Huang Huaquan used to just dream of buying a house, owning a car, and eating good meals. Having lost both of his legs in a car accident at age 6 and since using his hands and two wooden stools to get around, the dream didn’t seem so bad.

Yet as he grew older, so did his ambition. Despite only having a primary school education, the 44-year-old took to the books and taught himself English with just a dictionary and radio. In 2003, he even became a weightlifter and went on to win multiple medals, including gold at the Guangdong Provincial Games for Persons with Disabilities in 2023. Even when life took a cruel turn and he was scammed out of nearly 300,000 yuan (roughly $41,785), he woke up the next morning, set up an umbrella and shoe repair stall, and worked to pay off the debt while livestreaming in English.

“I enjoy every day, every minute, and every second of life,” he says. “It’s really worth being in this world.”

His livestreams are full of can-do spirit and a positive outlook and have garnered him an impressive following of roughly 165,000 on video site Douyin. Often delivered in crisp English, Huang shares motivational messages and talks about his life experiences of finding strength and resilience. Just this past May, one of the videos he made last year at his repair stall went viral.

As viewers have found inspiration from the unassuming cobbler, so too has he found a new dream: delivering a speech at Harvard University.

This dream may yet come to fruition. On May 22, Xu Liang, the president of the Harvard Alumni Association in Beijing, posted a video on social media, saying that he had already contacted the Harvard Student Union in the hopes of helping Huang fulfill his elocution dream. He has also invited Huang to Beijing to give a speech at the Harvard Alumni Association in Beijing event.

For Huang, achieving his dreams is all about the journey.

“I want to keep going,” he says. “I want to go far. I want to travel around the country, even travel around the world. I want to expand my dreams, step by step.”