Bangladeshi teenager Alifa Chin was born on the Chinese naval hospital ship Peace Ark in November 2010.
At the time, her mother Jannatul Ferdou was eight months pregnant and had been diagnosed with a serious heart problem. Ferdou told Xinhua News Agency that local hospitals did not have the ultra modern medical facilities necessary to deal with her condition.
As the Peace Ark was visiting Chittagong, a major port city in Bangladesh, to provide free medical services to local people, Ferdou’s doctors turned to their counterparts on the ship for help. Shortly after a joint consultation, Chinese doctors performed a cesarean section on Ferdou. “After the operation, both my daughter and I were healthy,” she said.
Her husband Anwar Hossain decided to name the baby girl Chin, after the word for China in the Bengali language, as a token of their gratitude. The girl’s bond with China continued when she reunited with the Chinese medical staff during Peace Ark’s visits to Bangladesh in 2013 and again in 2017. She also traveled to China in 2019.
In a letter
