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Fran Lu

A Chinese man with cerebral palsy who was unloved by his father and bullied by classmates made it through the prestigious universities of Peking and Harvard thanks to his mother’s unwavering support.
Ding Zheng, 37, and his mother Zou Hongyan, 62, from central China’s Hubei province, have moved many people online with their story.
Zou said Ding was diagnosed with cerebral palsy due to medical malpractice during his birth in 1988
A doctor and Ding’s father advised Zou to give up the baby while he was in a critical condition. Zou refused, saying she would “fight them to the death if anyone removed his tubes”.

“I am his mother. I took such good care of him when I was pregnant. I would never give up,” Zou recalled.
As Ding grew up, Zou noticed he was hemiparetic, or faced difficulty moving the left side of his body, but his intelligence was unaffected, and he often excelled at school.
Zou, a college teacher, helped her son build up his physical strength at home.
She spent a year training him to master chopsticks, and would not let him settle with spoons, so that he would not need to explain his condition to others after he grew up.

This was “for his dignity”, Zou said.
The strong-minded mother never cried on seeing her son suffering at the rehabilitation centre, because “if I cried my son would cry harder.”
Zou earned just 100 yuan (US$14) a month, and she had to fund Ding’s rehabilitation which cost 5 yuan (US 70 cents) a time every two days. She also taught etiquette classes part-time and sold insurance.
She was elected as a local deputy to the National People’s Congress in 1998, making her a politician by day and an insurance salesperson by night.
Zou divorced Ding’s father, who discriminated against and ignored his son, when he was 10 years old. Ding’s paternal grandmother chose to live with them after the divorce.
Zou said the thing she heard most from her son was “I cannot do it”, to which she always replied: “Give it a go.”
Ding excelled from primary to postgraduate school.
He chose Peking University after being accepted by multiple prestigious Chinese universities following the college entrance examinations in 2007.
He continued his postgraduate study at Peking University’s School of Transnational Law. Then, his teachers advised him to apply to Harvard University’s Master’s programme.
Ding then studied law there. He finished his studies and passed the New York State bar exam in a single year.

He now works as a legal counsel for a company in his hometown.
In a recent interview with ifeng.com, Zou went through all the records she kept of her son, including his birth certificate and transcripts.
She said: “When I saw him succeed, I thought of the child whose tubes were almost removed, the child who was bullied by his classmates. The longest night has an end.”
Many people online were touched by her unconditional love for her son.
“She is a great mother, giving all the support and love to her son,” one person said.
“The mother and grandmother stayed. The father escaped. Women are the backbone of the family,” said another.
“She is a wise mother to have taught her son dignity, skills, and confidence,” said a third.


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.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Cerebral palsy sufferer who was shunned by uncaring father scales academic heights, becomes legal counsel

Cerebral palsy sufferer who was shunned by uncaring father scales academic heights, becomes legal counsel