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Xinling Shen

by Claire from Tainan, Taiwan


There is a hero named Xinling Shen lives in Taiwan in my opinion. The way she lives from a little child to a young adult makes her have an incomparable status in my heart. She was born into a poor family. In her childhood, her parents’ failure in the clothes business brought the family into a lot of debts. They couldn’t do anything but work as hard as possible to pay back those debts. In those tough days, her mother took her to earn their living in front of a temple at a street, such as as selling balloons or souvenirs. Now the girl who has grown up said, “What the god had given us was not luck but bravery.”


Although her parents couldn’t afford to have her study at a kindergarten like other children, her mother tried her best to make the ends of the family meet and saved a little money to buy several used books for her. To her parents’ relief, the girl studied quite well on her own. When she was in the elementary school, she found great interest in the computer and the online world; however, she knew very well that she couldn’t own one because of the financial situation of her family. However, her considerate parents were very aware of her thought, so they tried everything to buy a computer for their daughter. To buy the computer, her mother decided to sell her beloved jewelry to get enough money for the computer, which was named Lucky by Xinling. Exceedingly touched by her parents’ love, Xinling Shen told herself, “I will do my best! “Lucky” is not a tool for chatting, or playing, but a tool to let mom’s sacrifice be worthwhile in the future.”


Her life’s devotion to charity also began at the moment of getting the computer "Lucky”. Her talent at computers showed at the the beginning of using it, as she learned how to establish websites, create computer programs and so on. She helped her parents establish a website of their own clothes shop at first, and her family’s financial situation gradually got improvement. Later, she earned some money on herself by using her talent of computers. She said, "I remembered when I got the first payment, I considered using it to improve my family at first thought. But my mother told me to use it to help those in need.” She agreed at last. She donated a part of her first payment, using the rest of the money to found an Internet individual-workroom. With a computer, a camera, a scan machine, a printer, and endless passion, she started her charitable works at the young age of twelve.

At the start, she helped hard-working farmers sell inactive produce. She sent e-mails recommending these produce to every big company and sold thirty thousand kilograms of shaddocks in 2000. From then on, many people started learning from her and selling produce at websites as well. Her kind heart didn’t stop at this matter. Because of her own experience in her childhood, she realized the sad feelings of those children who can’t study at young ages from poor families. In 2001, she established a website of education to help those children. She said, "This was a quite difficult work for me. I had been exhausted, discouraged, knowing that what I owned was just a little ability of a child. But when I thought again, if there would be ten children helped by me, I must do that.” Eventually, from 2002, the website started working, and until now there has been over 3 million visitors. It even helped many children in China. Xinling is considering about extending it to more countries such as Cambodia, Vietnam, and Myanmar.

In the period of her high school time, she had taken 200 thousands of pictures of hard-working people in the daily life because she wanted to have the government be aware of common people’s lives. Several years have passed, the ingtruth proved that being devoted to helping needy people around herself didn’t stop her from doing well at school. In the year of 2008, the kind-hearted girl had become a young lady and entered a university majoring in humanities social science in the rank of third. Though I haven’t heard of other news about her for years, I still admire her very much now. She isn’t the only person who tries his/her best to help other people. But in my mind, she is special because of her humble beginning, and extending to a huge charity all on her own. That’s really valuable to me for such a little girl to have this kind of warm-heart. In comparison to young adults nowadays, she is much more positive to do something to make the world better instead of complaining about the environment. She affected my thoughts, it is she that has me feel I can also do many things on my own to change the world even though I am still a teenager. I really expect someday I can live up to the values and do some charitable things by myself, just like what she did. No matter how few people will be helped by me, I should do it.

Page created on 5/29/2011 12:00:00 AM

Last edited 5/29/2011 12:00:00 AM

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