Through richer and poorer times, sacrifices define a relationship built on kindness and caring

Love blossomed for Li Shuai and Yang Kai in a special mix of caring, kindness and sacrifice.

Li, a 25-year-old woman from Changchun, Jilin province, tied the knot last year with Yang, 29, whose family had provided her with nine years of financial assistance for school.

The help started when Yang's family was rich, and it continued when they were poor. It was years before Li knew the extent of their sacrifice. When she found out, she was touched by their generosity. Yet the marriage, she stressed, was one of true love, not a repayment of Yang's family's kindness.

The couple's story started in 2003, when they were classmates at junior high school. "I was the monitor and he was in charge of sports in our class. We got along well, but never thought we would be a couple," Li said.

Li's parents had divorced and she had been living with her grandmother since she was aged 3. "We were very poor and I wanted to drop out of school in the second year of junior high school," Li said. "Yang Kai told my story to his mother Liu Shuqing and she decided to help me."

Yang's family was rich - they owned a restaurant and a hotel and a workshop for repairing cars - and they helped many students, she said.

"His mother paid my tuition fees at school and let him give me monthly expenses. When his mother visited him at school, she asked me to study hard and not be bothered with financial problems," Li said.

"Due to my low esteem as a poor student, I wasn't very hospitable to her," she added. "All I wanted was to study hard to make it so that I wouldn't need others' help one day."

Before the end of Li's second year of junior high school, his family's business faltered as the houses where they did business were dismantled.