Sichuan: This dad will do just about anything to give his son with disabilities every opportunity in the world. Yu Xukang (40), a single dad from the Sichuan Province in China, walks nine miles every day with his son, Xiao Qiang, strapped to his back, so that the boy can get an education.
Yu Xukang secures three-feet-tall Xiao Qiang in a basket that he attaches to his own back
The 12-year-old has a disorder that has caused his arms and legs to become twisted and his back to be hunched over, and there is no public transportation available to take him
to class.
Yu works as a farmer. He wakes up at 5 am, prepares lunch for his son and then secures three-feet-tall Xiao Qiang in a basket that he attaches to his own back. The pair makes the 7.24-km trek to school across the rugged terrain, and then, Yu walks back home so that he can work. He picks his boy up from school and carries him all the way home — almost a 29 km round trip.
Yu Xukang said, “I couldn’t find any school here with the facilities to accept him. He was constantly rejected.” Xiao Qiang was finally accepted to Fengxi Primary School. The boy has already climbed to the top of his class.
2,575km
The distance that the devoted father has walked since he started taking his son to school
Day-to-day heroes
mid-day recently reported how a newspaper vendor in Navi Mumbai, 48-year-old Murugan Yadav, carried his teenage daughter Mahalakshmi in his arms every day to her exam centre, so she could write her HSC papers. His daughter Mahalakshmi (17), who suffers from muscular dystrophy, has been immobile from the age of seven.
