What would you do while on holiday abroad if you saw someone having a seizure? Turn a blind eye and hope that a local with the same mother tongue could ride to the rescue?

Chinese nurse Ren Shuangshuang refused to be so passive when she came across a Japanese student in trouble at Tokyo’s Senso-ji temple recently. Ren, a member of staff at the Henan Cancer Hospital in the central Chinese city of Zhengzhou, ensured the female student’s survival by clearing the girl’s airways and staying with her until she regained consciousness.

Ren has become a hero of the Chinese internet after pictures of the incident were posted online, and she was awarded a prize of 5,000 yuan (724 US dollars) in a philanthropy award scheme organized by Alibaba Group and the Zhengzhou Evening News on Thursday.

On April 20, Ren was on a tour of Senso-ji with some of her colleagues when there was a commotion in the crowd. A local girl had collapsed.

Ren pushed past bystanders and found the girl twitching and foaming at the mouth, according to the Zhengzhou Evening News. With the help of her colleagues and a translator for her tour group, Ren identified that the student had fallen into an epileptic seizure.

Unbuttoning the girl’s collar and clearing the foam from her lips, Ren also stuffed a wet wipe into the girl’s mouth to stop her accidentally biting her tongue while unconscious.

The 28-year-old did not leave until the girl woke up and an ambulance had arrived.

Back in China, Ren did not mention her good deed to anyone. In her view, it was only to be expected of a professional nurse. Her actions would have remained little known if her colleagues had not talked about them and posted the pictures.

Thousands of netizens have commented on the story.

“Kindness knows no bound of nationalities,” wrote @DengfenglaiiAue on Weibo.

Someone else with the screen name @shuangyuzhenlueshuai said, “I am giving her a thumb up for her kindheartedness.”