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Serviceman stocks year's worth of home-cooked meals for wife

An officer in one nation's military prepared enough dishes for his wife to enjoy until he returns from serving his country. 

Service men and women in armed forces around the world make enormous sacrifices for the sake of duty to one's country. Moreover, their families sacrifice just as much by forgoing time spent with loved ones for events like holidays or birthdays, with a very real possibility that their son, daughter, husband, wife, father, and/or mother may not come home. 

For one Chinese couple, this is the way of life they have come to know. Zhao Yunfeng is the wife of a People's Liberation Army (PLA) officer stationed in Tibet and only sees her husband once a year, but this doesn't mean she can't enjoy any good old home-cooked meals while her husband Jin is away on duty. 

A week before Jin left to rejoin his men, he got to work and made over 1,000 dumplings, among other dishes, for his wife. Zhao is a middle school teacher in Guizhou Province, which is some 1,700 miles from Tibet. She says that she has very little time during her work day to sit down and eat a full meal because of her class schedule. 

The only other time she can enjoy home cooked meals is when Jin is home for a week on leave from the PLA. Now she can just stick her meal in the microwave and have a quality meal whenever she desires. 

In addition to the seemingly endless supply of frozen food, Jin also left a bevy of prepared snacks for Zhao to enjoy.

If she can find them.

All of the snacks come with a hand-written note and Jin would text her hints as to where she can find them. One read, "As you're so engaged in your reading today, I want to give you an award for it. Check the back of the sofa in the sitting room, there is a pack of raisin."

"I didn't really anticipate we would be parting for months every year before I got married to him, but I support his work," Zhao told Tencent, a Chinese publication (Link in Chinese, story in English here). "My heart feels warm when I see all this food he's prepared for me."

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