Zhineng was 2 years old when he was diagnosed with autism. His mother cried for three days.
“No one knew how to handle it, but they had to face it”, says his father, Huang Shaoli. For years, they took him to a rehabilitation center for children with special needs. Then one day came the words he would never forget: “Dad, hug me”. He stood frozen, his eyes moist, and hugged him with all his strength.
In 2016, Huang Shaoli signed up as a part-time delivery driver in Shenzhen, and since then he has never gone out without his son. Going out, talking to customers, facing the unpredictable. For him, every order is training. At 16, Zhineng has completed nearly 3.000 deliveries alongside his parents.
His favorite routes are the buses that start with K or M, because they are fast and travel on the highway, and metro lines 10 and 14. He likes listening to the wind and looking at the scenery. His father says he has a map of the public transportation system in his head and almost never takes a wrong turn. And that customers hardly ever notice he is different.
His father asks for just one thing: that he be able to live independently. “I can’t be with him forever.”
