Teacher gives rural students a sense of greater opportunity

Almost every day, Mi Famei climbs the mountain to reach the school at the top and quietly places the lunch, which she prepares for her daughter, in the school's dining hall.

During her daily visits, she often sees teacher Yang Wenqing busily shuttling back and forth between three classrooms to supervise her 22 students.

Yang is the only teacher of this small-scale school, more precisely a teaching center, located in Dengyunzhai village, Luxi county, Central China's Hunan province.

The tiny school was specially built for this remote rural area with a sparse and scattered population. The school arranges different graders from the neighboring areas into one single class.

Situated in a mountainous region with poor transportation, the village cast off poverty in 2016. It is the home to many "left-behind children", as young and middle-aged villagers have migrated to work in the coastal cities.

"Currently, 15 of the 22 students in our school are 'left-behind kids'," Yang says.

The 53-year-old teacher volunteered to come to Dengyunzhai a decade ago when Luxi county set up its highest altitude teaching center to facilitate education among the school-age children in the vicinity.

"Someone has to be there," Yang says. "The purpose of the teaching center is to provide pre-school care and educate the pupils in the first and second grades. When our students are able to go to the regular primary school 4 kilometers away on their own, they will be enrolled in higher grades.