A first-year student at China’s prestigious Peking University entered the campus in style for his orientation day after cycling an impressive 1,328 km from Shanghai to the capital city of Beijing in 15 days.

The student’s challenging bike ride was published as a welcome greeting on the university’s official social media account.

Ding Wenxin comes from Xinyu City in eastern China’s Jiangxi Province and is a first-year student majoring in sociology at Peking University, one of China’s most prestigious universities.

The purpose of his ultra-long-distance cycling challenge is to leave a colorful memory of his youth, Ding said.

“I hope that my youth will be enriched and that I will have more beautiful memories. I also want to develop my skills further. This is also a very big challenge for me,” said Ding.

Even before the entrance exam, Ding had decided to start his college life with cycling.

After the exam, Ding bought a bike and started training.

To make his journey smoother, he even learned how to repair a bicycle by listing problems that might arise in the future and then solving them one by one.

With everything prepared, Ding set out from his brother’s house in Shanghai and cycled all the way north to begin his odyssey.

He said his epic cross-country adventure inspired him and gave him the confidence to pursue his future dreams.

“Because you know what you are studying for. If you have a goal in mind, you will not deviate from it or get lost. Whether it is life or study, we should maintain our passion, remember that we must move forward, and maintain our courage and passion to move forward,” Ding said.

Freshman arrives at university in style after epic 15-day, 1,300km bike ride

In August alone, the Israeli army issued 13 evacuation orders for various areas in the Gaza Strip, significantly reducing the size of the humanitarian zone it had declared since the beginning of the conflict.

Due to the threat of violence, the displaced Palestinians are forced to live in ever smaller areas within the besieged enclave.

Thousands of Palestinian civilians were forced to flee their homes following the latest evacuation order issued on Sunday for Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip.

Omar Al-Atla’s family, now homeless, has sought refuge under a flimsy tent on a city beach.

“We were displaced from Gaza to Al Nuseirat, then to Rafah, then to Hamad and now we are here. We have been displaced four times. The last time was the worst because we fled without our belongings when tanks attacked us. Now we have nowhere else to go except to the sea,” he said.

According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), more than 80 percent of the Gaza Strip has been under evacuation orders since October last year, and an estimated 90 percent of Gaza’s 2.1 million residents have been displaced more than once.

Although the Israeli military defends the forced evacuations with military arguments, the damage to the civilian population is catastrophic. As more and more shelters become unusable, 1.9 million Palestinians are at risk of becoming homeless.

“The evacuation orders have led to severe overcrowding of the civilian population in a narrow strip of land. The safe humanitarian zone in Deir al-Balah province has shrunk to 15 square kilometers, leading to the displacement of 100,000 people and the inoperability of 20 emergency shelters,” said Diab Al-Jarou, mayor of Deir al-Balah.

The evacuations come as international mediators struggle to resolve differences between Israel and Hamas over a ceasefire agreement that would end fighting in Gaza and result in an exchange of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners.

Israel’s evacuation orders leave more Palestinians homeless