Best and brightest: Teachers who inspire the nation

Teacher makes map for home visit in villages

Lan Songlin, a science teacher for 16 years at Tashi Junior High School, solved the problem of finding the homes of students in villages by drawing a handy map that works better than navigation apps in June 2017.

The families of the school's 583 students are mostly scattered in 130 villages in a mountainous town of Quzhou city, Zhejiang province. Some are remote and lack transportation.

The village names are constantly changing due to mergers, and many roads have yet to be uploaded on the digital map. All these add difficulties to teachers' home visits, especially for the dozen or so non-local teachers who have not been there long.

Having been to each and every village where the students live, Lan was able to dot the lines to show the villages' locations based on his memory.

Lan finished the map, receiving praise from his colleagues and leaders. Since then, a copy of the hand-drawn map has become a must for teachers paying home visits.