(chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2008-01-23 11:15

Huang Xiaodong was a disfigured young adult paralysed from the waist down. He supported his mother by singing on the street, in Southwest China’s Chongqing Municipality.

His face and hands were seriously burnt and deformed in a fire when he was six months old. When he was 11, his father died of cancer. Then his only brother died in a traffic accident when he was 30 and his sister-in-law left home for work with the nephew, leaving his mother and the disfigured son to look after themselves.

However, misfortune did not keep him down. To support his mother, Huang, the only man in this single-parent family, began to scratch out a living by singing on the streets in 1998, tolerating the sneers and contempt of passerby.

In 2002, Huang received government subsidies for a minimum standard of living. Three years later, Huang couldn’t speak or sing because of infections on the burn injury on his head. The government stepped in again and gave his mother the same subsidies and they were also offered an apartment.

Soon afterwards Huang died of the infections.

“When I first met him, I was astonished and scared by his appearance, but later I found him a responsible, considerate, and filial person. He respected the old and felt grateful for everyone who helped him,” Huang’s sister-in-law told a reporter after he died.