Lou Xiaoying

While most of the stories on this list involve a single dramatic situation, the
heroism of Lou Xiaoying took a very different form. China has an ongoing
problem with infant abandonment and the impoverished Xiaoying has
stepped up to care for every abandoned child she could.

It all started in 1972, when Xiaoying and her husband found an abandoned
child in a local train station in Jinhua, Zhejiang Province. Even though the
couple were in such desperate straits that they were scavenging through
garbage on the station floor at the time, they took the child to raise as their
own. Since then, the couple have rescued more than 30 abandoned
babies, although 12 tragically died in infancy.

It’s truly awful that the Xiayongs had to save so many children from such
dire circumstances. In January 2013, official figures estimated that there
were around 615,000 orphans or abandoned children in China, yet only
around 109,000 received government care.