Sheng Tianyi and Sheng Meijuan are recently pictured in front of their house in Hulian village, Boshe township, Lanxi. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

A boy with mixed-African ancestry has been living in a remote village in Lanxi, East China's Zhejiang province for nearly 11 years and was recently admitted to a local senior high school.

His guardian Sheng Meijuan, who is 66 years old, told local media reporters about how she brought up the boy against all odds.

She recalled that her son Sheng Xiaoyang, who has been working in Yiwu, brought the then six-year-old boy to her side during the Spring Festival in 2010 and asked for her help in raising him.

Sheng Xiaoyang was a driver hired by the boy's birth father. According to Sheng Xiaoyang, the boy's Chinese mother had deserted him not long after his birth, while his Togolese father, who was a medicinal materials merchant in the Yiwu market, requested that Sheng Xiaoyang take care of the boy for just a few days while he made a business trip back to Togo. However, Sheng Xiaoyang had since lost contact with the father.

As the boy did not meet the legal conditions to be accepted by orphanages and raising a child in Yiwu was beyond his financial capabilities, Sheng Xiaoyang had no choice but to turn to Sheng Meijuan to take care of the boy in the village.

With Sheng Meijuan's loving care, the boy gradually got used to village life and even learnt to speak the dialect fluently. To pay for the boy's primary school tuition fees, Sheng Meijuan not only continued to performed farm work, but also took on a new job at a quilt factory in the village, where she often worked overtime.

The boy had been an excellent student at school and was viewed as a sports talent by his classmates.

In early 2018, the boy finally obtained household registration as a result of the special assistance delivered by local police. His registered Chinese name is Sheng Tianyi.

Sheng Tianyi now identifies himself as a Chinese national and bears enormous gratitude toward his beloved guardian Sheng Meijuan, whom he refers to as his grandma.