China’s ‘Ice Boy’ told to leave new private school after week
Headmaster says he offered to educate boy for free, but the school was unable to cope with the excessive scrutiny and attention from the authorities and media
China’s “Ice Boy”, whose photograph went viral on the internet after his freezing trek to school in an impoverished area of western China, has been removed from his new private school after just over a week because the headmaster says it cannot cope with the intense extra scrutiny from the authorities and pressures from the media.
Wang Fuman, eight, started attending Xinhua School in Zhaotong in southwestern Yunnan province late last month.
He was enrolled at the school by the headmaster after he learned of the boy’s plight through the massive publicity generated by Fuman’s photograph in the media.
The boy used to walk more than an hour from his home in the remote mountain village of Zhuanshanbao to his state school every day.
He came under the media spotlight in January after a teacher shared a photo of him with his hair, eyebrows and eyelashes encrusted in ice after he arrived at school on a freezing winter’s day.