Diary helps boy, 11, cope with hard life

Zhang Yuxiao, an 11-year-old pupil in Harbin, capital of Northeast China's Heilongjiang province, has written hundreds of diary entries about daily life, as well as encouraging words to himself. [Photo by Liu Yang/for China Daily]

Until last year, when he entered a primary school in Harbin, capital of Northeast China's Heilongjiang province at the age of 10, Zhang had never been in a classroom due to his family's difficult situation.

Since then he has written hundreds of diary entries in six notebooks.

In his diaries, he writes about daily life, as well as encouraging words to himself.

The boy has had a tough life. He was abandoned by his mother when he was only one year old and shortly afterwards, his father died suddenly from a cerebral infarction.

His elderly grandparents took the boy in, but they were in poor health.

After his grandmother suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and became paralyzed and confined to bed in 2011, the little boy began to take on the burden of taking care of himself and his grandparents.