Jianping He (何建平)

Grant Status

Log in or Register to Donate!

About

Profile

Like many in my village, I did not own my first set of clothing until I was five years old. My family had been too poor to buy cloth. My family rents fields from others, and my father works a second job as a manual laborer downtown. My family must pay tuition for my brother and me – I am in middle school and my brother is in elementary school. During one tough time, I dropped out of class for a semester because my family couldn’t afford my tuition fee.

Originally, I lived in a remote rural area, from where children would walk five hours to get to school since public transportation was not available. My old home was about 5 miles away from my current school. Everyday, I had to walk for an hour and a half to get to school. Because my parents wanted my brother and me to be closer to school, we decided to move, and found a nice neighbor willing to rent some farmland out. Unfortunately, the weather was very bad. When there was a storm, my family would have nothing to eat for several days. During these difficult times, my neighbors usually invited my whole family to dinner.

I started helping my father and mother out on the farmland at a very young age. At age six, I followed my father to the timberlands to lumber. One day, my father asked me to watch the carriage. It was raining heavily during that time and the ground was muddy. The horse was frightened by the storm, so it sprinted away with the carriage. Unfortunately, the wheel ran right across my left leg. Because my family did not have money to see a doctor, my left leg never fully recovered from the fracture. My mother continued to farm, but took a second job doing housework for others in order to make money to support the entire family. Even with the additional income, my parents did not have enough to cover my daily expenses at school. When my parents could not longer afford my schooling, my beloved headmaster and teacher were able to pull together some money to pay for my room and board fees. As a result, I was lucky to stay in school. From that day onward, I made up my mind to study and work hard in order to repay the people around me for their kindness and to give back to society.

(Translated from Jianping’s autobiographical sketch)