The Chinese boy was born in Hunan Province with a rare birth facial defect which has left two huge gaps from both sides of his mouth leading towards his ears.

Because of his deformation,  Huikang appears to have two faces.

This has led to him being cruelly dubbed “mask boy”.

His mum Yi Lianxi, who was 23 years old at the time of his birth, describes being devastated when she first saw her baby boy in 2009.

She said to a reporter from Changsha Evening News: “I saw the child was crying, and I cried too.

“I felt my heart had broken.

“Why would this happen to me.”

Huikang’s gran suggested they should chuck the child away but the mum implored “how could we do that?”

Yi said she had three ultrasound scans and one Doppler scan during her pregnancy but no deformation was found.

As well as coming to terms with the child’s tragic defect, the family are mocked by unkind people community who laugh at the boy’s bad luck.

But when the plight of the boy came to light the family have been inundated with sympathy from the Chinese public and help with £40,000 medical bills.

Wang Duquan, a doctor from Huikang’s hospital, told a reporter: “Not only his soft tissues were damaged, broken and moved, his temporal bone, cheekbones, sphenoid bone and upper jaw were all damaged.”