Netizens have named Wu Juping, a 31-year-old woman, "the most beautiful mother" after she saved a 2-year-old girl who fell from a window on the 10th floor of a building in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, on July 2. Wu is in hospital with a broken arm and hopefully the 2-year-old will recover from her injuries, says an article on xinhuanet.com. Excerpts:
The 2-year-old girl was sleeping in the bedroom in the afternoon when her grandmother left her to fetch some quilts from the terrace. Before her granny could return, the toddler woke up and crawled to the windowsill.
A neighbor who lives a floor below saw the girl on the windowsill and tried to reach her using a ladder, but the attempt failed and the girl went hurtling down.
Wu Juping, who lives in the same neighborhood, ran toward the building after hearing someone cry for help and caught the girl before she hit the ground.
Though she could not hold the girl because of the force of the impact, she managed to break the 2-year-old's fall.
"I did it out of a mother's instinct," Wu said from her hospital bed later. As a mother of a 7-month-old child, Wu was driven by maternal love and didn't have time to think about the consequences in the fraction of a second it took her to lunge forward and save the 2-year-old's life.
Some people have confessed that they wouldn't have acted like Wu in the same situation. But Wu has proved that kindheartedness and altruism are far from dead.
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