her story
Xia Jinhe grew up in Lujiang County, Anhui, raised by her grandmother. Online she was 奇迹夏夏, Miracle Xiaxia.
In 2021, at 18, she fainted from pain in her right leg in the middle of the gaokao maths paper. She came round and finished the paper. The pain was osteosarcoma, a bone cancer. Her offer from a teachers’ college reached her in a hospital ward. She never got to use it.
By her own account, she went through most of the treatment that followed without her parents. At 19, on Qixi, the Chinese Valentine’s Day, her right leg was amputated. She signed the consent form herself. “A leg for a life,” she said. “Worth it.” Over five years she had six or seven major operations and 25 rounds of chemotherapy, and she signed her own forms every time.
She saved for her own treatment and her prosthetic leg. When she was well enough, she went home and ran a street stall on that leg, selling bead bracelets and crocheted dolls she made herself. People offered to start a crowdfunding page for her. She said no: everyone works hard for their money.
Nurses in Shanghai remember her arriving alone, pulling a suitcase, smiling. Her profile gave her age as 100, the age she hoped to reach. She liked to say that once life has dragged you onto its pirate ship, you may as well be a happy pirate.
Her last wishes were small: to see the sea, and to buy her grandmother new clothes. In a message typed for after she was gone, she thanked everyone, said sorry for breaking the deal and for being a deserter, and asked people to understand her pain. “The world stays online,” she wrote. “I’m logging off first.” She asked to be buried where there are trees, with flowers and grass beside her.
She died in Shanghai on 27 October 2026, at 8:28 in the evening. She was 23. In the comments on her account, thousands of strangers left the same words: 夏夏，晚安. Goodnight, Xiaxia.
I read about her on 30 October and kept thinking about the empty chair beside her bed. I never knew her. The song is sung by a stranger, the way all those strangers said goodnight. It follows her life in order and ends where she asked to be: somewhere with trees.