A Chinese
grandpa has four sons, four sons have
married and got their own sons, and
they all live close to each other in
northern China villages.
Among his
sons, the third one has a mental
disability, and he marries to a woman
who also has a mental disability. So
they depend on village welfare.
The couple
have a son, the grandpa named him
Xiao Feng, and Xiao Feng has no
disabilities. In fact, he is smarter
than most of his peers.
When Xiao Feng
finished his junior high school study
at age of 16 three months ago, he
felt bad that he had to rely on his
poor parents’ financial support and
insisted to get a job to help the
family. So he went to a nearby city
and worked as waiter at a small
noodle shop. Each week he would make
time to visit home, and when he got
his first monthly wage of 300 yuans
(apx. 40 usd, or 50 aud), he sent it
all to his parents. For being
diligent and honest, soon he was
promoted to the kitchen to learn how
to stretch dough into noodles with
bare hands.
He learned
fast and well, and he began to have
some spare time and money to kill.
Like most teenagers in today’s
China, he opted to spend his time and
money at Internet bar. From then on,
his life turned and spined and
eventually he got lost, literally. He
resigned from the shop to head for
somewhere else in great hasty, and
has not been heard by his parents
ever since earlier last month.
When
collecting his belongings left in the
shop, his grandpa found a notebook in
which there was the photo of a young
girl. Following the clue from Xiao
Feng’s friends, the grandpa found
the Internet bar that the teenager
frequented most.
The grandpa
never saw a computer before, let
alone knew how to use the Internet.
But since Xiao Feng has been,
allegedly, sucked into that strange
world, he determined to find a way to
that fatancy land to search for his
lost grandson.
He told the
manager that he would help clear the
rooms and make tea in exchange for an
opportunity to learn and use the
Internet. The bar agreed and vacated
a computer just for his use.
So at the age
of 73, the grandpa sits amidst a pool
of teenagers, and becomes their keen
student. The teenagers are all eager
to show they are old hands, and
before long this semi-literate and
computer-ignorant grandpa is able to
login on to QQ, China’s most
popular IM program, and post his
message on numerous online chat
rooms.
