For more than a week now, a young father has been spending much of his time inside a Chengdu subway station, dressed up as Pikachu, trying desperately to raise money for his 1-year-old daughter with leukemia.
Liu Yuehu's daughter Yu Yan was born in August 2015. He could not have expected that more than a year later, his little girl would stop eating and start suffering from severe colds and fevers. Liu and his wife brought their daughter to a hospital in Chengdu in January, where she was diagnosed with acute lymphocytic leukemia.
Doctors gave the girl a 70% chance of beating the disease, but it would come at a high cost for the family's bank account. Even when warned that his daughter's medical bills could run into the hundreds of thousands of yuan, Liu said that he could not give up on her.
The 24-year-old immediately quit his job as a construction worker, explaining that he would only have been paid his wages at the end of the year and he needed money now. With his wife staying at the hospital to look after Yu Yan, Liu knew that he needed to find a way of raising some serious cash. The family has already spent 160,000 yuan on medical treatment. Their savings have run out and they owe their friends and relatives a lot of money. Each day, their daughter's medical bills are about 3,000 yuan.
In April, Liu decided to go online and purchase a Pikachu costume. When he came to pick it up, the company gave it to him for free after hearing his sad story. For the last 10 days, Liu has visited a busy subway station in Chengdu with his costume, a sign announcing that he is selling photos with Pikachu to raise money for his sick daughter, and some medical papers to back his story up.
He said that he doesn't ask for any specific amount of money from people. Whatever they want to give, they can give. Sometimes, smiling little children run up to him and take pictures and he doesn't demand any money from their parents in return.
Liu said that so far he has managed to raise 13,000 yuan thanks to the kind-hearted people of Chengdu. He admits that he still has a long way to go.
For lunch, Liu just buys one small piece of bread and a bottle of mineral water. While eating his piece of bread, Liu admitted to reporters that sometimes he looks back on his somewhat mischievous youth, and can not believe how much things have changed. At 24, he is now a father fighting desperately to save his daughter's life.
Unfortunately, in China, many family members have faced the same situation as Liu.. Without enough money to cover their loved one's high medical costs, they are forced to resort to selling flowers, bear hugs, blow-up sex dolls or even their virginity to raise some cash.