'PLEASE have mercy' read the note pinned on the 10-day-old baby's soiled top. Tucked into a cardboard box on a rubbish heap in Hubei, China, the girl lay motionless, too weak to even cry, a bottle of spoiling milk at her side. Mercy came in the form of a 51-year-old scavenger named Li Xingshan, scouring the smelly pile for cans and bottles.
As Li looked at the infant's face, it became obvious why her family had abandoned her. She was what the Chinese call a 'rabbit child', a baby born with a harelip, an upper lip split into two. Looking more closely, he found that the child also had a cleft palate - the roof of her mouth had a hole through the middle of it.
In China, 'rabbit' children are seen as an evil omen, portending famine, poverty or even death. In Li's case, it certainly brought poverty. Unable to leave the child to die, he took her home to his wife and four children. They banished him from the house, sending him and his 'rabbit' daughter wandering through China.
He called the girl Li Mengfang which means 'dreaming of being normal'. They sustained themselves by begging and scrounging for cans and bottles. 'I promised myself that one day I would get her lip fixed,' Li said. 'But I never thought I'd have the opportunity.' In autumn last year, the pair arrived in Shantou, a port city east of Guangdong province. While asking for handouts on the streets, Li was approached by a woman. 'There are American doctors in town,' she said. 'They will fix your child's mouth for free.' Operation Smile, an organisation devoted to helping children with facial deformities, had come to Shantou for a week to perform hundreds of operations. Although Li arrived at the hospital after the medical screenings had closed, the doctors decided to make room for one more patient. After a 45-minute operation, Li Mengfang's lip was repaired. More importantly, her place in Chinese society was altered forever. 'It was a miracle,' Li cried, cradling the four-year-old girl.
'IT DOES get a little schmaltzy, doesn't it?' said former television presenter Michelle Han, as she finished recounting the modern-day legend of Li Mengfang. A new recruit to Operation Smile, Han had just returned from Shantou, where the mission has set up once again in the hopes of operating on another 200 Chinese children.
The doctors and nurses who journeyed to Shantou this year were mostly American volunteers. They usually work in hospitals or private practices throughout the United States, and most will forego their annual holiday to devote these two weeks to the Shantou mission. And while Operation Smile International, founded in 1982 by surgeon William Magee and his wife, Kathy, sends volunteers into 11 different countries, the Hong Kong branch of the charity, the Operation Smile China Medical Mission, raises funds solely for the trips into China.