The first teacher who taught in dongxiang county was a college student from other places.
It was twenty years ago that I heard a lady from Linxia Women's Federation tell me about her past work in Dongxiang. A foreign college student went to dongxiang county to teach and worked as a teacher in a remote mountain village primary school. In the years of teaching in Dongxiang School, the farthest place she has been is Suonanba in the county seat.
She stayed in the village school for three meals and ate potatoes every day. Eat boiled potatoes left over from last night for breakfast, potato chips for lunch and potato chips for dinner. In Dongxiang, potatoes are both staple food and non-staple food. Teacher Otawa, a local villager, eats the same meal, and the change pattern of three meals a day in the rice bowl is always inseparable from potatoes. At that time, it was not easy to eat enough potatoes. Living in a mountain village is scattered. Some children go to school for an hour and a half at noon, then go to class in the afternoon, and then go home to help their parents do housework at four or five in the afternoon. Boys drive sheep to the mountains to herd sheep, and girls help their mothers fill the kang. Village schools work and rest every week to take care of those students who are far away from home, otherwise they will not come to school. Many students have family difficulties. When she was teaching at school, she saw that the children's schoolbags were full of boiled potatoes brought from home. Those children who are far away from home go to school, some have to walk several roads and mountains, and they don't go home after school at noon. The children sat in the classroom and had boiled potatoes for lunch. Thirst, the school has a water cellar. Sometimes she will have lunch with the children and bake potatoes with them on the stove in the classroom in winter. Potatoes are cooked, and brown potatoes are all over the classroom, and the smell is fragrant.
One night, I heard that there was going to be a movie in the county. She met several teachers and walked several kilometers to the county to see a movie. In the eyes of the villagers at that time, this was really remarkable. How extravagant it should be, so that the students envied it for a long time: "The teacher went to the county to see a movie."
On the way back to the village primary school, there was no light in the middle of the night, the mountain road was dark, the surrounding mountains were tightly surrounded by night, and the stars overhead hung low in the sky, and the dense starlight was shining and crystal clear, as if it could be touched by hand. Several teachers are walking on the road. They told stories in movies to pass the loneliness on the mountain road. Drumming footsteps echoed on the narrow path, and they could hear the heartbeat.
After teaching in rural schools for several years, the young female teacher took time to go to the county seat again. She sent a registered letter home from the post office, which was written overnight in the dormitory the night before. At noon, it is lunch time. She was hungry and walked aimlessly on Sonan Street. The county seat in front of us is much more lively than the village. It's only one or two kilometers after visiting the county, and the bungalow shops on the street are next to each other. She bought some notebooks in the salesroom and left more than three yuan on her. When I passed a restaurant, the smell of mutton in the restaurant was overflowing. She can eat a bowl of noodles by feeling the money in her pocket. Standing in front of the restaurant, she thought for a long time, but still didn't want to go in. She pursed her lips, swallowed saliva, moistened her chapped lips, and her stomach was not so hungry at first.
People looked at the girl from other places, walking up and down the street alone. Thirst, she went to the slope of Baijialing. She saw a vegetable shop, so she went into it. There is a handful of radish on the ground. She asked the store to weigh some radishes, then went to the small restaurant next door and asked for a bowl of noodle soup. If she didn't wash it, she held the radish like a treasure and couldn't bear to peel it. She wiped her clothes a few times and squatted on the side of the road to eat. In early summer, radish just came into the market. After a few days, she lost moisture, faded a little, and her heart was chaff, but she ate with relish and was extremely sweet. She said, "The radish I ate that day is the best fruit I have ever eaten."
Life in Dongxiang was hard, but she fell in love with Dongxiang because love fell in love with barren land. Later, she returned to the city and left Dongxiang, the village where she had taught and lived for more than three years. Her feelings merged into Dongxiang, which she said was her "second hometown" and the best season in her life, and she stayed in this land. After more than 30 years, she can't forget the children in the village school, the open-air movie and the sweet radish she ate in Suonan Street. "That experience is a valuable asset in my life." She said with emotion.
The second teacher who teaches in dongxiang county is David Ding, a young American volunteer. Many people in dongxiang county know him. That year, I went to Dongxiang to interview David Ding. In the office of David Ding of the County Education Bureau, a bright five-star red flag hangs on the wall. In this small office, there are all kinds of postal parcels received by fundraising, school supplies sent by strangers all over the country, and clothes worn by some children. On a single bed against the wall, there is a package on the bed, which is almost full of textbooks, schoolbags and other materials for children.
David Ding took out a stack of photos of the rural school where he used to teach. In those photos, the innocent smiling faces of Dongxiang children are as happy as children. That's David Ding. There are many such happy moments, and the happiness that can be obviously felt in the rural schools is printed on the photos of four-inch paper. It is the kind of wealth behind a person's frugality and even poverty, which is reflected in the pure plateau and the loess-like luster in the sun.
"On one occasion, on the shuttle bus from Lanzhou to Linxia, David Ding and his wife Han sat in my front row, and David Ding solemnly asked the young people for tickets. The young man who was collecting the fare suddenly froze when he asked David Ding for a ticket. " On the shuttle bus from Linxia to Lanzhou, none of the local passengers asked for tickets. They know about private buses. To this end, the more serious Ding David said: "I bought a ticket by car, and the passengers bought services and insurance, so they should give tickets." The young man selling tickets was amused by him. He turned and pulled out two tickets and handed them to David Ding.
Rich and generous, David Ding gives the impression, but he is always so haggle over every ounce of himself. During his teaching in dongxiang county, all the educational donations received by David Ding were sent to the most needy schools through his hands, but his own teaching life was extremely simple. When he was teaching in dongxiang county, David Ding's daily food was very simple, and he basically ate fried potatoes for three meals a day. Teaching in dongxiang county, "the monthly food cost is only 240 yuan, which is enough", said David Ding.
Once in a cold drink stand in Binhe Middle Road, Linxia, David Ding sat on a lounge chair under an umbrella. While reading the book in his hand, he ate fried sunflower seeds, completely unaware of the cars coming and going.
The third teacher who teaches in dongxiang county is a familiar friend. That year, she was assigned to teach in a rural school far from the county seat. Teaching is a good thing, but she really doesn't want to go to the countryside because her elderly mother is ill and her son has just turned three. At first, she left through contacts, but the effect was not very good. Thanks to her efforts, she went to teach in the countryside. She is the head teacher in the third grade of primary school. A year later, when she came home from school at the weekend, the children had to help her carry her schoolbag, take the teacher from the foot of the mountain to the roadside, and wait for the bus with her on the roadside until they got on the bus. Every weekend is like this. Later, in the tone of the head teacher, she pretended to have a straight face and ordered her classmates to say, "Go home after school and don't let anyone see me off again." Everyone said so, but after leaving the school, the students still followed her.
After teaching in that country school for a year, she reluctantly left that country school. She said, "If I had known this, why didn't I want to accept this happy experience?"
The touching story happened after the teaching. More than a year later, that summer, she was accompanying her sick mother in the hospital in the city when she suddenly received a strange phone call. Listening to the voice of a strange childish boy on the other end of the phone, she asked curiously, "Who are you?" The boy said, "Teacher, you forgot me. I am the monitor of the fifth grade. " She suddenly remembered. "That's the naughty boy. She thought of her students. That year she went to their home and mobilized his parents to let him go to school. After three consecutive visits, she finally reassured her parents to give her the child. Prevent children from dropping out of school, especially mobilize parents to let girls go to school, so that children in the village can persist in completing their studies. He is now in the fifth grade and has become the monitor. He told the teacher that his composition "I love Dongxiang" won the first prize when he participated in the composition speech contest held by the school.
Next, he said to the teacher on the phone, "My mother asked me to send you corn on the cob, which is the tender corn that my mother just picked from the ground." After hanging up the phone quickly, she hurried to the square. "When I saw that classmate, he stood in front of me sweating profusely and waved his hand from time to time to wipe the sweat from his forehead and temples."
"I was stumped at once." The most precious gift she received while teaching changed her attitude towards life. I believe that the power of education and love can change our world. She told me that before she went to teach that year, she stayed up all night, almost brewing for one night, and there were only four words in her mind-"Love my hometown". In a short period of one year, she thought about how to do a good job in teaching, not only the knowledge and inspiration instilled in children, but also how to hear from their mouths with the eyes of a Dongxiang child: I love Dongxiang.