• ‘She doesn’t know her mum is gone’
Millions have been moved to tears on Chinese social media by a video of a three-year-old girl kissing a wedding photo of her dead mother who the toddler thinks is still alive in hospital.
The heart wrenching video shows her kissing a wedding portrait of her mother while completely unaware that she had died from cancer last year.
Three-year-old Youyou happily kissed the cheek of her mother in one of her parents’ wedding photos, while looking at them with her father and grandmother on February 23 in eastern China’s Anhui province.
Still unaware of her mother’s passing, Youyou then wiped the photos clean with her father before he put them away.
Youyou’s mother, named Xu Qiao, was diagnosed with late stage lung cancer in May 2020, when Youyou was only six months old.
From that point on until her death, Xu posted more than 400 videos on her Douyin account @Youyoumama, in an effort to “live longer and give my child more company”.
She said the first thing she thought about after hearing the diagnosis was Youyou, and that it was the little girl who gave her the strength to fight the illness as long as she could.
Xu spent as much time with Youyou as she could between the chemotherapy treatments and made her a “growth album” with photos that document the moments they spent together.
She said she wanted Youyou to have something to talk about when her classmates ask her about her mother in the future.
Li announced his wife’s death in February on Douyin, and said he would continue fulfilling her wish for Youyou to grow up happy and healthy.
Millions on Chinese social media have been touched by the family’s deep love for each other.
“She doesn’t know her mum is gone…I’m heartbroken,” said one.
“The little girl will know after she grows up that there used to be a person who loved her more than anything in the world,” commented another.
A third said the video made her realise how important it is to take family photos: “Many say taking photos is meaningless, but a lot of people forget what their parents used to look like after they grow up,” she said.
Stories of great love between parents and children touched people’s hearts every time they make the headlines.
In January, social media observers were moved by a Chinese mother who bought clothes for her daughter that would last her until she turns 12, before dying from ovarian cancer when her daughter was just four.