China’s little ‘Ice Boy,’ delivers a message to his mother, asking her to come back home

8-year-old Wang Fuman has one wish for the Chinese New Year, to see his mom again

After a photo went viral last month, showing him at the end of his freezing trek to school, one little boy from rural Yunnan province got to go on a dream trip to Beijing. Now, he’s hoping to make one more of his wishes come true.

8-year-old Wang Fuman — better known as China’s little “Ice Boy” — and his older sister have penned a letter addressed to their absent mother, who left home two years ago, asking her to please come back home for Chinese New Year.

In a heartbreaking video posted to Chinese social media, the little boy reads the letter aloud.

“Dear mother, long time no see. Where are you? Are you doing ok so far away? Do you miss us?” he asks. “I remember when I was little, you would work very hard and do everything for us with painstaking care and effort.”

“When you decided to leave us, you deeply let us down. Is it something that we did wrong or did we make you feel that you were not important,” he continues. “Mama, we don’t resent you, we long to see you again… a child without a mother is like a broken strand of grass.”

“We don’t want to search for you any longer, I wish that you were like other mothers, beating me and scolding me, at least that way you would be back by my side,” he concludes. “Mama, please come back.”

The little boy became an internet sensation last month after a photo of him arriving at his primary school in mountainous Zhaotong County with his hair and eyebrows covered in ice went viral online. To get to school each day, Fuman must walk 4.5 kilometers. On that particular morning, he had to make the hour-long trek as temperatures dropped to a frigid -8 degrees Celsius outside.

Suddenly, reporters began to arrive at the ramshackle home where he lived with his elderly grandmother and sister. Soon, his father, a migrant worker in Kunming who usually could only see his children once or twice a year, returned home and was offered a job nearby. However, Fuman’s mother was nowhere to be seen.

The father, Wang Gangkui, told the South China Morning Post that his wife had left the family two years ago, fed up with their difficult life of poverty. She had only returned once, last July, to demand a divorce, and left the very next day after Wang refused.

“I haven’t been able to find her as she changed her mobile phone number and never called us after she left,” the 29-year-old father said. “I know she hated how poor we were and believed I was not capable [of making money to better our lives]. We often quarreled over this in the past. Then she left me.”

After his son’s photo went viral, money began streaming in. Nearly 3 million yuan was donated to Yunnan youth development fund in Fuman’s name. While that money will reportedly go to impoverished children across the province, the family has also received personal donations and gifts, amounting to at least 10,000 yuan.

In addition, last month, the family was also taken on a dream trip to Beijing where Fuman learned about becoming a police officer, visited Tiananmen Square, and experienced the wonder of indoor central heating for the first time.

“I’m very grateful for all of your support. When I grow up, I will pay you all back,” the little boy said at the end of his trip.

[Images via 椿树学堂]