accommodation and food as well as the teachers' salaries, equipment and rent, Xu has never turned down a child who needs her support.

"Ms Xu is like my mother. She changed my life," said Li Bingjie, a fourth grader who was once one of the children at the center.