Man seeks job to pay granddaughter’s tuition

Yu Changyuan, 78, attends a job fair in Zhengzhou last Saturday for seeking a job to pay for his granddaughter’s tuition. [Photo/zynews.com]

A construction job fair was held in Zhengzhou last Saturday. The oldest job seeker was a 78-year-old man named Yu Changyuan. He is a retired senior engineer and wants to find a job with a 4,000-yuan (US$580) monthly salary, with the hopes of paying his granddaughter’s tuition.

According to Yu, he was a senior engineer in Henan Fifth Construction Group, and he wanted to find a management position at the construction job fair to pay for his granddaughter’s university tuition, as his son died last year. “Although I am old, I am still healthy and I can still work,” said Yu.

However, Yu could not find a proper position at the job fair, because most of the positions were at construction sites and no one wanted to hire a 78-year-old man.

This was not the first time Yu went to a job fair. Liu Kai, a worker at the job fair, said that Yu started to seek a job after the Lantern Festival, which fell on Feb. 11 this year. At first, he thought that Yu was there to help his kids to find a job. However, he was shocked when Yu asked him whether there was any position for himself. According to Liu, the old man has a lot of certifications and this is the third time he came to the job fair.

According to Yu, he was born in 1938 in Shanghai and graduated from the Shanghai Urban Construction Academy in 1960. Then he was assigned to work at the Architectural Design Institute of Henan Province. After three years, he was assigned to work in Henan Fifth Construction Group until his retirement. He had participated in the construction of many projects in Zhengzhou since the 1980’s.

After his retirement, he was hired by the Institute of Geodesy Photogrammetry and Cartography for 10 years. At 70, he was truly retired.

Yu had a son and a daughter. His daughter is a teacher in a middle school while his son used to work for Henan Rural Credit Cooperative. However, his son suffered from suffusion of blood on the brain last September and died three months after surgery for the ailment.

“He cried everyday over our son’s death,” said Yu’s wife.

“My granddaughter is a top student and she will go to college next year. We want to help her and share her mother’s burden after my son’s death,” said Yu Changyuan.