Song Xingyu grew up in a rural village in Badong County, part of Enshi in China’s Hubei province, where he left school at fourteen to work in his father’s timber mill. Days spent covered in sawdust left little room for formal training, yet an old tablet computer from a friend showed him foreign flight-test programs that fixed the idea of flight in his mind. He started building model aircraft from leftover foam board and scrap parts, posting the work online under the name Amazing Ayu until the channel grew past three million followers.
