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Love is often sweet. But for Li Xiaoling it is more about sweat.

A native of Nanjing, Jiangsu province, Li has to carry her husband Chen Xu on her back down from their third-floor apartment in the morning and back upstairs in the evening. And she has done that for 23 years.

Chen, 53, had his left leg amputated because of congenital hemophilia in 1990, four years after their marriage in 1986.

The marriage followed a bloody encounter a year earlier.

It was on April 5, 1985, a rainy spring day. Chen, then a technician at a cable plant in Nanjing, fell on the slippery road and hurt his left knee. Blood gushed out and did not seem to stop.

While Chen was struggling to his feet, Li came across him on her way home. Seeing his leg soaked in blood, she immediately called a taxi and took him to a nearby hospital where his life was saved. Only then did Chen learn that the girl was a new colleague who came to the plant two days before.

After he left the hospital, the plant arranged an apartment for him in the hope that he would recover faster when spared the trouble of commuting from his home to the plant every day.

Li came to visit him after work each day. She learned that Chen has been in anguish since birth due to internal bleeding that gradually deformed his joints. He barely escaped death many times.

But over time Li found she had fallen in love with him because of his persistence and optimism about the future.

In May 1986, Chen suffered cerebral hemorrhage and sank into coma after the operation. Though uncertain whether he would live, Li took great care of him everyday, cleaning his face and body and helping him answer the call of nature.

Even Chen's mother said she should end the relationship, fearful her son would not survive.

Fiercer opposition came from her own parents.

Learning that her daughter was in love with a terminally ill person who might die at any moment, Li's father was furious because it was rumored that Li, whose hukou - or residential registration - was in a rural township, wanted to settle in the city by taking advantage of her relationship with Chen. In the 1980s, it was far more difficult for rural residents to work in cities than it is today.

But Li insisted on her choice, convinced that it would not be wrong to love a man who loves life. She even started a hunger protest when her parents forced her to leave Chen.

They tied the knot in December. Despite a hard life, what made the newly wedded couple happy was that Li gave birth to a daughter the next year.

Naming her daughter Tiantian - which means sweetness in Chinese - they hoped their life would get better and better.

But things turned out otherwise. After Chen lost his left leg in 1990, he was laid off from the plant. To take care of him, Li had to quit her job.

The family of three has since lived on the minimum living guarantee. Li has continued to carry her husband on her back up and down the stairs.

But she never complains. "It is true that life is hard but we are nevertheless together," she said.

Chen is grateful that he has such a wife. She makes him more confident about the future.

"Without her, I could have died many times," Chen said.

The couple has finally seen a glimmer of hope as their daughter Tiantian graduated from university and started to work.

"I hope she will change the fate of our family," said Chen.

lifusheng@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 07/07/2013 page8)