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Chinese husband carries his paralysed wife up a mountain for 12 hours to keep a promise, but a slip closes a chapter in a beautiful love story
- Zhang Mingrong straps his paralysed wife Kong Yan to his back and climbs “bear style” up Shandong’s tallest mountain to catch the sunrise
- The first time he reached the summit, Zhang had fulfilled a promise he made years ago, before Kong injured her spinal cord in an accident
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When Zhang Mingrong slipped and fell while carrying his paralysed wife on his back during a hike in 2021, an aggravated herniated disc meant he would not be able to summit Mount Taishan in Shandong province in eastern China.
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For most people, the injury would have been a minor delay before inevitably checking off a fun adventure that could be accomplished a few months later. But for Zhang, and his wife Kong Yan, it might have marked the end of an annual journey that had come to symbolise over a decade of love, tragedy, hope and commitment.
“It may be superstition, but I think that fall was the mountain telling me not to go up there again, so our annual climb to Mount Taishan stopped,” he told the South China Morning Post.
For Zhang and Kong, climbing Mount Taishan symbolised that their love could overcome anything – from a disapproving family to a nasty fall that left Kong paralysed 13 years ago.
A Hollywood script gone terribly wrong
The Spring Festival in 2009 was supposed to be the greatest moment of their young romance. Kong and Zhang had decided to elope because Kong’s family could not accept Zhang; they viewed him as a burden because he was not wealthy and had to care for multiple siblings and a disabled mother.
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