Teenage Boy's Letter to Absent Mother Moves Millions on Douyin

A video showing a teenage boy from rural China writing a letter to the mother who left him years ago has gone viral on Douyin, drawing millions of reactions and prompting many viewers to offer help with his education.

The video was posted on August 1 by Douyin creator 丁一之旅 (The Journey of Ding Yi). It has received 2.1 million likes and 84,000 comments as of the latest count.

In the video, the blogger said she met a group of "rebellious-looking" boys on the road in northwest China's Gansu Province and later learned they were students from a mountain vocational school. They were carrying watermelons to earn money. She offered 300 yuan (US$44) to ask one of them to write an essay about his mother, a topic that led to a long handwritten letter stained with tear-smudged ink.

The boy wrote that his mother had not returned to see him and his younger brother for eight or nine years. He said he was in first grade when he came home one day and found her gone. After searching for her for two or three days, someone told him: "Your mother left. She doesn't want you anymore."

The boy wrote that his father worked on construction sites carrying bricks and cement, while his grandmother took care of him and his brother. He said he was bullied at school because he did not have his mother around, got into fights and later became rebellious.

He also said he once dropped out and went to Lanzhou before he was 15, hoping to make a living, but found that restaurants, construction sites and barbershops would not hire someone his age. He survived for four months in a rented room eating biscuits and pickles before an uncle brought him back to school.

The boy said he later got into a sports school through track and field, but gave up after learning that professional training shoes would cost more than 1,000 yuan. He said his 61-year-old father could no longer find construction work, and the family could not afford the expense.

He described working in melon fields, getting up at 4 or 5am and returning at night. His first day's pay was more than 200 yuan, which he used to buy roast chicken for his grandmother, new clothes for his brother and dye for his own hair.

The video prompted many viewers to say they were willing to sponsor the boy's schooling. Some also asked whether his mother might have been trafficked and later escaped. The boy replied in the comments that this was not the case, saying his mother was a local woman and still had contact with other relatives.

In the letter, the boy wrote: "I often pretend not to care, but I quietly ask about you. Do you ever ask about me too?"