Armless national swimming champion goes to college

Zhu Peng, a disabled champion swimmer who lost his arms in a childhood accident, was admitted to Wuhan Donghu University, a school in the capital of Central China's Hubei province, reported local newspaper Hubei Daily.

When Zhu checked into school on Thursday, the university offered to switch him from an upper berth in a four-bed room on the sixth floor to a lower berth in a double room on the second floor. To the surprise of many, he declined the offer without hesitation.

"I can totally live on my own and have no need of special treatment," he said.

Zhu, 22, is from Yangxin county, Hubei province. When he was three, Zhu lost his arms in an accident in which he touched an unprotected high-tension wire.

He made a narrow escape from death and regained consciousness after more than two months of treatment in a hospital.

Zhu recalled that after the injury, he did not think he was different from other children.

"It did not occur to me that I was different from others until I was made fun of and looked at in a strange way after I went to school. I was really sad and upset then," he said.

His father, Zhu Fenghua, forced him to practice using his feet every day to learn how to replace his amputated arms for everyday tasks and to help him face the future.

"I had trained him to use his feet to pick up peanuts at first. He could not do it well with his hands, not to mention his feet. After he made it, I held his feet to train him write when he was four, and he started to learn to write calligraphy with a brush pen when he was five," Zhu Fenghua said.

As time went by, the younger Zhu learned how to eat, write, wash his face, study and do other things in his daily life using his feet.

When he was seven, Zhu began learning to swim. Since then, he spent every summer vacation in swim training, and, at 12, he was selected as a member of the provincial swimming team for the disabled.

With great effort, he performed well, earning good results in provincial-level competitions. At the age of 16, he won the gold medal in the men's 100-meters freestyle at the National Swimming Championship for the Disabled in 2012.

"I not only made a lot of friends through swimming training and the competitions, but continuously pushed myself beyond my limits," he said.

After his retirement from swimming in the spring of 2015, Zhu set a new goal for himself - going to college.

Older than the average senior high school student, he decided to skip the junior phase of high school and went straight to the senior high school.

He thought that his achievements in swimming had proved that he was no different than people without disabilities, and moreover, he had greater perseverance and self-discipline.

"In my first class in high school, the teacher was teaching trigonometric functions and I did not understand it at all. But I worked harder after class. I spent holidays and my spare time on study and finally caught up after a year or so,” said Zhu.

Having scored 514 points on the gaokao, or the national college entrance exam, Zhu was admitted as a finance major at Wuhan Donghu University this year.

"I want to focus on learning knowledge on campus and also take part in club activities in my spare time. I am interested in music, football, speech and e-sports," he said.

"After graduation, I want to pursue further education in Shanghai and take on a financial job as my older sister does," Zhu said about his next goal in life.