Center: 'I love these children so much'

Care provided for young, terminally ill patients

Huang Fang still clearly remembers the day she carried a child's body to the funeral parlor.

It was raining, and as she held the body, the solemn atmosphere in the parlor made her feel scared. However, she felt calm the moment the body was placed in a refrigerated compartment.

Huang, 46, can recall her every movement at the parlor - she had to stand on tiptoe, lean forward and bend down to place the body in the compartment.

"With respect for the life and love of the child, I gained a new understanding about death at that moment," she said.

Huang, founder of the Nanjing Shimao Rainbow Care Center for Terminally Ill Children in Jiangsu province, said she has found the career to which she wants to devote the rest of her life.

She previously worked in the foreign trade industry and also did some English translation work in her spare time.

She later did translation work for public welfare programs, initially working as a volunteer before devoting all her time to these programs.

In 2014, she founded the center in Nanjing to provide palliative care to children with severe or incurable illnesses.

The center, a two-story building, has seven bedrooms, each painted a different color of the rainbow. Each of the 38 beds is named after a cartoon character, and a recreation area is provided between every two bedrooms, complete with colorful desks, chairs and toys.