Frost-encrusted boy highlights poverty in China
A PICTURE of eight-year-old Wang Fuman arriving at school with hair and eyebrows encrusted with ice has touched China and sparked a debate about the impact of poverty in a country with huge divisions of wealth.
Donations have flooded into his school in China’s poor rural south-west since the image of him reporting for lessons after walking three miles in freezing conditions was published.
Pupils laughed when he arrived after his hour-long commute, his face red with cold after braving temperatures of -9C wearing only thin clothes.
“It was the first day of the final exams, but when entering the classroom he pulled a face and everyone laughed,” said Fu Heng, the head teacher.
Wang is one of more than 60million “left-behind children” – youths of rural China who have been left to live with extended family after their parents move away to the booming coastal cities to earn a living.
However, following Wang’s sudden fame, his father has been offered work with a construction company in his home town of Ludian, in Yunnan province, according to reports. And donations have started to pour in to help the school, which has no heating. The Yunnan Youth Development Foundation said it had received more than £210,000. The China Daily newspaper reported the total of all donations had reached £1.9million. And an engineering firm donated more than 140 items of warm clothing, state media said.
Chinese state television quoted the boy as saying: “I’m very happy as many people are helping me, giving me so many presents.”
The newspaper said Wang’s father was reported to have given the boy five yuan (56p) pocket money when he returned to his home town.
“I want to save it for treatment when my parents get sick,” he said.
Wang appears to be among the brightest in class, scoring 99 per cent in the exam he took after his frosty walk.
Xi Jinping, the Chinese president, has vowed to wipe out rural poverty by 2020. Statistics from 2016 found that around 43.3 million rural residents still live below the country’s official poverty line of £260 a year in the country of 1.4 billion people.
Many Chinese took to social media after the image of Wang went viral.
“I really can’t believe we are not doing more for people like him. Aren’t we a rich country?” asked one commentator on Sina Weibo, China’s Twitter. Additional reporting by Christine Wei