Precious neighbor: falling toddler caught by woman

(Ecns.cn)--On Saturday afternoon, a two-year-old girl who fell from her tenth floor home in Hangzhou, the capital city of eastern China's Zhejiang Province, was miraculously saved by a young mother who was walking by the building at the time.

The toddler nicknamed "Niu Niu," crawled onto the windowsill of the bedroom while her grandmother went to fetch some quilts drying on the roof. She was seen by a neighbor downstairs, who attempted to reach her by a ladder, but the rescue plan failed and Niu Niu eventually fell.

"She clung to the windowpane for about two minutes and then fell off," said a neighbor who witnessed the incident. "My mind was a total blank when I saw the baby falling. I felt as though my heart was falling off the building with the girl."

Wu Juping, 31, who lives in the same neighborhood, ran to the building after hearing someone cry out in alarm and managed to catch the girl before she hit the ground.

However, Wu was not able to hold onto her because of the force of the impact. Both Wu and Niu Niu were rushed to the hospital.

Wu, the mother of a seven-month-old boy, suffered a broken arm while Niu Niu was found to have internal bleeding and is still in critical condition.

The girl was admitted to the ICU in Zhejiang Children's Hospital, and her brain, lungs, and gastrointestinal tract are all injured because of the height of the fall, according to a doctor who treated her.

The story was quickly posted on the Chinese micro-blogging site Weibo.cn, and thousands of people were moved by Wu's actions and prayed for her and the child to recover soon.

"She's a real heroic mother in our society. Wu is certainly the most beautiful mother in China," one web user posted.

"According to my calculation," said another Weibo member using the screenname “Tian Qing,” "catching a two-year-old baby who fell from tenth floor is equivalent to catching something that weighs around 335.4 kilograms (738.5 pounds)."

A hospital that specializes in treating fractures in the nearby city of Fuyang has offered to treat Wu for free.

"When she reached out for the child, she put her own life at risk," said Jin Dengfeng, the hospital's president. "She could have died or been paralyzed for the rest of her life if the child had hit her head or back."

Wu, who is originally from Jiaxing, said she did it out of a mother's instinct.

"I know how difficult it is to deliver and bring up a child. I wouldn't have been able to accept it if the child had died in front of me," she said.

Wu works at the customer service department of China's e-commerce giant Alibaba. "I feel privileged to be working with Wu and I hope she and the girl recover soon," the firm's chairman Ma Yun posted on his micro-blog on Sunday.

"If it was not for Wu, my daughter would have not have survived," the girl's father, surnamed Zhang, who was out of town for business, was quoted by China Central Television (CCTV) as saying on Sunday.

"It is the greatest kindness I have ever experienced in my life—that a stranger saved my daughter's life," he said.