15岁女孩为慈善写书

    Du Yan, a 15-year-old Senior 1 student at Shenzhen Foreign Languages School, has been raising money for poor children in remote mountainous areas in Guizhou Province by having her writing published in newspapers.

    She had a collection of her work published last December, marking a big step toward her literary dreams and boosting her charitable efforts.

    While growing up in a prosperous urban city, Du said her life changed when she traveled to Guizhou at age 10. The picturesque water and mountain scenery attracted her very much, but she was dumbfounded by scenes in a rural village where kids close to her age wore ragged clothes while standing in cold winds to sell local products to travelers. Their shivering bodies and destitute lives shocked her, Du said.

    After she returned from the trip, she began to save every jiao she earned from doing chores at home, in hopes of raising money for those deprived children. But she found her efforts were far from helpful.

    At 11, she began to publish her writing after entering junior high school. She would write about trips she took and submit the pieces for publication in Shenzhen Youth Weekly and her school’s magazine. The articles finally resulted in her book, “Flying to the Sky and Growing Up,” which was published by Haitian Publishing House. Profits from her book were donated through her school to four students in Guizhou and to relief efforts in earthquake-hit Ya’an City.(Zhao Jie)