Good NewsWoman see mother’s face for first time in five years after photo goes viral on Chinese social network
Zhong Shufang, a 71-year-old shoeshiner who works in Chengdu, the capital of China's Sichuan province, hadn't seen her daughter in five years.
Zhong's daughter, Zhou Qunhua, lives in Wenzhou city in east China's Zhejiang province. With financial struggles and a 4-year-old son to care for, she hasn't been able to visit her mother.
While the two women did have some phone contact, Zhong's lack of internet access prevented any photo sharing. Petapixel reports that Zhou's daughter "desperately wanted to see" her mother's face.
When Zhong told Zhou that she had injured herself while cooking, Zhou begged her mother to find an internet bar so she could see her via photo or video. Zhong refused the request, but only because she doesn't know how to use the internet.
On June 24th, Zhong saw a man walk by with an iPad. Seizing the opportunity, she begged him to take her picture and send it to her daughter. With no email address to send it to, the man uploaded the photo of the shoeshiner to Weibo, a Chinese social networking site akin to Twitter, along with this message:
"An elderly lady who shines shoes and collects garbage for a living … wishes to send a photo of herself to her daughter, who had said she wanted to see her. Her daughter said that the Internet allows photo sharing, yet the elderly lady has no idea how to access the Internet and also does not have her daughter's phone number. I feel quite bad that I cannot do much to help."
His search inspired others to retweet the photo — over 100,000 times. News organizations even picked up the story.
Someone recognized the post and forwarded it to Zhou's son, who then showed it to his mother.
Three days after the photo was taken, Zhou Qunhua saw her mother's grin for the first time in five years. Weeping, she promptly called her mother.
