“When I finally typed the eight characters ‘Deep as the sea, heavy as the mountains,’ my eyes filled with tears.”
This is a true story reported by City Express. Its protagonist, Sun Bojiang, was once an educated youth from Tianjin. His wife, Yin Guirong, was a rural Mongolian woman whom he married on the grasslands of Inner Mongolia. Just 26 months into their marriage, tragedy struck: Sun became paralyzed from the neck down, losing the ability to care for himself.
For the next 31 years, Yin Guirong helped her husband with every aspect of daily life, worked to support the family, and raised their daughter — never leaving his side and never once complaining. Through years of devoted care and acupuncture treatments she learned on her own, a small miracle eventually occurred. Sun regained enough strength in his hands to hold a pen and write. What followed was his way of saying thank you.
A routine bath turns into a disaster
On July 27, 1979, Sun Bojiang went to work at a construction site as he did every day. His job involved pushing logs through the water. After returning to shore, he noticed mud on his body and stepped into the river to wash it off. But when he dove in, he failed to resurface.
Several young men pulled him from the water. Aside from his head, he could not move a single part of his body. Doctors later diagnosed fractures to the fourth, fifth, and sixth cervical vertebrae, leaving him paralyzed below the neck.
At the time, Yin Guirong was just 24 years old, and Sun was 27. They had been married for barely two years, and their daughter, Xuemei, was not yet two.
Now gray-haired, Sun looks back on those early days with longing. “When we first married, we lived at my mother-in-law’s house. Every piece of furniture in that room was built by my own hands,” he recalls. “Later, when we finally had a place of our own, we moved out. It was a beautiful home. We raised two broods of chicks, all hatched by our old hen. Those times were the happiest of my life — unfortunately, they lasted only three months.”
A wife’s devotion over three decades
Paralysis robbed Sun of control over his bladder and bowels. He relied on a urine bag and often soiled his clothes. Every morning, Yin Guirong gently massaged her husband’s abdomen to help him empty his body. Every few hours, she repeated the process to help him urinate.
Each day, she carried him from their room onto his hand-cranked wheelchair, then pushed him through open markets or nearby parks so he could leave the house and see the world beyond their walls.
“She weighs just 92 pounds. I weigh 138 — a difference of more than 40 pounds,” Sun says. “For all these years, she has carried me on her back every single day. We’ve been husband and wife in name for 31 years, but in truth, she has been my caregiver for nearly 30.”
At times, the weight of that realization became unbearable. “I often felt guilty — like my existence only brought hardship to others,” he admits. “There were many moments when I thought it might be better to end my life so I wouldn’t burden her anymore.”
Each time, Yin Guirong stopped him. “What meaning would my life have without you?” she would say. “As long as you’re here, our child has her father, and our family of three remains whole.”
Holding the family together through work and scrap collection
In 1987, the family returned to Tianjin. Stability remained elusive. With nowhere else to go, they crowded into a small ground-floor room in Sun’s mother’s old house, where they lived for many years.
Though life was hard, Yin Guirong refused to despair. Seeing her struggle, someone helped her find temporary work as a cleaner at a railway hospital. She gladly accepted.
“The hospital was close to home,” Sun recalls. “She worked two hours in the morning and two in the afternoon, earning 150 yuan a month [roughly the equivalent of a few dozen U.S. dollars at the time]. It wasn’t much, but she was happy because she could work and still care for me.”
Her days grew even longer. Every morning at 5:30, she helped her husband with toileting, dressed him, carried him to his chair, folded the bedding, and fed him breakfast. Only after everything at home was in order would she eat a few bites of leftover rice before heading to work.
While cleaning hospital wards, Yin Guirong quietly collected pull-tab cans, glass jars, and empty bottles. After work, she sold them at a scrap station. Each month, the scrap earned her just enough money to buy vegetables or a bit of fruit for her daughter.
A daughter’s success repays a lifetime of sacrifice
For years, every piece of clothing the family owned was sewn by Yin Guirong herself. “To save money, I cut both my husband’s and my daughter’s hair,” she recalls with a smile. “I didn’t know how to style it, so Xuelian wore the same haircut for years. When she went to university, she finally asked: ‘Mom, may I go to a salon and choose a hairstyle I like?’”
Inspired by her mother’s resilience, Xuelian studied tirelessly and consistently ranked near the top of her class. She was admitted to Nankai University, where she later earned a master’s degree in biology. Now 33, she works as a supervisor at a foreign-owned company.
Earlier this year, Xuelian took out a loan to buy the apartment where the family now lives. Though it is a modest two-bedroom unit of just over 60 square meters, it represents the comfort they once could not imagine.
She borrowed 100,000 yuan for the down payment — roughly equivalent to a year’s income for many urban workers at the time — and another 100,000 yuan from classmates. Each month, she repays both the bank and her friends — a heavy burden she accepts without hesitation. “I just want to give my mom a few years of comfort,” she says.
A paralyzed husband’s written tribute
While working at the hospital, Yin Guirong learned acupuncture and massage techniques. She began treating her husband at home, patiently and persistently. One day, something changed. Sun discovered he could grip a pen.
After drawing his first picture, he resolved to fulfill a long-held wish: to write a book for his wife.
In 2005, with guidance from his daughter, Sun began typing his wife’s story on a computer, using a fist he could not fully close. “When I finally typed the words ‘Deep as the sea, heavy as the mountains,’ my eyes filled with tears,” he says.
Four years and four months later, the manuscript — 650,000 words long — was complete. Sun called it a gift to the woman who had given him her life.
The work consists of two volumes. Love Song of the Grasslands tells the story of their courtship, while Grace as Deep as the Sea records the decades of unwavering care that followed his paralysis.
Translated by Eva
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