Pei Chunliang's family was also very poor when he was a child. His father was a stockman for the village, and his mother was illiterate but had a strong work ethic.

"Hunger is my only memory of childhood, when I had never had a hearty meal or new clothes," Pei Chunliang, born in 1970, said. Alluding to further heartbreak, he added, "When it rains, it pours."

When he was a third grader, his eldest brother had a stroke, and his other two older brothers died in a car crash and a coal mining accident respectively. And he lost two of his three sisters-in-law – one remarried and the other ran away, abandoning their young children.

Pei Chunliang dropped out when he should have been in eighth grade. He was moved by his relatives and the neighbors, whom he turned to for money to pay his father's hospital bills. When he was 16, his father passed away, and his family could not afford a funeral. His father was buried with the help of the fellow villagers.