Disabled Tsinghua graduate to pursue PhD near home

Disabled Wei Xiang graduated from Tsinghua University last month and will pursue doctoral studies in physics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Modern Physics.

Four years ago, a letter he wrote to Tsinghua asking for a living space for himself and his mother, who would accompany him, made headlines, and the university offered him a wheelchair-accessible apartment.

Wei, 23, from Dingxi, Gansu province, will pursue his doctoral studies in Lanzhou, Gansu’s provincial capital, the university said.

He declined to be interviewed by China Daily. According to a report by Beijing Daily, Wei has not agreed to be interviewed by the media for four years and has focused his attention on his studies.

In the letter, he said he suffered from a congenital disease of the spine and needed to use a wheelchair or crutches. Despite three operations, his condition did not improve.

His father died of illness when Wei was just 7, and his mother, Xia Ruiyun, a nurse, took him to school and brought him home every day.

Wei scored 648 points out of 750 in the 2017 national college entrance exam and enrolled at Tsinghua under a special program for students from rural and formerly impoverished regions, which allows them to be admitted with relatively lower grades.

Tsinghua said on its website that 2,671 students have been admitted to the university under the program.

Launched by the Ministry of Education in 2012, the program has seen 5.14 million students from once-impoverished families enroll at universities, with 700,000 of them admitted to key universities, the ministry said.

In an interview with China Central Television in 2017, Wei said he did not consider himself much different from his peers. “I am lucky. No classmates or teachers I meet have ever discriminated against me or laughed at me,” he said.

Xia said she often told her son that the most important things for people are brains and hands. “Your hands and brain are good, and with a more accessible electric wheelchair, you will be just like other people,” she said.

Tsinghua posted a reply to his letter titled “life is painful, please have faith” on its Sina Weibo account, promising to offer him help with his studies and day-to-day life.

It commended him for persevering and working hard after his illness and losing his father. “You have lived your life the way we all respect and aspire to,” it said.