QIANXI, Guizhou - For 10-year-old Gao Defu, the daily commute to a primary school in Zhongshan village in Qianxi county, a remote village in Southwest China's Guizhou province, is not as easy as his city-based fellows' school-bound journey.

The boy gets up quite early to make sure he can arrive at Shaba Primary School at 8 am. It's two-hour journey from his home, through mountain roads.

Gao is one of the school's 169 students who often miss lunch because of the long distance between their home and the school.

"Sometimes, when I wake up early, I cook corn meal and take it along for lunch," Gao said. But on most days he goes hungry.

Gao's parents divorced and both left him back home to seek job opportunities elsewhere when he was three. He never saw them again.

"I can barely remember what they look like," said Gao. His parents have not kept in touch since they went away.

He lives with his 71-year-old grandfather, the only family member he has now, in a crude thatched hut built 20 years ago.

Usually, Gao's dinner at home is the corn that his grandpa plants in the fields. He barely has a chance to eat rice except when the local government distributes relief a couple of times every year.

Traveling back home for lunch during the two-hour break at noon is not a possibility as it is too far away.

Last April, Deng Fei, a journalist at the Phoenix Weekly magazine, launched a movement that inspired millions of netizens to donate money to provide free lunches to poor school children in remote areas.

"We are glad to see social organizations lending a hand in solving the problem," said 41-year-old Fang Kunyou, the school's headmaster.

"We hope the government takes up the responsibility, enabling all rural students to enjoy a free lunch," Deng Fei said.

"The county's education bureau allocated at least 100,000 yuan ($15,700) to help the school build a dinning hall for the kids in July," said Li Duanhua, an official from the bureau.

Shaba Primary School now has sufficient cooking facilities and hired cooks, thanks to the support of warm-hearted netizens and the government initiative.

Generous netizens from Beijing and Hangzhou have donated a huge supply of books since the school drew widespread public attention.

"I hope he will study in the county's middle school some day," said Gao's grandpa, though the boy has never stepped out of the village.

"I watched Beijing on television at a classmate's home," the boy said. "If I did well in school, maybe I'll see the capital city some day when I grow up."