A teacher's moving story

Dedicated educator is on a mission to rejuvenate rural education in a remote mountainous community and provide the best education to its children, one school at a time, Yang Feiyue reports.

With her ponytail and big, square glasses, Cheng Feng looks every bit the schoolteacher.

Yet, to many of her students, the 33-year-old is more than that. Cheng's care for her rural students has extended beyond the classroom and makes her a mother figure to them all.

During the just past summer vacation, Cheng didn't take time off but paid home visits to rural students of the Liling Primary School, which is nestled in the mountains more than 120 kilometers from the central area of Poyang county, East China's Jiangxi province.

Most students have been left behind by their parents, who have to go to work far away from home and are looked after by their grandparents.

"Seeing these special families and special children is what made me realize the importance of rural education, and it is one of the major reasons why I have stuck around all these years," says Cheng, who also grew up in Poyang.

Since learning that one of her students, Tan Yeting, and her brother, were just scraping by on the meager income of their grandparents' handmade broom business, Cheng would pay regular visits to Tan's home.