In 'beautiful coincidence,' mailman father delivers college offer to son

WUHAN - Long Zhanjun, who has been a mailman for 19 years, has delivered over 3,000 admission letters to rejoicing high school graduates, but this year, his son is a recipient.

"It was a beautiful coincidence," said Long, who works in the city of Ezhou in Central China's Hubei province, "Because I am usually not responsible for mail in my own building, but I was filling in for a colleague that day."

More to his pleasure, the offer was made by Peking University, one of China's top universities, which admitted only two students from his city this year.

Long first learned the great news when was awakened from a nap in the mail delivery station on Aug 17 by a colleague, who told Long that he found a mail belonging to his son.

"Suddenly, I was wide awake. I knew the admission letter finally came, so I called my family right away and brought the letter back home," he said.

At around 4 pm that afternoon, Long delivered the letter to his son -- following the due procedure of checking ID information and signing for the mail before handing it over to his son.

After moments of joy shared with his family, Long went on with his work to finish the mail delivery tasks for that day.

"I've delivered many admission letters for the past 19 years. Finally, I got to send one to my son, and it's from Peking University. The delight and sense of pride can hardly be put into words," Long recalled.

The result did not come easy for the family, according to Yi Meilin, Long's wife.

Long's residential compound had seen confirmed cases of the COVID-19 epidemic at the beginning of this year, but Long still kept working, which caused stress to the family with a student about to take the college entrance examination, the most important event for Chinese students.

Even so, Yi said the family supported his work while taking very thorough disinfection measures when he would return home from work.

Her son, Yi Rui, saw his grades dropping as he was not quite accustomed to online classes at first during the epidemic. Luckily, with the help of teachers, the situation improved.

Local media coverage of Long's heartening moment of delivery has created a buzz online, with many Chinese netizens clicking "like" and commenting on it.

"Great! After sending good news to so many, he finally gets his own good news!" read one comment.

"The delivery looks ceremonial; the father must be really proud of his child," read another.

Yi Rui, his 17-year-old son who is about to start college life in Beijing, said he had little communication with his father due to his busy work, but he understands him.

"He has done his job diligently for so many years, especially when he held on to his post bravely despite the epidemic. In my mind, he is ordinary and great at the same time," Yi said.