Nurturing minds

An American educator resides in a quiet Chinese city owing to her love of teaching, Liu Xiangrui reports in Yinchuan.

Having spent about three years in the early 1990s teaching English to the residents of Yinchuan city in Northwest China's Ningxia Hui autonomous region, Melissa Kay Smith had grown fond enough of China to return in 2004 after acquiring a doctoral degree in education from the United States.

Since then, the 48-year-old, who was raised in the US state of Indiana, has called Yinchuan her new "hometown".