A 10-year-old boy hid himself in an internet cafe in Changsha, Hunan province, for four days after receiving bad marks on his end-term exams. The boy, called Rui Rui, didn’t go to the net cafe to ease his pain — Voice of China reports that instead, he was hiding there to avoid punishment from his parents.
On the evening of January 23, Rui Rui’s parents noticed that their son hadn’t returned home from his after-school cram school session. Anxious and confused, Rui Rui’s mother decided to wait till the morning before she called his son’s teachers. They told her that the boy had left the school the night before, and that was it.
After waiting another day, Rui Rui’s mother couldn’t handle sitting around anymore and finally called the police, and also told her husband — who was away on business — that their son was missing. On the morning of January 25, the police and the media started a search for the boy.
When the father, Mr Fu Shuguang returned to Changsha, he joined the search effort for his son. In the afternoon of the fourth day, he found Rui Rui inside an internet cafe. He was enjoying an intense session of the Chinese first person shooter, CrossFire.
Fu immediately hugged his son and then asked why Rui Rui had not returned home. Rui Rui answered, “I was afraid that mother would hit me”.
On the day that he received his test scores, Rui Rui had met a young man who was headed to the internet cafe. The boy decided to join him. After his first day away from home, he read in the news that his mother was looking for him. Afraid that he would get a bigger beating, he decided to stay at the internet cafe, drinking tap water when he got thirsty, eating junk food when he was hungry and curling up in a chair when he was sleepy.
Upon hearing about Rui Rui’s ordeal, and overjoyed that he had found him, Fu said to his son, “Your mother will never hit you again.”
According to Rui Rui’s mother, he was addicted to online video games and he had bad grades in school. She said she had a bad temper and was at her wits’ end on how to raise him properly. To help Rui Rui get better grades, she would force him to study as well as physically punish him. Rui Rui said the reason he went with the older boy to the net cafe was that the older boy “understood him and wouldn’t hit him.”
In the end, Rui Rui’s mother also promised in front of reporters that she wouldn’t hit him anymore.
Hopefully things work out for Rui Rui and his family. Personally, my mother used to beat me with bags of oranges when I didn’t achieve in school and I never ran away. I still got to play my video games.
男孩离家4天蜗居网吧 称考试成绩不好怕挨揍 [Voice of China via Tencent]
Picture: Hung Chung Chih | Shutterstock
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