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“Back in our day, we didn’t have cars or ACs and we’d walk miles in the heat, rain and snow to get our education and you are complaining about not feeling like going?”
Well, today, we’ve got a story that might top your parents dangerous hike to school. Because this child walked through a frozen snowscape to class to take a test and arrived with his hair literally iced through. An Imgur user took us through the story and translated it into English from the official site.
Source: Imgur
Many of you saw this little boy with frozen hair the other day. He apparently walked to school in -9 C weather (15 F). This image triggered a wave of emotion from people in China and all across the world. This boy lives with his older sister and his grandparents, while his parents work in a big city to earn money to support them. His family is poor (like many others in this school) but they teach their kids that an education is the way out of poverty, and this boy shows his commitment by making an arduous trek to school every day. This little boy walked over mountainous terrain, down trails instead of roads, to get to school and take an exam that day (which, BTW, he got a 99/100 on).
About this image – I had read that this boy is the class clown and he was probably making the other kids laugh, and they were laughing with him, rather than at him. Many of them tough it out in the same harsh conditions as this little boy. Some of his classmates are shown below.
He isn’t the only one suffering from the extreme cold and a lack of proper clothing. This child’s hands are badly damaged by the cold to the point that they look like the skin of an elderly person.
Another boy from the same school. He wears a military jacket left to him by his parents. Many of the kids are in similar situations – they live with elderly relatives and go to school in their home village, while their parents work in the city.
This is not the parent’s choice. Chinese policy does not allow people to move from their home village without official permission, although many do, to find work. In order to discourage “internal migration”, these internal migrants and their children are denied schooling and health care. They often have to leave the city and go back to the village to go to school, where their papers say they should live. I could go on about that, but that’s for a different post.
This adorable little girl has badly burned lips from the cold, and you can see the discolored cheeks in the children behind her.
