An eight year old little boy in rural China had a crazy walk to school recently. He arrived to his class after the nearly 3 mile trek with his hair and eyebrows completely covered with ice.
A picture taken as soon as he got to school, with his frosty hair and painfully red cheeks, spread like wildfire as soon as it was posted.
The boy spends over an hour each day walking to class. When he showed up in -9 temps with frosty hair, it quickly went viral. He was wearing inadequate clothing for the temperature, but he braved the frigid cold to get to school for an exam. The classroom has no heat, either. He’s really going to have a story to tell his kids and grandkids one day. Much better than the uphill both ways in the snow story, don’t you think?
The dedication this child shows toward his schooling is admirable. I am pretty sure most of the kids I know wouldn’t walk half a mile on a warm day, much less 3 miles in subzero temps. He attends Zhuanshanbo Primary School in the town of Xinjie, in Ludian County, as reported by People’s Daily Online. The school’s headmaster, Mr. Fu, said the child lives with his grandmother and sister in a mud hut over an hour away by foot.
They are poor. His father is a migrant worker, in another town for the moment, and his mother has abandoned them. He misses his dad terribly while he’s gone. His name is Wang Fuman, and he is in 3rd grade. He said the jacket he was wearing is the thickest one he had.
The lad’s hands are covered in cracks from frostbite obtained helping his grandmother work on a farm. The huge drop in temps happened suddenly and frosted the front gate of the school, too.
Headmaster Fu confirmed that final exams for the school were beginning that day, and the weather took a downward turn early that morning, unexpectedly.
This is what caused the boy’s hair and eyebrows to be completely covered with ice. A picture that People’s Daily captured shows his frostbitten hands against the exam paper, showing an almost perfect score, a 99% in mathematics
When he entered the room, the other pupils laughed to see such a sight. Wang seemed unaffected by his unusual, unintentional hair do.
The boy likes making his classmates laugh and is somewhat of a class clown.
Fu also said that the boy is cute, and responded to the laughs with funny faces. He also noted that the boy works hard at his studies, and said he’s particularly good at math.
When the story of this tenacious boy went viral, many Chinese citizens were proud that he was so dedicated to his school work that he would go through such pain to get it. He received kind words from strangers urging him to continue to do well so he can make a better life for himself one day. They said they believed he would achieve that.
One person complained that China’s wage gap was larger than it should be. They said China seems prosperous on the outside, but too many are unaware of the gap between the wealthy and the poor. The school does provide him and other less fortunate children with a good breakfast, however, they lamented that the classrooms were not provided with heating because there is a lack of funding.
Chinese citizens liked the picture upwards of 14,000 times and it has been shared by thousands as well.
Much love and respect for this special little boy.
H/T – Source
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