Things got worse when Xu went to school at the age of 9.

"Almost every kid would scream when they saw me for the first time. Nobody wanted to play with me," she recalls.

"Some students said to me, 'You look like a demon, why do you show up in school'?"

Depressed and disheartened, Xu quit school and sometimes wondered if suicide was her only choice. Her negative attitude soon disappeared after her encounter with a good Samaritan.

When Xu Xianyuan, a Putian native who is a retired lawyer based in Fuzhou, returned to his hometown in 2004, he visited the girl after hearing about her story.

Xu, then 63, spent some time with the girl and decided to help her out. "It was not simply because the girl's praying and innocent eyes aroused sympathy," Xu Xianyuan says.

The 72-year-old says he was impressed with the girl, who still managed to write and do housework with her disfigured hands. "She made it after constant practice. There is precious strength in the girl," he says.

Xu Xianyuan then began to write letters to the province's newspapers and contact charity organizations to seek donations for the girl. He even learned how to use the Internet and spread Xu Jianmei's story on the Web.

Xu Xianyuan's years of effort finally paid off as enough money was collected to cover the surgery expenses and the Fujian provincial women's federation helped with hospital arrangements.

Jiang Chenhong, a doctor with the orthopedics department of Fujian Medical University Union Hospital, who handled Xu Jianmei's surgery, says even though the difficulties and risks were high, it was worth trying to bring Xu's life back to normal.

Xu Jianmei says she underwent constant pain when the anesthesia did not work after several operations throughout the year. "I didn't want to eat anything for a week after one of the surgeries, and I still experience debilitating pain when I walk or stand for a long period of time," she says.

"To move on, I just hold on to the belief that the pain is temporary. Although I had to stay in the hospital to treat the wounds for a while, I've gone through the last gut-wrenching operation in October. There is nothing that I can't endure.

"I want to go back to school to study again," she adds.