Poor Chinese student meets mystery sponsor thanks to online payment glitch
Accounting major Yuan Songling was preparing to drop out of her university course because she could not pay the tuition fees, but the kindness of strangers helped her pull through
A final-year accounting student in central China has finally met one of the mystery sponsors of her university education after a glitch in tuition payment system forced the donor to get in contact, Chinese media report.
Yuan Songling defied her impoverished upbringing to gain a place at the Wuhan Institute of Technology in Hubei province in 2015, according to the Chutian Metropolis Daily.
A charity covered her first year of tuition fees, which came to 17,800 yuan (US$2,588), but Yuan did not have enough money for the next year and decided to leave the school and look for a job.
“I felt so desperate when I came to school to complete the procedures to drop out,” she was quoted as saying.
“But my mother is deaf and my father is disabled. I have a brother at primary school. Three more years of tuition fees was just too much for me to manage.”
Fellow accounting student Li Qiuyu heard about Yuan’s plight and told her family about it. Her father, a successful businessman, was particularly moved by the story and together decided to pay for the rest of Yuan’s education.