Last Tuesday was the happiest day in the life of He Jiaxiong, a resident of Nanchong, Sichuan, because surgeons at the Oral Hospital of Chongqing Medical University succeeded in making a new nose for him.

Rats ate away the nose of He, 24, when he was 30 days old. When he was 17, he went to Hainan Province and the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region to do odd jobs for seven years to earn more than 20,000 yuan ($2,580) to pay for the operation, in which surgeons used skin and bones from his body to make a new nose.

He's mother said that her son's efforts won the hand of a girl long before the operation took place.

(Chongqing Morning Post)