Sweethearts to spend wedding gifts on school uniforms

An engaged couple in South China's Guangdong province wants to use the cash wedding gifts they receive online to buy school uniforms for students in the impoverished mountain areas.

Chen Huaxin and Wu Wenyuan were both volunteer teachers in a mountain village in Dafa county of Guizhou province when they fell in love. They decided to use the cash gifts they receive for their wedding to help the children in the poverty-stricken village, the China Youth Daily reported.

Chen, 26, first arrived at the mountain village as a volunteer teacher in 2007 when he was a sophomore journalism student at Guangdong University of Business Studies, and he was immediately struck by the poverty in the village. The primary school in the village has no teaching facilities other than desks and chairs.

Chen, who now works in the public welfare department of a media group, returned to the mountain village months later with four other volunteer teachers from his university.

He has since organized students from his university to act as volunteer teachers for the village school, and he fell in love with his future wife in one such teaching trip to the village.

Chen and Wu will hold their wedding ceremony in December. They have put a bank account number online to gather donations from Internet users for the pupils.

The couple said they hope to gather 52,000 yuan ($8,340) for 520 sets of uniforms, according to the report.