‘You are beautiful’: teacher in China turns ‘mum’ to shy motherless boy from single-parent family, transforms him into happy extrovert
- Mother died when boy from poor rural family was very young
- Video of her with him goes viral sparking praise, cash donations
A primary school teacher in China who treated a motherless student as if he were her own son has transformed him from a shy to an outgoing child, touching millions on mainland social media.
When teacher, Wang Qianqian, posted a Douyin video of her interactions with Zhang Baolong in September, the boy, dressed in oversized and ragged clothes, appeared sluggish and shy in front of the camera.
Wang said Zhang’s mother passed away when he was only a few months old.
His father, who takes care of the boy, his older brother and his octogenarian grandmother, could not move to the city, so the whole family scraped by on meagre rural earnings and basic living allowance.
Wang, 36, has been a teacher at the primary school for six years and she encouraged Zhang every day starting on his first day of class, telling him: “I love you, you are beautiful.”
Wang, the mother of a little boy herself, told Zhang he could call her “mum” and said she would try to give him the maternal love he had never received. She said she wished to see the light appear in his eyes.
