A 3,500-Kilometer Run to Walk the Kid Through the School Gate, Guests Included
A family of six from Shandong is driving 3,500 km to deliver their son to medical school in Xinjiang, four adults taking turns at the wheel and the grandfather coming along to see his own brother. It's a small, warm snapshot of how Chinese families mark university admission.
Three days out of Zaozhuang, Shandong, a seven-seat SUV crossed into Gansu with six people aboard and a handwritten sign taped to the tailgate: "driving the kid to study."
The passenger of honor is an eighteen-year-old who just got into Xinjiang Second Medical College in Karamay, 3,500 kilometers from home. His send-off party is a family project. His father, Geng, is driving; his mother, his older sister and her husband take turns at the wheel; and riding along is his eighty-something maternal grandfather, who has watched a brother of his own in Xinjiang through WeChat for years and has now decided, since everyone is going that way, to actually see him once more.
The family left on August 20, picked up the grandfather in Xuzhou, and by August 22 had reached Zhangye, Gansu, having covered more than a thousand kilometers the day before. The mother, Liu, told the Yangtze Daily-affiliated outlet Jiu Pai News that the trip is not a money-saver: a flight or a train would have been cheaper. But with a full complement of luggage and local specialties, and a school gate to walk the boy through in person, driving felt like the only proper answer.
"Poor parents, devoted hearts," she said, using an idiom any Chinese reader recognizes — kelian tianxia fumu xin, the parents of the world all share the same soft spot. She wanted to deliver him, settle him in, and hand him a memory, she said; costs were not the point.
The story has been met on Weibo with the affection generally reserved for long drives in general-issue Chinese family cars: not economics, but ceremony. China's university-entrance exam opens the social valve once a year, and every August the highways fill with parents transporting refrigerators, quilts, hometown snacks, and freshmen to campuses a province or three away. A tailgate sign is the custom's natural extension, the trip's purpose spelled out for the cars behind.
Geng and his family still had the Hexi Corridor and the desert beyond to cross. Their son reports for orientation on August 29. The grandfather, who only wanted to see his brother, picked a good ride to get there.