How can she take care paralyzed father 19 years since she was 7

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Huang Silin, 26, looks everything like a Generation-Z in the flesh -- she talks to the one earbud stuffed in her left ear and blurts out at least three social media one-liners on the two-minute walk to her doorway.

What happens behind the door, however, is much less typical of a Generation-Z experience. Huang carries a bedridden man from the bed to a wheelchair and wheeled him out under the sun. She has been doing this since she was 7, and the man is Huang Jingliang, her 49-year-old father who is paralyzed from the neck down.

Early this month, Huang was honored as a nominee of national models of high morality for her 19 years of meticulous care for her father, a title she never thought of earning.

"I don't think it's laudable for me to take care of him because he is my home," said Huang, rubbing shampoo over her father's head outside their hillside home in Minhou County, east China's Fujian Province.

Huang Jingliang, a loving and hardworking father in the eyes of his family, fell head-first from the scaffold of a construction site when Huang was 4 years old. He was paralyzed from the neck down from spine injuries.

Three years later, Huang's mother succumbed to financial and emotional pressure and committed suicide. Since then, 7-year-old Huang became her father's primary caregiver, which entails moving the 55-kg man from the bed to a wheelchair with all the might of her 25-kg body.

"I can't say no even if I was too little to do anything expected of me, because we simply can't afford otherwise," said Huang. She bantered with her old man as he coyly ordered her to help alleviate a head rush, saying, "Didn't I offer you that bowl of sugar water so you won't feel this way?"

For 19 years, Huang has kept a tight schedule. She always heads home immediately after school or work to help her father eat, dress, go to the restroom and shower. Every night, she gets up two to three times to turn him over to help with blood circulation and prevent rashes.

The housework once weighed on Huang's adolescent mind and incited her to seek refuge. "When I was in middle school, I used to have a go-bag with all my essentials ready in the closet," said Huang. "So that I could sneak out for a few days when I couldn't stand my father."

But the three escapes she made ended up in her coming back and tending to her father because all she could think of away from home is "whether he is properly turned over in bed, or whether his diapers are changed."

Since then, Huang has kept her father close by, working temporary jobs to support the family. She maintained the fixed routine with no interruptions other than giving birth to her two boys and undergoing surgery for thyroid cancer.

"She is everything to me," said Huang Jingliang slowly, dubbing himself "deadweight" to his heartening daughter. When Huang had to leave his sight to fetch water and towels, he would call on her to come back, agitated.

Huang's optimism is contagious to family, friends and beyond. Liu Xiuling, Huang's sister-in-law, now partners with Huang at her invitation in running a barbecue stand at a night market in the county seat.

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"I feel uplifted just being around her," said Liu as she loads a tray of skewered bacon rolls onto the stand. Since Huang spent the afternoon caring for her father, Liu offered to prepare the food herself. Their husbands would also help out from time to time.

The night stand's signature dish is grilled pig's feet, which sell out every night. "Because it's my picky father's favorite snack," said Huang, giggling.

A frequent customer surnamed Chen, who drove for 20 minutes to the snack stand, said he was deeply touched by Huang's stories and decided to eat there as a show of support.

Over the past 19 years, Huang has always received outpouring of support from local government and strangers like Chen, including basic living allowance, a free place at a private primary school, and donations from people of all walks of life.

Currently, the local government of Minhou is arranging affordable housing for Huang and her father that is close to the night market.