Today the front page of the Market Star features a picture of a woman in a hospital bed, with the headline: “The ‘most beautiful pregnant woman’ will be discharged from the hospital today.” The article tells the story of a woman in Suzhou who was carrying twins and noticed she wasn’t feeling them move as much on the evening of July 25. She went to a doctor and was immediately sent to the Provincial Hospital to give birth by cesarean section the next day. Yet in the ultrasound they found that one of the twins had died prematurely in the womb. The twins had been monozygotic, meaning they had both come from one egg, and shared a single amniotic sac. At 32 weeks, one had failed to develop. The other, a boy, was born and is now in stable condition.
The newspaper says he is very lively, and has been given the name Pu’yuan (璞源). The character “Pu” is a kind of gem, and “yuan” represents an idiom: yuan yuan bu duan (源源不断), meaning a never ending stream. He was given the nickname ping’an (平安), meaning “save and sound.”
The headline of this story is interesting, because people are usually only labeled “most beautiful” after a selfless act of heroism. These stories have been fairly common over the past three months. Examples include: a “most beautiful teacher” who threw herself in front of a bus to save her students, and ended up losing both legs; a “most beautiful driver” who was hit by a piece of flying metal while driving and managed to steer his passengers to safety before dying himself; and a “most beautiful” university student who spent an afternoon handing out water to construction workers on her own initiative.
Links and Sources
Market Star: 最美孕妇”今天将出院
Danwei: China’s everyday heroes take their lead from the CPC, “Most beautiful teacher” joins the Party, Awesome “yellow shirt guys” to the rescue, Most beautiful girl gives water to construction workers