Education advocate

Dreaming of going back to school, Wang taught himself at the rehabilitation center, despite his demanding physical schedule. Sometimes he read on his stomach while undergoing acupuncture.

To improve his memory, which was also damaged by a brain injury caused by the accident, he recited English words repeatedly until he could remember them by heart. At first, he would forget what he had learned just hours later and had to start all over again the following morning.

In those days, he viewed life like a marathon. No matter how slow he walked, he could make progress every day, and if there were roadblocks, he found a way to negotiate the barriers. His family, therapists, doctors and other patients around him were all his teachers.

With extraordinary perseverance and solid faith in himself, he passed the exam and went to Norway to attend UWC Red Cross Nordic, a life-changing experience as he put it, before completing his undergraduate and postgraduate studies in economics at the University of Oslo.

There, he developed another dream, that of setting up a UWC school on the Chinese mainland to introduce an inclusive, intercultural learning environment and promote mutual understanding between youngsters from various cultures.

Fifteen years after Wang－with just $200 in his pocket－had expressed the idea to Macoun on his graduation day, UWC Changshu China was founded in its namesake city in East China's Jiangsu province in 2015.

So far, the school has welcomed more than 1,700 students and graduates from 124 countries and regions. It had provided a total scholarship of 280 million yuan ($44 million) for around 700 students by 2021, including those with physical challenges or from disadvantaged backgrounds.

"Love and education are two powerful forces in this world. To me, they can remove the physical and psychological barriers in life," Wang says.

Lyu Shiming, vice-chairman of the China Disabled Persons' Federation, says that Wang has been contributing to the motherland by promoting the well-being of people facing physical challenges.

"He believes that education can change the lives of many young people, as his own experience has proved, therefore he runs schools to exert the great influence of education," Lyu says.

He Chaoxian, a decadelong friend of Wang's, witnessed his battle to open the school, despite repeated setbacks in several other cities of China, and his success when he finally managed to do so in Changshu. Many times, Wang had been close to the finish line, but failed at the last hurdle.

"Few people believed he would succeed," recalls He, adding that apart from his persistence, it was Wang's vision of always taking social well-being into account in pursuit of his own dreams that especially impressed him.

Wang is excellent at encouraging people to work together to create something incredible, He says.

As a parent of a UWC South East Asia graduate, He is working with Wang on a project based on a biomedical technology company called Eosvision. This aims to realize large-scale production of bioregenerative corneas as a solution to insufficient cornea donations and rejections after transplantation.

It's an incubation project of the "UWC+"platform Wang's team and the local government of Changshu launched together to integrate resources of UWC alumni and their parents to promote technological innovation, attract investment and boost the city's development.