|
Yesterday's People's Daily carried a moving photograph: a woman pushing a tricycle in the rain. She was drenched but the goods on the vehicle were well covered by plastic sheets. A placard hung on the handle read: "I buy reading materials, magazines and auxiliary teaching materials for primary school students." The woman in the photograph is Li Ling, headmistress of a primary school in Huaiyang county, Henan province. She was in Zhengzhou, the province's capital, collecting second-hand books for her students back in the Hope School she set up seven years ago in her hometown after she graduated from a local normal school. Her deeds began circulating online a few days ago, and netizens lauded her as the "most beautiful rural school headmaster born after 1980". In fact, the 27-year-old woman is not pretty and looks much older than her age - apparently a result of her hard work and the harsh conditions she lives and works under. Her selfless devotion to the education of children in a rural area is touching. And she is not alone. There have been many reports about teachers who have dedicated their lives to children's education in poverty-stricken and remote areas. Take two people that the Chinese media reported about last October. Shen Qijun, a 45-year-old man, taught farmers' children in a mountainous village school in Hanyuan county, Sichuan province, for 26 years. He was the only teacher in the school, which stands on a cliff above the Dadu River valley. His students and their parents loved him very much. And he said his wish was that his students in the secluded village do not lag behind other children in the outside world. | 
