THE story of a wondering doctor in the United States has attracted wide attention in China. The man, considered a top talent by his peers, thanked volunteers for helping him restart his life in a newly released video yesterday, news.sina.com.cn reported.

Chinese volunteers and the American Alumni Association of Fudan University (New York) said yesterday that Dr. Sun Weidong had been resettled, and someone accompanied him in his temporary residence during the day, and the alumni association would carry out the next step of the help plan according to his mental condition.

Dr. Sun said in the video that he has experienced some life changes and fallen into difficulties over the years, and he is very grateful to all the friends who have cared for and helped him, so that he can get back on his feet and start a new life.

The Fudan University alumnus, who was found to be living on the streets of New York as a vagrant, has become an Internet sensation after a video about him spread online.

In the video, Sun tells a blogger that he is from Jiangyin City of Jiangsu Province, China, and that he has lived in the United States for more than 30 years. He graduated from Fudan with a bachelor’s degree in physics, and then acquired master’s and doctoral degrees in the U.S.

He said that he had worked as a post-doctoral researcher for two years and then a software engineer at a Wall Street company for another two years. He is now an American citizen.

He said he became homeless in 2007. He first slept in Internet cafes and later on the streets.

He said his life fell into disarray shortly after his devastating divorce and he faced hardship as he had been “captivated by loneliness and illusion.” “I cannot tell illusion from reality,” he said.

The video attracted wide attention on the internet. Some of Sun’s classmates confirmed his identity and said Sun was an outstanding student. He had studied at Nanjing Senior High School for only one year and was admitted into Fudan via a program for gifted teenagers in 1985.He went to study in the U.S. with a scholarship via the China-U.S. Physics Examination and Application program, which was initiated by Chinese-born American physicist Tsung-Dao Lee, who shared the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1958 with Chen-Ning Yang for their work in discovering violations of the principle of parity conservation.

It’s said that Sun had published 32 papers in top science journals.

Many web users said it’s a pity that such a well-educated person has become a vagrant. Some discussed what had caused his tragedy.

“I wonder what had happened to him, but his story does remind me again that academic learning is only a small part in the lifelong growth of a person,” said a Weibo user.

(SD-shine.cn)