Difficulty: Summiteer (Level 3)
A young Chinese woman named Zhang Yan has been accepted into university after a difficult childhood.
At the age of seven, she and her blind father, Zhang Shiming, had to beg on the streets to survive.
Zhang would often go with her father to beg near Jiangbei Bus Station, where they met kind strangers.
To support their family, her parents run a small stall selling daily necessities. They depend on government help, like living allowances and disability support, to get by. Despite growing up in poverty, Zhang excelled academically from a young age, and the walls of her modest home are proudly decorated with many award certificates.
In August, she received an admission letter from Chengdu Normal University in Sichuan. She will major in physics at the School of Physics and Electronic Engineering. She was admitted under a programme that guarantees her a teaching position upon graduation.
