Starting at 11 a.m. every day, a narrow alleyway in Nanchang City, east China's Jiangxi Province, is always teeming with people bustling around in a communal kitchen with over 30 stoves lined up along the passage. In a cacophony of chopping, frying, scrambling as well as chitchat, delicious smells of home-cooked dishes such as sauteed tofu in spicy sauce or bean curd soup waft up from the improvised kitchen. 

Although the "chefs" there are not acquainted with each other, they share one thing in common – the desire to bring a taste of home-cooking to their cancer-stricken family members.

Set up by a couple Wan Zuocheng and Xiong Genxiang 17 years ago, "the Anti-Cancer Kitchen" offers the relatives of cancer patients a space and gear for cooking with 1 yuan ($0.15) per dish — way cheaper than the hospital or other takeaways.

The makeshift kitchen is situated on a street near Jiangxi Provincial Cancer Hospital in Nanchang, one of the best for oncotherapy in Jiangxi. Every year, many patients travel long distances with their family for better cancer therapy here, with no expense spared. The high costs for the lengthy treatment and living, however, add strain to already cash-strapped families. The cancer-fighting kitchen, therefore, has served as a timely succor, somewhat easing the pain.

Every day, the couple wakes up at 4 a.m. to light the coal stoves and usually wrap up their day at 10 p.m. Throughout the day, they would tidy up the kitchen each time after a family wraps up cooking to ensure a clean and comfy place for next "customers." 

Eighteen hours of work per day throughout the year show on the old couple, sometimes causing fatigue that is more than what they can bear. But even during the Chinese Spring Festival, the couple has never shut the kitchen for the past nearly two decades.

The kitchen sees tens of thousands of dishes being cooked each year that are imbued with stories of life and death, hope and despair as well as joy and sorrow. 

"Suffering from cancer is extremely pitiful, so giving some widow's mite really made us feel relieved," said Xiong, the wife who is in her late 60s.

The couple used to own a stall selling breakfast on Xueyuan Road in Nanchang in 1997. Speaking of the original intention of their "kitchen", Xiong recalled a mother back then who begged to borrow the stove in order to cook something familiar for her sick child. 

"Ever since then, the mother would come everyday at noon and in the evening to borrow the stove to cook for her kid. Seeing her happy eyes each time she packed the dishes after cooking made me feel satisfied," said Xiong.

From then on, a growing number of people came with ingredients to the alley asking to borrow the stove as news spread. In the very beginning, they served between a few dozens and over 200 people in a day for free. With the increasing expenditure of water and coal, however, the couple decided to collect a nominal fee to cover part of the facility costs.

The elderly couple is not alone in their charity work. Once their philanthropic behaviors were reported by the local media, many people donated items to them while some volunteers also visited the kitchen once a week to assist the couple in cleaning up the kitchen. 

In July 2019, the local government allocated 130,000 yuan ($19,300) altogether to help renovate the kitchen, expanding the original space to a gross area up to 100 square meters.

China's National Cancer Center (NCC) released an annual report last year based on 2015 statistics that an average of 10,000 Chinese citizens are diagnosed with cancer each day, meaning about seven people are diagnosed every minute. According to the report, the incidence rate of malignant tumor witnessed a rise of 3.9 percent on an annual basis, while mortality rate rose by 2.5 percent.