Yuan Lihai was raising 17 abandoned children on her slender income as a market vendor and the subsistence allowance provided by the local authorities. But after seven of the children died in a fire at their home in Lankao county, Henan province, on the morning of Jan 4, she was questioned for illegally adopting the children. Since then many people have voiced their sympathy for her.

Yuan obviously does not meet the legal requirements to adopt so many children. Yet the authorities have been trying to legalize her adoptions and bring them up to standard. They have also sent some of the children to other facilities.

In fact, Yuan has adopted more than 100 abandoned children in total over the past 25 years, and, because of her fame as a loving foster mother, even the local police and clinics sent abandoned children to her.