The Father Who Dug His Daughter's Grave: Zhang Xinlei's Recovery, and What Thalassaemia Is

This distraught father digs grave for his critically ill daughter, and brings her to play in it everyday...

Zhang Liyong dug the grave himself, on the family’s own land in Sichuan province. In June 2017, a video showed him lying in that shallow pit beside his two-year-old daughter, the two of them playing in the dirt. Zhang Xinlei had severe thalassaemia, the family had run out of money for her transfusions, and he wanted her to be unafraid of the place he believed she’d soon be.

The video went round the world, and Singapore parents shared it with the mix of horror and recognition that any parent of a sick child understands. What most people never saw was the ending, which is a good one.

Zhang Xinlei received a stem cell transplant from her baby brother’s cord blood, recovered, and is now a healthy primary school pupil. Her father turned the grave into a flower garden.

The story also explains a disease that about 3% of Singaporeans carry without knowing it, and why a simple blood test before pregnancy matters.

What happened in 2017

Xinlei was diagnosed with thalassaemia at two months old. The severe form of the condition means the body can’t make working haemoglobin, and a child needs blood transfusions every few weeks to stay alive. Her father earned about 2,500 yuan a month at a glass factory in Neijiang, Sichuan. Within two years the family had spent more than 140,000 yuan, roughly S$28,000, on her care, and had borrowed from everyone they knew.

“We have borrowed money from everyone possible,” he told reporters at the time, “to the extent that nobody is willing to help us anymore.”

The grave was his answer to a question no parent should have to think about. He dug it on the family’s land, lay in it with her, and let her play there every day, so that when the time came she wouldn’t be frightened. The footage, filmed by the Chinese news outlet Pear Video, drew both sympathy and criticism, with some viewers calling it cruel and others recognising a man with no other way to prepare his child.

How the story turned

The attention did what the family couldn’t. A crowdfunding campaign raised money for her treatment, and the local government stepped in to cover most of her medical expenses. Then came the piece of luck that changed everything: Xinlei’s mother, Deng Min, was pregnant, and the family had already hoped the new baby’s umbilical cord blood might treat her.

In August 2017 the baby was born and the cord blood was saved. It matched. Xinlei went through an eight-hour stem cell transplant using her brother’s cord blood, and it worked. She no longer needs regular transfusions.

By 2026, when Chinese media revisited the family, Xinlei was around 11 and described as a cheerful girl doing well in primary school. The grave in the field is now a flower garden her father planted.

What thalassaemia is

Thalassaemia is an inherited blood disorder. A faulty gene stops the body making normal haemoglobin, the protein in red blood cells that carries oxygen. It affects boys and girls equally and is common across Asia, the Mediterranean and the Middle East.

There are two very different versions:

Thalassaemia minor, also called thalassaemia trait, means a person has inherited one faulty gene. They’re healthy, usually have mild anaemia at most, and often never know. In Singapore, KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital puts the carrier rate at about 3% of the population.
Thalassaemia major means a child has inherited a faulty gene from each parent. The baby looks well at birth, but within the first year or two develops severe anaemia, poor growth and an enlarged liver and spleen, and needs blood transfusions for life along with medication to remove the iron that transfusions leave behind. A bone marrow or stem cell transplant is the only cure.

Chronic childhood illness tends to take that shape whatever the diagnosis, as families dealing with nephrotic syndrome in children will recognise: hospital appointments, daily medication, and a whole household reorganised around one small patient.

When two carriers have a child, each pregnancy has a one in four chance of thalassaemia major. That one in four is what screening exists to catch.

Screening and cord blood in Singapore

Thalassaemia screening is a simple blood test, available at polyclinics, and it’s part of standard antenatal blood tests here. Couples planning a pregnancy can be tested beforehand. If both partners are carriers, genetic counselling at KKH or NUH explains the options, including prenatal testing. The same clinics counsel families through other inherited conditions, including rarer ones such as Apert syndrome. Antenatal blood work does double duty as well, since it’s how complications that threaten the mother, like HELLP syndrome in pregnancy, get picked up in time.

Xinlei’s cure came from a sibling’s cord blood, and Singapore has both routes for that. Parents can donate cord blood to the Singapore Cord Blood Bank, the public bank that has supplied transplants for patients with thalassaemia, leukaemia and other conditions, or store it privately for their own family’s use. For a family that already has a child with thalassaemia major, a new baby’s cord blood is collected as a matter of course, and doctors will test whether it matches.

Common questions

What happened to Zhang Liyong’s daughter?

Zhang Xinlei received a stem cell transplant using cord blood from her younger brother, born in August 2017. The transplant succeeded, she no longer needs regular transfusions, and by 2026 she was a healthy primary school pupil. Her father turned the grave into a flower garden.

Why did the father dig a grave for his daughter?

He believed she would die because the family couldn’t afford further treatment for her severe thalassaemia, and he wanted her to be familiar with the grave so she wouldn’t be afraid.

Is thalassaemia curable?

Thalassaemia major can be cured by a bone marrow or stem cell transplant from a matched donor, often a sibling. Without a transplant it’s managed with lifelong transfusions and iron-removing medication. Thalassaemia minor needs no treatment.

How common is thalassaemia in Singapore?

About 3% of the population carry the thalassaemia gene, according to KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital. Most carriers are healthy and unaware.

Can I get tested for thalassaemia in Singapore?

Yes. It’s a simple blood test available at polyclinics and included in standard antenatal screening. Couples planning a pregnancy can be tested in advance.

Before you start trying

A father dug a grave because he’d run out of options, and a baby brother’s cord blood filled it with flowers instead. Almost no parent here will ever face that arithmetic, and the step that keeps you away from it’s unglamorous: one blood test tells you whether you carry the gene, and cord blood, donated or stored, can be the cure for a child you haven’t met yet. Ten minutes at a polyclinic now, or the same information later, learned the hard way.