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In March 2021, Mr. Zhang Yue from Guangzhou announced the death of his son Zhang Yide in his circle of friends.
It is reported that Zhang Yide, a freshman in the Department of Philosophy at Emory University in the United States, committed suicide at school in February 2021. After the news spread, many netizens expressed their shock while mourning.
Because they are not ordinary people, but a pair of Internet celebrity father and son.
Mr. Zhang Yue spent 17 years taking nearly 200,000 photos of his son, sorting them out and "posting" them on the Internet. This has made him a well-known parenting blogger in recent years.
After the news of Zhang Yide's suicide spread, some netizens commented: It was Zhang Yue's overly heavy fatherly love that ruined the child's life......
A childhood wrapped in fatherly love
Zhang Yue lives in Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, and his wife gave birth to a son for him in 2001. Zhang Yue named his son "Zhang Yide", which means "the most proud work in his life".
However, when the son was less than a year old. Due to the discord between the husband and wife, Zhang Yue divorced his wife, and his wife left Guangzhou and no longer cared about Zhang Yide's growth. Zhang Yue has been a father and a mother since then, and began to raise this infant child.
Zhang Yue is a foreign company executive with a good salary, and he has also saved some savings over the years. But he was too busy at work to spend time at home with his children.
He was afraid that the nanny he hired would not take good care of Xiaoyi, and he didn't want to miss his son's growth process, so he simply gritted his teeth and resigned from the company and returned home to be a full-time father.
As a novice father with little experience in parenting, he was recommended by a friend to join the QQ group of the Mom.com forum to learn parenting knowledge and exchange parenting experience with many stay-at-home mothers. Netizens affectionately called Zhang Yue "old".
In order to create a beautiful childhood for his son to be close to nature, Zhang Yue moved his family to a farm in Panyu District, and moved his son from a high-rise building to a small farm yard.
Since then, he has made a living from farming, and at the same time, he has let his children grow up freely in this environment of birds and flowers.
The popularity of this father and son is because Zhang Yue recorded his son's growth with a camera. Since his son was one year old, Zhang Yue has used his camera to record his smiles, crying, physical changes, and the daily life of father and son.
In 17 years, Zhang Yue broke five cameras and took nearly 200,000 photos. The photos were sorted out by him, some of them were developed and hung at home, and some of them were posted on the Internet. These photos are Zhang Yide's growth history.
Since he no longer has a formal job, Zhang Yue has a lot of free time, and he puts his daily life with his son on his online homepage. He took his son to pick up scraps, reclaim wasteland, grow vegetables and flowers, and raise chickens and fish in his family's farm.
Over the past ten years, Zhang Yue's homepage has accumulated thousands of articles, which have also received hundreds of millions of clicks.
In the past ten years, Zhang Yue has never been perfunctory about his son's diet, and the dishes he cooks are not only nutritious, but also exquisite. And every dish has a story, sometimes a fairy tale, sometimes a historical allusion.
Zhang Yue integrates these stories into his daily dishes, achieving the effect of entertaining and educating. He will also carefully place his son's favorite toy, the baby elephant, next to the meal every day, so that he can accompany his son to eat.
Naturally, the photos of these meals were also carefully taken by him and posted on the Internet.
Zhang Yide has been a child who grew up in nature since he was a child. In addition to helping his father grow vegetables, he also raised more than 200 chickens, ducks, geese and sheep on the farm with his father. This funny father and son even gave each animal a name.
In addition to cooking, Zhang Yue is also very talented in handicraft. He often takes his son to create a "breast milk room", "delivery room" and "habitat" for these animals by hand with solid wood.
Zhang Yide was influenced by his father and loved labor extraordinarily. Since he was a child, he would stand on a small bench and cook by himself, and he could easily complete all kinds of farm work.
Compared to many children who grew up in the "steel forest" city and never even saw live chickens and ducks. Zhang Yide has a richer life experience, and also has a warm childhood wrapped in father's love.
After Zhang Yue's personal account became popular on the Internet for recording daily photos with his son, the relationship between the father and son attracted the attention of tens of thousands of netizens.
Netizens commented: "What a great father's love! "I want such a father!"
Overcome difficulties and give back to the community
After quitting his job and moving to the farm, Zhang Yue's previous savings were almost spent. Relying on farming for a living, the father and son's financial resources were not stable, so they also lived a period of financial constraints.
At the most bitter time, Zhang Yide wanted to watch animated movies, but Zhang Yue rummaged through his pockets and only took out the money to buy one ticket. So he bought a ticket for his son to go in and watch it, and he waited in front of the movie theater until the movie ended.
Years of farming have made Zhang Yue look much older than his peers, and before he reaches retirement age, he has gray temples and his hands are covered with traces of vicissitudes.
Even in times of financial constraints, he insisted that his children receive the best education possible. When he couldn't afford to pay for his tuition, he borrowed money from his friends.
After his online homepage unexpectedly went viral, every year some fans came to visit their farm and also to see the father and son. These well-meaning fans will stuff Zhang Yue with some money every time to help the father and son get through the difficulties of life.
Some fans who are inconvenient to come will also send money to Zhang Yue from all over the country, or send some things that can be used in study and life.
Zhang Yue used an A4 piece of paper to carefully write down the contact information of each well-wisher and the amount of donations. It took him nine years to pay off the donation.
In Zhang Yue's farm, there is a special photo wall. In the center of the photo wall is a photo of Zhang Yide who is 17 years old, while dozens of photos of the Zhang family's father and son and fans are hung around it.
Directly above the photo wall is written "150 children of his father". Zhang Yue said that these fans who have helped him are like his children, and it is the love of these fans that has helped him and his son through the most difficult time.
After receiving attention and help from all walks of life, Zhang Yue also wants to do his part to give back to the society. He not only opened his farm to the outside world, shared his parenting experience with netizens for free, but also set up a "star garden".
Designed for children with autism, this "Star Garden" was handmade by Zhang Yue and his son out of solid wood, and is equipped with topics, balancing facilities, mini trampolines, etc. All the material costs come from the WeChat tips received by Zhang Yue's parenting official account.
The park was set up to help children with autism train their audio-visual and motor skills, and is permanently free for children with autism and their parents.
In August 2019, a reporter from Guangzhou Daily interviewed the Internet celebrity father and son.
In an interview, Zhang Yue said that whether it is a single parent or a double parent, as long as parents give enough love, children can grow up happily.
At this time, Zhang Yide has grown into a handsome 17-year-old boy, because of his excellent grades, he got the overseas scholarship provided by the high school, and in the second semester of the third year of high school, he can choose the overseas university he is about to study.
Zhang Yide told reporters with great interest that he played a piano piece for his father on Father's Day this year. Zhang Yide said that if there is an afterlife, he is still willing to be Zhang Yue's son, and he is willing to continue to grow up in this way.
After this report was issued, everyone felt that this was a model family of fathers and sons. Zhang Yue's parenting experience has set a good example for many parents.
However, no one expected that just a year and a half later, tragedy would strike.
A father's love is like a mountain, crushing his son?
After graduating from high school, Zhang Yi entered the Department of Philosophy at Emory University in the United States with excellent grades and outstanding TOEFL scores.
However, on March 5, 2021, the school's student newspaper announced that Zhang Yide had died by suicide.
Previously, due to the impact of the epidemic, Zhang Yide completed the semester course online in the fall of 2020 and only came to the campus in the United States in early 2021. Only in the sixth week of his visit to the United States, he left this beautiful world.
In the early morning of March 7, 2021, Zhang Yue announced the news of his son's death in the circle of friends, and said that his son's funeral would be handled by his biological mother, and the body would be buried in the United States.
What is embarrassing is that before his son's accident, Zhang Yue's last circle of friends was an advertisement for a lecture on his parenting experience.
The theme of the lecture is how to establish a good parent-child relationship, and although it is a public welfare lecture, there is a venue fee of 138 yuan.
Some netizens questioned whether Zhang Yue was using his parenting experience as a gimmick to make money from it?
And the 200,000 photos taken by Zhang Yue for his son before, and the entertaining dishes he made were also judged by netizens, and commented that these things are "Father's love is like a mountain, the mountain is too heavy, and the child is crushed." ”
One stone stirred up a thousand waves, and many netizens began to "archaeology". They think that there is something wrong with Zhang Yue's education method, he pays too much attention to the child, and spends too much energy on the child, which indirectly forces the child to death.
These netizens believe that for Zhang Yue, he spent all his energy on his son and placed too much expectation on his son.
Although Zhang Yide is indeed very good, he is much stronger than other children in terms of hands-on ability and learning ability. But his father's love was too heavy for him to breathe.
On March 16, 2021, Zhang Yue responded to various speculations on the Internet, and he accepted all the questions from netizens, and everyone was free to express their opinions. No one or thing is perfect, he said.
In this life, I unconditionally respect and accept all the decisions made by my son, including the final decision of my son this time.
Regardless of whether Zhang Yue cares too much for his son, now that Zhang Yide has passed away, it is useless to blame anything. I only hope that Zhang Yide can rest in peace, and I hope that this father can get out of the haze as soon as possible.
Resources:
[1] This single father in Guangzhou has taken 200,000 growth photos for his son in the past 17 years! ——Guangzhou Daily
[2] Cover Draft丨19-year-old American bully died unexpectedly "Parenting blogger" education method was accused of being "suffocating" The deceased's father responded: Respect for expression - cover news