A poor couple who took in a badly disfigured baby after he was abandoned two decades ago have used their life savings to pay for his facial surgery, in the hope he will one day find a job.

Li Xianyu, 68, discovered the child she later named Zhao Xuecheng under a bridge in Xiangyang, Hubei province, in 1994.

"It was around Spring Festival, and it was snowing," she recalled, adding that she had been on her way home from selling vegetables and heard the soft crying of a baby. She searched a nearby bush and found the child.

"His face was totally burned, so much so that I could hardly tell his facial features," she said. "I immediately realized he'd been abandoned."

Li took the child home to her husband, Zhao Liniu. He recalled, "I was afraid the baby would die at any minute due to his severe wounds."

They named him Xuecheng, which means "happening in snow".

After the Spring Festival holiday, the couple took the boy to a hospital but could not afford the cost of plastic surgery, which would have been tens of thousands of yuan. They barely made ends meet by planting and selling vegetables and had little savings.

So they bought some medicine and fed him milk powder and rice soup. After three months, the scars on the boy's face began to heal.

When the boy reached age 7, he was rejected by all of the schools because of his appearance. Finally, one school accepted him, but he could not bear the discrimination and bullying and dropped out a year later.

The couple, who have only a primary school education, taught him at home. When their vegetable business struggled, they began picking through garbage for recyclables to make money.

Zhao Xuecheng is now 22 but has been unable to find work because of his face, Li said.

"We are getting old, and he has to making a living by himself. All we can do is use our savings, 30,000 yuan ($4,370), to get him the surgery he needs."

This month, the family arrived at Chongqing's Southwest Hospital affiliated with the Third Military Medical School. The 30,000 yuan covered the cost of the first surgery.

Now their son is out of the hospital after the first surgery, and in six months he will have another operation, which is expected to cost over 80,000 yuan. After the couple's plight was reported by local media, donations began pouring in to help cover the medical bills, Li said.

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