GUARDIAN OF HOPE

On Wednesday, one day before the Teacher's Day, the 38-year-old teacher received many greetings from her students.

"Students in the mountainous area were simple and intelligent," said Yan Fuchun, teacher of Chinese literature in the Qingping school of Mianzhu, southwest China's Sichuan Province.

Qingping boasts rich minerals and beautiful scenery, but the village was ravaged in the devastating May 12 earthquake last year. Altogether 278 people were killed in the disaster, while another 190 were seriously injured.

In retrospect, the teachers believed they were lucky. "Our school building didn't collapse," Yan said.

After they escaped, the teachers realized that the paramount issue then was food. She recalled that there were two bags of peanuts in the dormitory and soon went back to the cracked building.

On the next day, while taking care of her students, she heard that her daughter's school building collapsed.

"I went to the field at night and cried my heart out," she said. Fortunately, she later learnt that her daughter survived.

On July 30 last year, classes resumed in a makeshift house.

It was a rainy day and the floor in the house was muddy.

As a teacher of Chinese literature, Yan assigned her students to write a composition as the first lesson. The topic was the most touching moment in their lives.

"Reading their stories, I was moved," she recalled. Some students wrote about doctors, some about teachers, some about volunteers, while one said, "we met with aftershock while leaving and rocks rolled down mountains. A soldier was killed for saving me..."

This semester, students moved to the new building.

"Each classroom was equipped with televisions and kids had sports lessons on a plastic playground." Yan said this used to be just the hope of students in impoverished mountainous regions.

In fact, the students had another hope -- to go to good schools and enter colleges. Teachers like Yan were guarding their hopes.

Talking about their own hope, the woman smiled. "I just want them to grow up safely."

THEY CREATE MIRACLES

Doctors said that Song Zhipeng couldn't live longer than 15 years, but now the man is already 22, a world champion of the Special Olympics.

In fact, Song was just one of the students who graduated from Liaoyuan school in Harbin, capital of northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, which was open especially to autistic, brain paralysis, hyperkinetic syndrome children and those with other mental defects.

Over the years, graduates from the school have grabbed 136 Special Olympic gold medals. The school also sent 39 students to work posts and 32 others to normal schools.

"For these students, our goal was to foster their speciality, so as to build up their confidence," said Zhang Lianchi, headmaster of the school.

The training was hard for both students and teachers.

Liu Tao was coach of the swimming. He well remembered a student namely Ding Yi.

"The student suffered from brain paralysis, and couldn't close her mouth while in water," he said.

Before she went into water, the teacher had to close her mouth with his hand, otherwise she would throw up everything into the pool.

Liu tried to persuade Ding's mother to let her quit, but the mother refused.

"Once I couldn't bear to see her suffering and looked for the mother again. When I found her, I was stunned: she was weeping behind a pillar," he said.

Finally, Ding learnt swimming, and won a gold medal in the special national games in breast stroke.

Teachers from the school were always excited seeing the miracles.

Yao Nan was a coach in roller skating.

"Most kids with brain defects were timid, not daring to move," she said.

The day when her first batch of students could finally skate, Yao was so delighted that she walked a long distance while going back home, instead of taking buses, calling her friends to tell them that she had created a miracle.

The teachers were not forgotten by their students.

Yang Yan, director of the school, remembered one day that a student who became a cleaner after graduation returned to visit her.

"He left two roasted chicken and rushed out," she said.

Considering that the boy just earned some 600 yuan a month, Yang decided to give back the gift. When she caught him, the boy stammered, "this is delicious...I can earn money now."

"At that time, I know that my efforts paid off," she said.

(Xinhua News Agency September 10, 2009)