Officials in Sichuan Province said they are working on the plight of a 12-year-old girl, whose homework essay about her mother's death grabbed national attention.
The 300-word essay by Muku Yiwumu, of the Yi ethnic minority in Liangshan, has unleashed an outpour of compassion and prompted reflection on the country's fight against poverty.
"My father died four years ago" was the first sentence of the essay. It went on to say there was no money available to treat her mother after she suddenly fell sick.
After one day in hospital, her mother pleaded to return home saying she would feel more comfortable.
"I took my mom home before cooking for her. I sadly found her dead when the dinner was ready."
Posted by a volunteer teacher, the essay "Tear" has gone viral on a popular microblog, where it was described as "the saddest essay ever."
Netizens said they were sad to see such a grave tragedy in a pupil's essay.
The government of the Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture, where Muku is from, said the essay was not the original version, but a transcript of the teacher's rephrased version.
It confirmed that Muku, a primary school student from the prefecture's Yuexi County, lost her father in 2011 and mother in 2013. She has four brothers and sisters, who are under care of their grandparents.
It promised to step up relief efforts on Muku's family to ensure they be lifted out of poverty. The family has received 3,500 yuan (560 U.S. dollars) a month in government subsidies since October 2014, it said.
One major website launched a donation for children in Liangshan. A total of 470,000 yuan has been collected as of Friday noon.
Liangshan is known for its grinding poverty due to drug trade and high incidence of AIDS. The mountainous prefecture recorded 35,329 cases of HIV/AIDS from 1995 to 2014 and currently has 21,631 people living with HIV.
China lifted more than 600 million people out of poverty in the past 15 years, accounting for about 70 percent of those brought out of poverty worldwide. Yet the country still faced an uphill battle to enrich the 70 million poverty-stricken people in countryside, largely in the underdeveloped western and central areas.
Last year, the central treasury allocated 43.3 billion yuan in poverty relief funding, compared with 22.2 billion in 2010.
