Couple change 1,000 lives by running school

After 22 years in mountain village, Wang Pu and wife Zhang Wenfang have come to think of students as their own children

A couple who have been the only teachers in a remote village in Southwest China's Chongqing for 22 years have shared their love and wisdom with their students and, in the process, demonstrated the ethics and sense of responsibility today's teachers exemplify.

As a result of the efforts of 57-year-old Wang Pu and his 53-year-old wife, Zhang Wenfang, to inspire students to pursue their dreams and put an end to passing on poverty, some 1,000 local children have been educated, and more than 100 went on to college.

In 1999, at his mother's request, Wang left his post as a math teacher at a middle school to become a teacher at Pu'an Primary School.

The 600-square-meter school, founded in the 1980s, has a single two-story building with classrooms on the first floor, and a canteen and dormitories on the second. It is the only school in Pu'an village, which is in Zhongxian county.

Located in a remote mountainous area, Pu'an sits 700 meters above sea level and is about 23 kilometers from the center of the nearest town. It has a registered population of more than 2,000, but fewer than 400 actual residents, according to Tian Dongbo, a village official.

Wang said that it was his mother, a selfless woman and former middle school teacher, who encouraged him to help out in Pu'an, despite having to take a 30 percent cut to his salary. Pu'an was his mother's hometown and the place where he was born.