The Mountain Boy Who Plucked the Stars

Huang Xiaoxing, nicknamed “Shanwa” as a child, grew up in a poor mountain village on the banks of the Yellow River. With his parents away working, he became a left-behind child who often gazed at the stars alone. He clung to his dream of flying into the sky to “pluck a star,” pouring into it his longing for his missing mother. After moving to the city with his migrant-worker father to attend school, he was mocked by classmates who idolized singers, dancers, and movie stars. Because he came from the mountains and held fast to his dream of “plucking a star,” they called him a clueless “mountain bumpkin” and a “star-obsessed fool.” Under the pressure of schoolwork and his classmates’ doubts, he eventually lost heart and became confused about what it meant to pursue a star. His homeroom teacher, Mr. Zhou, notices that his students’ idol worship has become distorted. Drawing on the Ministry of Education’s guidance on comprehensively strengthening and improving aesthetic education in schools in the new era, including the “Nine Beauties” goals for primary and secondary students, he designs a “Nine Growth Stars” evaluation system: the Stars of Inner Beauty, Etiquette and Music, Language, Conduct, Science, Order, Health, Diligence, and Art. He launches an educational experiment to reform what it means to “pursue a star.” Guided by Mr. Zhou, Huang Xiaoxing regains his confidence and resolves to pursue the “Star of Scientific Excellence.” Taking aerospace scientists as his role models, he overcomes difficulties in math, physics, and chemistry, as well as setbacks such as failing an aerospace science competition, and eventually enters an aeronautics and astronautics university. After graduation, he grows into a space payload specialist and aerospace scientist, flies into space aboard a Shenzhou spacecraft, and explores the mysteries of the universe aboard China’s space station, fulfilling his childhood dream of “plucking a star.” Twenty years later, a reunion at his alma mater’s anniversary celebration bears witness to an entire generation’s transformation, from confusion to awakening, and affirms the story’s theme: “Every star of growth can light up a dream.”