Kneeling down on one’s knees is often seen as a sign of submission, hence making the posture appropriate for only special occasions, such as festivals or religious activities. However, some photos of people on their knees in China have melted many hearts.

Chinese students preparing for their college entrance exams, or gaokao, are under great stress, but so are their teachers, who often fall ill due to the great pressure.

For Xu Jinzhong and Yuyan, the most comfortable posture at work is not sitting down in a chair, but kneeling down on both knees. The posture, widely seen as submissive and disgraceful, can help relieve pain caused by lumbar herniated disc systems, a common disease among teachers in China.

After 27 years of teaching, Xu, a middle-aged teacher at Lu’an No.2 High School in east China’s Anhui province, became an online celebrity after a photo of himself kneeling down on a pile of books behind a desk at the front of a classroom went viral.

“It was self-study time, so I thought no one would see me like that. So I chose my favorite posture, so that my back would not hurt that much,” Xu explained.

“As a teacher for senior students, I cannot miss a class. My students need everything on schedule for their gaokao. I must fulfill my responsibility as a teacher,” he said. This means postponing his medical treatment, too.

Yu, from Suining County in Xuzhou, east China’s Jiangsu province, was also captured working on both knees. As a teacher for second year high school students, she also thinks it is normal for her and her colleagues to work in such a seemingly abnormal posture, so as to always be there for their students.

The most professional kneeling often takes place at hospitals when cardio-pulmonary resuscitation (CPR), one of the most intensive emergency rescue skills, is used to save people’s lives. The stressing scene wins more empathy especially when the CPR kneeling takes place outside a hospital.

On December 21, 2016, a teacher Xie Xiaomin from Lianyungang city, Jiangsu province, brought back life of one of his student who got a heart attack during morning exercise through CPR. He spent four straight minutes kneeling on the ground for the resuscitation, which gave back pulse to the student in coma.

Xie later said he was not overthinking the situation but was trying to fulfill his responsibility as a teacher.

The same responsibility was fulfilled by medical staff both inside and outside hospital.

In September 2015, a nurse Guo Yuanyuan in Dalian, NE China’s Liaoning province turned her wedding photo shooting scene into an emergency room, as she spotted a patient with heart failure when she was all dressed up for wedding photo on the beach. The woman in her wedding gown then ran off her stage and spent more than 20 minutes kneeling on the ground to save the person she had no acquaintance of.

Similarly, Tan Yongchao, a doctor in Wanzhou district of SW China’s Chongqing, immediately got on her knees for the rescue when she found an old person fell down due to disease seizure, never hesitating to stop for her pregnant body.

Sometimes, kneeling down does not mean a nervous competition against time, but also provides a soothing harbor.

In Fuzhou province, photos of doctor Qu Wei went viral, showing him knelt down to hold the head of his patient during an operation that lasted over 20 minutes to protect the patient.