Eight-year-old Niu Dongfang trains at the No. 2 Beijing Shuangqiao School January 13, 2005 in Beijing, China. Most of students in the gymnastics school have to study more than five years from as young as age six before they become athletes. (Photo by Guang Niu/Getty Images)

Children attend a swim training session at Hangzhou Chen Jinglun Sport school Natatorium, where Chinese Olympic swimmer Sun Yang and Fu Yuanhui also trained, in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, China, August 10, 2016. (Photo by Aly Song/Reuters)

Hunched at his desk and staring intently at the blackboard, Hu Yang looks like any other industrious schoolboy. But this ordinary eight-year-old finds himself in a unique position. He is the only pupil to attend his elementary school in, Fujian Province, China.

Santa Students practice dancing during the Charles W. Howard Santa Claus School workshop on October 16, 2008 in Midland, Michigan. (Photo by Al Bello/Getty Images)

Saudi children of al-Fefi family walk up the stairs as they make their way to their schools through Fifa Mountain, in Jazan, south of Saudi Arabia, December 15, 2016. (Photo by Mohamed Al Hwaity/Reuters)

Luke Personius, 12, waits for a wave as he surfs before school at sunrise in Hermosa Beach, California April 2, 2015. The group of friends surf at sunrise most mornings, then shower outside and walk to school. (Photo by Lucy Nicholson/Reuters)

Schoolchildren ride on a makeshift raft to attend the opening of classes at a remote Casili Elementary School in Montalban, Rizal northeast of Manila, Philippines June 13, 2016. (Photo by Erik De Castro/Reuters)

In this May 14, 2016 photo, children wearing their school backpacks climb on a cliff using a bamboo ladder on their way home from school in Zhaojue county, southwest China's Sichuan province. A village in China's mountainous west where schoolchildren must climb an 800-meter (2,625-foot)-high bamboo ladder secured to a sheer cliff face may get a set of steel stairs to improve it's safety. (Photo by Chinatopix via AP Photo)