The icicle-encrusted hair of a Chinese schoolboy has generated widespread online buzz and drawn attention to his fate, as well as the plight of China’s rural poor.
Just prior to the picture being taken, the boy spent over an hour walking 2.8 miles to school on a harsh winter morning, according to a Daily Mail report.
Wearing thin clothes, the youngster reportedly braved minus nine-degree weather on Tuesday, Jan. 9, to take a test in school in a small town in Shaotong, southern China’s Yunnan Province.
The boy has been identified as Wang Fuman and is in third grade, reported People’s Daily Online.It is said he comes from a family of modest means.
According to Pear Video, the boy lives in a simple mud house in Ludian with his grandmother and elder sister.
The mother is said to have abandoned the family and the father is a migrant laborer.
The child’s home is far from school and every day he needs to spend more than an hour walking to get there.
There is no heating in his classroom.
The school’s headmaster, surnamed Fu, said the temperature plunged to minus nine degrees suddenly in the morning and the boy’s hair and eyebrows were completely covered by frost when he got to school.
Apparently when the boy’s 16 classmates saw him entering the classroom, they broke out in laughter.
‘The child is cute. He pulled a funny face to his classmates,” headmaster Fu said, according to the Daily Mail.
The boy is said to be hard-working and good at math.
A picture taken by People’s Daily shows the boy’s hands next to a marked examination paper. A grade of 99 percent is apparently displayed on the paper.
Fuman told a reporter from Pear Video that he got frostbite on his hands from helping his grandmother do farm work.
The boy’s photo and accounts of his circumstances have prompted numerous online comments of sympathy and encouragement.
