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Chinese Teen Earns $2,600 in Three Days with AI Study App

A 13-year-old Shanghai student, Zhu Shuhan, earned 18,000 yuan (US$2,600) from her AI-powered study app, Zai Chang, during a three-day national competition in Hangzhou. With no programming background, she built the app using AI tools, and it won third prize and 5,000 yuan in prize money.

By Tertius News AI Desk 2 distinct · 2 mastheads · 2 articles Version 2 Coverage Aug 31, 2026 Published 1h ago

A Teen's AI Solution to a Study Problem

A 13-year-old student in Shanghai has turned a common study problem into a profitable AI product, earning 18,000 yuan (approximately US$2,600) from 90 orders in just three days. Zhu Shuhan, a Grade Two student at a junior secondary school, developed the app with no programming background, using AI assistance to build it in three to four days.

Shuhan's app, called Zai Chang (translated as "On Site"), is designed to help parents monitor their children's study sessions. According to reports from the South China Morning Post and The Economic Times, the app allows a parent to upload a photograph of themselves, after which the system creates a virtual parent who appears on screen while the child studies. A camera monitors the session, and if the child is detected playing on a mobile device or leaving their seat, the virtual parent issues a voice warning. After the homework session ends, the app generates a "concentration report" based on the child's study period.

The idea stemmed from Shuhan's own experiences. Her parents were often busy and could not always sit with her during homework, she said. Without someone around, she sometimes found herself distracted. This personal challenge led her to create a digital study supervisor, as reported by The Economic Times.

Competition Success in Hangzhou

Shuhan's creation earned her third prize at a national AI product marketing competition held in Hangzhou from August 21 to August 23. The competition, which involved more than 50 participants, judged entries not by technical expertise but by the revenue their AI-generated products earned during the three-day event, according to the South China Morning Post.

Her app secured 90 orders, bringing in total sales of 18,000 yuan, which helped her attain third place. She also received 5,000 yuan (approximately US$700) in prize money, as reported by The Economic Times.

Shuhan began using AI only last year, according to a report by the Shanghai Morning Post cited in the South China Morning Post. Her younger brother, a Primary One student, is already using the app, The Economic Times reported.

The original concept for the app included a feature labelled "mother getting angry," but Shuhan removed it, according to The Economic Times. Online users praised her idea, with one commenter saying, "She is incredible with a creative idea and the ability to leverage AI," as cited by The Economic Times.

How each outlet told it

A framing line is our reading of that outlet's own text — an interpretation, not a quotation and not a fact we assert. Check it against what the outlet published.

The Economic Times

Framing: Highlights a teen girl's success in turning a study problem into an AI app that earned a significant amount in three days. — Celebratory and admiring

as of Aug 31, 2026, 8:17 PM UTC

Facts Included:

A 13-year-old Shanghai student generated 18,000 yuan (Rs 2,600) from 90 orders in three days.
Zhu Shuhan has no programming background and built the app with AI assistance in three to four days.
She won third prize at a national competition in Hangzhou with more than 50 participants.
The competition judged participants by how much revenue their AI-generated products earned.
Shuhan’s product, Zai Chang (translated as 'On Site'), helps parents track children's behavior during study sessions.
The app creates a virtual parent when a parent uploads a photograph, and monitors the session with a camera.
The original concept included a feature labelled 'mother getting angry', which Shuhan removed.
Shuhan's younger brother, a Primary One student, is already using the app.
She received 5,000 yuan (Rs 70K) in prize money.
Online users praised her idea, with one commenter saying, 'She is incredible with a creative idea and the ability to leverage AI.'

Read the source article →

South China Morning Post as of Aug 31, 2026, 1:16 AM UTC

Facts Included:

A 13-year-old girl in China has earned 18,000 yuan (US$2,600) in just three days from an AI product she developed to assist parents in supervising their children’s study.
Zhu Shuhan, a Grade Two student at a junior secondary school in Shanghai, has no programming background.
She began using AI only last year, as reported by the Shanghai Morning.
At a national AI product marketing competition held in Hangzhou from August 21 to August 23, Shuhan secured the third prize of 5,000 yuan, competing against over 50 participants.
The contest did not include technical judges; instead, winners were selected based on their AI-generated apps’ income during the three-day event.
The app Shuhan created, called Zai Chang (translated as On Site in English), garnered 90 orders, resulting in total sales of 18,000 yuan, which helped her attain third place in the competition.
Once a parent uploads a photo of themselves using the app, the system assumes the role of a virtual parent, supervising their child while they complete homework.
Should the camera detect that the child is playing on a mobile device or leaving their seat, the virtual parent displayed on the screen will issue a voice warning.
Upon completion of the homework, the app generates a “concentration report.”

Read the source article →

What was claimed, and who backed it

AI-extracted; can misattribute a claim — see Methodology.

Each row is one claim, attributed to the outlet whose wording states it most clearly. Confidence rates how directly the source text states the claim — explicit and unhedged rates high; hedged, pieced-together, or internally inconsistent statements rate lower. It does not measure whether the claim is true. Status is Contested when two claims on this page negate each other; otherwise it counts the distinct outlets we found asserting that specific claim — so a single-source claim can still show high confidence, and a multi-source claim can show medium. Every one of those outlets is named beside the status, so you can check the count against the list. For claims extracted before we began storing that list, the row says so: it names the outlet the claim is quoted from and states that we have not recorded which outlets backed it. Outlets wrote at different times, so a figure that evolves — a casualty count, for example — can legitimately differ between rows; check the "as of" time next to each claim's source.

Claim	Confidence	Status
ClaimZhu Shuhan, a 13-year-old from Shanghai, earned 18,000 yuan (approximately US$2,600 / Rs 2.6 lakh) from her AI study app during a three-day competition in Hangzhou.	ConfidenceMedium	StatusSingle-source via The Tribune as of Sep 1, 2026, 8:47 AM UTC

Transparency & Audit Trail

2 distinct · 2 mastheads · 2 articles consulted: The Economic Times, South China Morning Post 1 claim extracted Version 2 Written 2026-09-01