A family who needed donations to pay for surgery on their baby has already received 20,000 yuan in donations from the public, according to The Daily Sunshine.

Yesterday we told you about the baby who could not defecate due to a birth defect. After Daily Sunshine reported the story on Monday, the newspaper’s hotline was ringing all day. Some were inquiring about the baby’s current condition, some wanted to know the family’s address, some wanted to know the father’s bank account number, others asked for the family’s phone number.

The first caller was a middle-aged woman named Li, who said she could not bear to see somebody suffer so much so soon after coming into the world. She donated 5,000 RMB and urged fellow residents to do the same to show that Shenzhen is a caring city.

On Monday, two government officials went to the home of parents Zhou Shaohe and Chen Xiuyu to bring gifts as well as money to help them pay for the operation. That afternoon, Zhou and Chen took their baby to Shenzhen Children’s Hospital. The head of the surgical department, Li Suyi, said the child would need to go through two or three procedures. Li also urged more members of the public to donate money to families who encounter the same problem.

The father Zhou said he was confident about the outcome of the operation, and expressed his deepest gratitude to all who had donated money. He told the newspaper that he had no idea how he could ever repay society, but he would try his best to be a good father, and raise his son to be an upstanding member of society.

Zhou came to Shenzhen in 1995 and had had numerous jobs. He once worked for an extended period of time in a hardware factory, and thinks that working in a polluted environment may be the cause of his child’s condition. His neighbours claim he is an unassuming and straightforward individual, who is not given to drawing attention to himself, let alone through the media. Zhou denies that his baby’s condition may be a punishment for his sins. Doctor Li also dismissed as “superstition” the suggestion that this was a punishment for the parents’ sins.

Last time anuses and childbirth made big news in China was during the anusgate scandal of 2010. A man was successfully sued by a midwife for defamation after he accused her of sewing up his wife’s rectum because her 100 RMB tip was too small. I think we can all agree that the current anus-related story reflects somewhat better on human nature.