"I thought I would take third or fourth place because I'd encountered quite strong rivals. But in the end I won first prize with full credits," he said excitedly.

Yu's path to the podium began at a city-level skills competition for disabled people in September.

"I started to work for the Shanghai Cyber and Information Security Emergency Center in 2015 and was transferred to the Shanghai Cyberspace Affairs Office on a temporary basis in 2019. I had seen some advertisements for these types of skills competitions before, but I never thought I would be one of the competitors," he said.

Yu placed third in the city-level skills competition and was one of two participants selected to represent Shanghai at the national competition.

"Me and many other competitors undertook highly intensive training in Shanghai's Songjiang district from June 12 to 21, before we departed for the national competition," he said.

Yu and his two teammates competing in the cybersecurity event got up around 6:30 am for lessons and training. From 8 am till 10 pm they studied how to reinforce the security of firewalls and servers and close loopholes.

On the day of the national competition, their event began at 9 am and lasted for five hours.

"The national competition was a bigger challenge for competitors because the questions were all linked with another, which meant that you couldn't skip to solve question two when you hadn't finished question one," Yu said.