今天，这个“灰头土脸”的男孩刷爆了朋友圈丨Son's college enrollment gives family hope
Growing up poor can force young people to mature fast and become independent very quickly.
https://v.qq.com/txp/iframe/player.html?vid=c0733hdivkj&width=500&height=375&auto=0
So it was for Cui Qingtao, who graduated from high school this summer.
The 17-year-old lives with his family in Wulipai village, Southwest China's Yunnan province, where he is the eldest of three children.
On July 22, while working on a construction site near the family home, Cui received an admission letter from Peking University.
In his dusty worker's garb, Cui probably didn't look much like a budding young college student.
Indeed, when the mailman arrived, he was too preoccupied with stirring mortar to notice that there was a letter for him.
The contents of that letter left his family astounded, however. They had never dreamed that one day their son would be attending one of the country's top universities.
“My son, you are amazing!” his father said.
Such a reaction is hardly surprising. In China, the onus is often put on the eldest child from a poor household to help change the family's fate by receiving a higher education.
Cui's family is certainly poverty-stricken and dependent on government subsidies to supplement their own meager incomes.
His parents have worked all sorts of part-time jobs, from construction to agriculture, to raise their three children.
The family of five still don't make enough money though, and often run up debts just to make ends meet.
Cui scored 669 points in this year's national college entrance examination and will be admitted to Peking University's School of Journalism and Communication.
https://v.qq.com/txp/iframe/player.html?vid=d07336g1stu&width=500&height=375&auto=0
"I will come back after graduation and try my best to bring prosperity to my hometown," he said.
There are many other college students whose stories are as encouraging as Cui's.
◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆
Last year, Pang Zhongwang, a student from a poor family in North China's Hebei province, scored 684 out of 750 points on China's national college entrance examination and was admitted by Tsinghua University.
His father, who is schizophrenic, could only do simple manual work, while his mother's lower limbs were disabled and she must be taken care of by his grandparents.
During his summer vacation, Pang was occupied with teaching physics classes as a part-time job, striving to earn the tuition fees for his first semester at Tsinghua.
The attitude of Pang toward difficulties puts the saying "Where there's a will, there's a way" into practice.
Also in last year, an 18-year-old deliveryman Mao Zhaomu, a self-taught English learner, was admitted to Sichuan International Studies University, one of China's top foreign studies universities.
As a deliveryman at the time, Mao sent a text message in English to one of his customers, a student at SISU.
Surprised to receive a message in English from a deliveryman, the student posted a screenshot of it to Weibo. The post soon went viral.
Mao also got a job at a bar to "talk with foreigners", chatted in English-language groups online during his spare time and made friends with a study buddy from the United States.
He took the SISU's self-taught entrance exam in July last year and was admitted to the university.
Click here for audio and translation of the story
点击小程序 获取音频和单词释义
Creative admission letters go viral
别让人心之疫，伤了祖国幼苗
Transparency will ease panic over vaccine scandal
Click here for audio and translation of the story