10-year-old Sun Derong, center, who sustains her family by collecting garbage, stays with her grandmother in a dilapidated house in Caoxian County, eastern China's Shandong Province, in the undated photo. [Photo: qlwb.com.cn]
A 10-year-old girl from eastern China has managed to support her family by collecting garbage from local dumps for more than five years, reported the Qilu Evening news on Saturday.
Sun Derong from eastern China's Shangdong province was left homeless when her heartbroken father deserted her after his wife died during childbirth. Sun went to live with her aging grandparents and started collecting garbage to make ends meet when she was five years old.
Sun became the family's bread winner, as her grandmother gradually lost her sight and her grandfather became deaf. Instead of feeling isolated and desperate, Sun faces life's hardness with a strong will. She also does all the housework herself.
Unlike other children happily pampered by their parents, Sun has to stand on her own and earn a living by roaming streets and alleys after school to collect garbage. What's waste for others is the only important source of income Sun's family has. She sometimes has to pick up leftover food to sustain her family. Other times, kindhearted people help the family.
To take good care of her grandparents, Sun always skips breakfast and keeps a meager amount of her food for her elders. Despite her harsh living conditions, Sun does very well in school and is first in her class. Even though she is an outstanding student, few of her classmates know how hard her life is.
Sun's dignity keeps her so strong inside that she has never mentioned her difficulties in front of her teachers or friends. But when school officials accidentally learned of Sun's predicament from the head-teacher, they offered to waive her tuition fees and arranged for the teachers to help her with daily tasks.
Sun says she has to study very hard in return for the help she has received from kind-hearted people. |
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