Li Wen is a seventeen-year-old high school graduate from Shapingba district, Chongqing city, Sichuan province. In her recollection, her family had always been poor. Li Wen was very thoughtful and never asked her parents for things. It wasn’t until her parents promised to buy her a car for college; they then revealed their financial status.

Began Selling Papers at the Age of Six

According to Chongqing Evening News, Li Wen moved with her parents to Chongqing’s Shapingba at the age of five. Li Wen said she knew, at a young age, that her father was a sales person. He spent over half a year away from home selling books in other provinces. Sometimes her mother had to accompany him on his business trips.

Since they were impoverished, her parents were very strict and they asked her to sell at least twenty newspapers daily during the winter and summer breaks. There was little time for playing during weekends because she had to do homework or help her mother with chores. Except for the New Years, Li Wen did not wear new clothes. Their most valuable possessions were household appliances and her parents’ mobile phones.

Parents Sold TV TO Help a Classmate

Since childhood, Li Wen said that her only material request was to help her classmate in middle school who had leukemia. She said that her parents sold their only 24-inch TV in order to donate 1,000 yuan (US$120) to help her classmate.

In her senior year, except for the lunch which her mother brought to school each day, Li Wen did not receive any additional care. She was among the five students in her class who did not have a mobile phone.

Buy a Car if Admitted to College

As the time approached to take the college entrance exam, Li Wen’s parents called her at home one day and told her solemnly that if Wen was admitted to the Department of Economics of a famous university in Shanghai, they would reward her with a new car and a trip abroad.

“This would cost over one hundred thousand yuan!” Li Wen was shocked. Finally, her mother revealed to her that before she was born, they had decided to raise her in an impoverished environment in order to preserve her pure mind.

Great Pains Taken by Her Father

In a phone interview with Li Wen’s father, he told us that he owns a coalmine in Panzhihua of Sichuan and a bookstore near their home. In the past, he had been traveling painstakingly back and forth between two cities in order to care for his businesses. In the end he said, “A tragedy had happened in his father’s generation because of money and he was not going to let it happen to his child.”