Some people are privileged enough to open their eyes in a loving family with a fully functional and sharp mind that get them through school with straight A’s. However, some are not blessed enough to enjoy these luxuries. Ding Ding was born to a Chinese mother Zou Hongyan in 1988 with birth complications that lead to the disease of cerebral palsy in her son.
Doctors told Zou to give up her child; child’s father agreed to do this as he feared that the boy might have to live an abnormal life. But, his mother refused to believe either of them and divorced the husband who abandoned their child. She made her son the center of her life and worked hard to treat and support her baby all by herself.
Zou had to work a minimum of 3 jobs simultaneously, varying from protocol training to insurance sales. With all that work, she also gave her son proper care and played brain-boosting games with him to stimulate his senses, while seeding his intelligence in the long run. His disabilities made his hands stiff, but she still taught him how to use chopsticks, even when he could not grip them. “Because he had inferior abilities in many areas, I was quite strict on him to work hard to catch up where he had difficulties,” explained Zou to South China Morning Post.
It has been 29 years since, and the little Ding Ding just graduated from Peking University with a degree in environmental sciences and engineering. Starting at what the doctors called the ‘bottom of intelligence’, Zou has brought her son to become a Harvard Law student. Only Ding could feel the efforts of his mother to bring him up and give him such a beautiful life that most never imagined.
When the story went viral on the internet, it gained massive support from readers all over the world. It inspired many others suffering from similar problems to work their way through hardships of life.
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