There is a Hope Primary School in Beihong Village, Beiji Town, Mohe City, Northeast China's Heilongjiang Province. Since March 2006, a border company of the Army under the PLA Northern Theater Command has successively sent five soldiers to this remote primary school as volunteer teachers.
In March 2006, Beihong Village, a remote area with 136 kilometers away from the nearest county, had no post service, no electricity and no roads. One day, soldier Song Hongju went to the school to participate in voluntary work, and the dilapidated tables and chairs in the classroom, extremely scarce teachers, and the tough learning conditions grieved him.
After careful consideration, Song Hongju applied to the company to volunteer to teach at the school and became the school's first "soldier teacher". Because he had to participate in the company's duty and training every day, Song could only compress his rest time in the evening to prepare lessons and arranged his annual vacation time during the school's winter and summer vacations to teach the pupils there.
Qin Guoqiang, the company instructor, introduced that when Song met children who dropped out of school due to family difficulties, he would persuade their parents repeatedly, and used his allowances to buy stationery and exercise books for the children in a bid to reduce their financial burden as much as possible.
Song's selfless behavior moved the villagers very much. Several parents brought back their children who were already in elementary school in the county. They all said, "We can rest assured because we trust our 'soldier teacher'!"
Since then, more soldier teachers have taken over Song Hongju's job, including Hou Guoqing, a soldier from the Tsinghua University.
For better teaching, Hou Guoqing made the teaching contents into vivid and interesting PowerPoint presentations, which made the children who had been accustomed to chalk and blackboard more interested in learning. During recess, Hou and the students talked with his teachers and classmates at the Tsinghua University via video link and listened to their campus stories.
In addition to the classroom teaching, the company also organized a variety of educational activities for the children including the joining ceremony of the young pioneers before the boundary marker and picnics on Children's Day.
In the past 16 years, 50 students from Beihong Village got out of the mountains through the efforts of five soldier teachers, 17 of whom were admitted to the university and were able to see the wonderful world outside. Wang Zhonglei, the principal of the Hope Primary School, said that four graduates, as far as he knew, have followed in the footsteps of soldier teachers and joined the Chinese military.