By Jason Lee
Last Thursday, I left Beijing for the village where the “Masked Boy” lives.
It took me seven hours by train and then by car to reach Mijiazhuang village. When I first saw the boy from a distance, I could already tell how lovely he was. He and his father Wang Shouwu were standing waiting for me. The boy waved at me as I approached. It didn’t take much time for us to get along. His fearless and caring heart comforted me. In fact, he even offered to carry my suitcase when we first met.
I’m not the first reporter to interview Wang Gengxiang. I went to the village because I sincerely wanted to help him. Although the money I donated to the family was relatively insufficient, his story was recognized and spread by many “netizens” on Weibo (Chinese Twitter), many of whom offered their help to the family, who has an income of nearly zero.
In order to cover Wang’s daily life, I stayed one night in their house. Three of us shared the same bed. I was a bit uncomfortable because the bed was too short and I had the feeling that I would fall off the bed at any time. Wang woke up several times during the night as his injured face gave him pain.
The following morning, I took my most satisfying photo when the father took off his son’s mask to replace it with a new one.
