‘He wants to be Ultraman’: Video of a three-year-old boy looking after vegetative father goes viral in China

A video of a three-year-old boy standing on a stool to help straighten up his vegetative father’s tilting head became a viral sensation in China.

The boy, nicknamed Tutu, often imitates the adults caring for his father and occasionally asks to perform tasks himself, such as feeding his father through a tube, Liu Na, the mother, told the South China Morning Post.

Liu, 31, posted the video on March 27 on Douyin, China’s TikTok, without realising how popular it would become. She has been posting her family’s short videos on Douyin for years.

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Her caption was a reminder to followers to fight through the challenges life presents:

“If you are still complaining about the injustice of fate and are losing hope, please look at us, we are still desperately trying to live,” she wrote.

Before tragedy struck, Liu and her family of four lived an ordinary yet fulfilling life in Anhui province in eastern China.

On February 27, 2020, her husband, Ding Yong, 33, suffered a brain haemorrhage at work and has yet to emerge from a vegetative state after a life-saving rescue.

Since then, Liu has been the sole breadwinner of her family and has acted as the primary carer for her husband.

The family is currently living at her in-laws’ home, where the elderly couple can assist her in caring for Ding and the two children while she is at work.

“I am working at a construction site doing clerical work,” Liu said. “The job distracts me from feeling sorry for myself. Now, I don’t cry as often at night as when the incident had just happened.”

Liu installed a camera in her home so she could monitor her husband’s condition while at work. On the day her son stood on a stool to help his father, she happened to be watching the monitor while on her lunch break.

“When Tutu was about to take a nap, he noticed his father’s head tilted to the side, so he went over to help him adjust it,” Liu explained. “But he is too young to hold it steady.”

The grandparents were running errands at the time, said Liu, and Tutu was left at home with his father.

“Seeing how hard Tutu was trying to take care of his dad was especially heartbreaking,” Liu said.

Tutu’s love for his father comes from his mother teaching him that “dad is sick, so we all have to protect him.”

“He once told me, ‘I want to grow up to be Ultraman to protect dad,’” Liu recalled fondly, referring to the popular Japanese superhero character.

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