Martin Li

    martin.mouse@163.com

    A SHENZHEN couple has been living with 20 children from underdeveloped rural areas in Guizhou Province for more than a year, on an island in Jiangxi Province.

    Zhou Yuyang and his wife, Liu Wanfeng, are using their savings to fund the children’s education at a private school in Jiangzhou.

    The children do homework and play together while also learning to live independent lives.

    Although the couple’s savings are running out, the couple has decided to keep raising the children for at least another five years.

    Earthquake brings change

    Zhou and Liu lived a well-off life in Shenzhen before 2008. They had apartments, a car and a lively child.

    Then the catastrophic Wenchuan earthquake jolted Sichuan Province in 2008, claiming more than 80,000 lives. The couple were shocked by tragic images on TV, and Zhou joined volunteers heading to the quake-hit area. He carried stretchers and distributed relief supplies there.

    Zhou continued to worry about people suffering from the quake after returning to Shenzhen, so he went to the quake-hit area again and resumed efforts to help with transportation of supplies.

    The experience inspired Zhou to think about the value of life. He’s always said “a person should not live for money.” Although he didn’t work for half a year while he was volunteering in quake-relief efforts, Zhou felt fulfilled.

    Teaching in Guizhou

    At the beginning of 2010, a Shenzhen charity organization sent Zhou to teach as a volunteer at Shiban Primary School in Shiban Village of Guizhou, in southwestern China. Liu joined him there six months later.

    The village’s underdeveloped state made an impression on the couple. Many villagers still lived in thatched cottages and electricity had not been available until 2008. Only 10 children from the village graduated from junior high school between 1949 and 2010. The 160 students at Shiban Primary School only had temporary teachers, who were not able to teach English.

    The couple’s arrival helped bring changes to the village.

    “Teacher Zhou gave erasers and pencils to students who were bold enough to open their mouths and try to speak English,” recalled student Zhu Meiyan. “Many of us were encouraged and gradually become more extroverted.”

    Zhou taught almost all the courses at school. Thanks to Zhou, village children saw a computer for the first time in their lives and paid their first visits to an adjacent county.

    Additionally, the couple gradually found that the substandard educational conditions were not as serious as some of the village’s habits and customs.

    Children in the village seldom washed their face and feet, and rarely took baths, for example.

    Liu began educating children about the importance of good hygiene habits. She required them to take a bath at least once every two weeks. Children whose necks were found dirty would be asked to write compositions. As a result, children gradually developed better hygiene.

    Another hurdle was that children in the village often were asked to get married when they were only 14 or 15 years old. The young marriages mainly were for money. A woman in the village who was about 20 years old already had given birth to seven children, the couple said.

    “I want to continue my studies but I haven’t received education equal to grade six at a primary school,” a 15-year-old girl once said to Liu. The girl often breast-fed her baby in public.

    The couple gradually became popular with local villagers. Many parents believed they could change their children’s destinies.

    The ties that bind

    After teaching in the village for more than two years, the couple decided to return to Shenzhen because their child was not used to the dialect or educational conditions in Guizhou.

    But one day, when they were back in Shenzhen, Zhou received a phone call from a student in the village. The student told him that a 15-year-old girl was going to get married and the sister of a 14-year-old girl wanted to take her to seek a job outside the village.

    Zhou was shocked by the news, because the two girls the student mentioned had worked hard at their studies and had dreams of careers.

    The couple went through several sleepless nights as children in the village occupied their minds.

    After several calls to villagers, Zhou found that neither students nor parents there were confident about the village’s middle school, so they didn’t want to continue their education.

    So Zhou and Liu decided to send some children from the village to be educated in Jiangzhou, their hometown in Jiangxi Province, where they had a three-story house.

    Zhou called Wang Xianguo, the head of Tuanzhou Middle School in Jiangzhou and a former teacher of Zhou. Wang agreed to enroll children from the village.

    Zhou now teaches English at Wang’s school.

    The couple has renovated their Jiangzhou home to accommodate 20 children. Zhou and Liu also have spent about 48,000 yuan (US$7,742) to pay their tuition.

    Zhou transformed a table tennis table on their home’s third floor into a study table so the children can do homework after school.

    Many of the 20 children said they would be willing to one day go back to their village to teach.

    Another 5 years

    Although the couple has drawn attention in the media, very little subsidies or donations have been found for the children they help.

    The couple has been living on their savings since 2008.

    Zhou said they’ve decided to hang on for another five years and will try to look for people to subsidize the village children.

    “I plan to go back to Shenzhen to continue my previous life after five years,” Zhou said.

    Liu said returning to their previous life might be impossible.

    “A person should not live for money.”

    — Zhou Yuyang, a Shenzhen man who has been supporting 20 children from underdeveloped rural areas in Guizhou Province for more than a year