Wang Fuman entered the classroom with white hair. It wasn’t age or gray hair: it was frost. His eyebrows and eyelashes had also frozen, and his cheeks were burning red from the cold. While his classmates laughed at him, his teacher looked at him and couldn’t help taking a photo.
It was January 2018. Wang was 8 years old and lived in a rural area of Yunnan, in southern China. To get to Zhuanshanbao Primary School, he walked about 4,5 kilometers every day, more than an hour’s journey. Even so, he never missed class, but that morning the thermometer read 9 degrees below zero.
It was not an ordinary day: Wang was going to take his final exams. He arrived with cracked hands, without gloves, and still sat down to complete his math test. He scored 99 out of 100.
His teacher put it simply: “Wang walks for an hour and a half every day in a temperature of nine degrees below zero. He is an example”.
Wang lived with his grandmother and older sister in a mud house with a thatched roof, and they did not have enough money to buy warm clothing, let alone transportation to get to school. His mother had left when he was very young, and his father worked far away, in another city, like thousands of other Chinese children who grow up separated from their migrant parents.
The photo went viral around the world and touched the hearts of individuals and even local companies, which made large donations to provide suitable winter clothing for the children in the province and improve the school’s heating system.
Wang only wanted to arrive at his exam on time. But his great spirit and perseverance ended up helping not only him, but hundreds of people.