In my whole life, I thought that the public school I went to had the worst condition ever: there was only a small playground with tracks of  200 meters, a small basketball court, and a five-floor building which had small classrooms where fifty people had to squeeze in. 

So when I heard of teaching children under the Aiding Poverty Program, the first thing that popped into my head was “how can there be a school poorer than the public school I went to?”. Conditions of the school and quality of the education were two different things, and I knew that this school’s teaching was even worse than their condition, so I founded a program of teaching kids under poverty in Heyuan with my friend Wendy. I was eager to explore how poor they could possibly be. 

It was the day we should be leaving and heading toward Heyuan. It was burning outside, so I hurried to the car, where I was relieved by the AC. My mom once laughed at me and called me “Girl sustaining life by AC”, and I was pretty proud with that: I couldn’t imagine a life without AC, especially during summer.

Tall urban edifices trailed off, diminishing as we drove away from Shenzhen. Images outside the window flashed by, shifting from highly industrialized city to agricultural rural countryside. Arriving in Heyuan, I discovered that the tallest building only had 3 floors, which was definitely shocking to me.

I felt anxious. We had to negotiate with the head of the school, Mr.Wen, about our teaching programs, and I couldn’t help but think of all sorts of questions: Is Mr.Wen easy to get along with? Are we able to convince him of our program? Will students be interested in this new subject they have never encountered before? Will I mess up the entire plan? What does Linbu Primary School look like? Is it going to be worse than the city?

Yet I kept my questions in my mind, deciding not to bother others.

The next day. 

We drove on a sinuous path, trying to find our destination. At last, a big rusty iron gate, a few bulletin boards, and some big golden characters that said “Linbu Primary School” leapt in our eyes.

Inside the primary school was shocking. There were only two buildings, each with two floors. There was no air conditioner, nor fan. The only thing to keep the temperature down was wind that passed through open doors and windows. 

There was only one class for each grade, while each class only had ten to twenty students. Nearly no family was rich enough to buy uniforms, so students were not required to wear them. 

When the students saw us, they were excited, since there was hardly anyone who would want to visit this place. It was between class periods, and some younger kids ran to us and stopped one or two meters away, not knowing what to say or what to do. 

I was amused by their reaction and, knowing it wasn’t the right time to laugh out loud, pretended to look at the buildings. There was a room separated away from the classrooms and did not fit in among all the other poor conditioned rooms. Later, I learnt that that was the computer room, where the only few computers were located, and the computers were recently donated by a bank via an anti-poverty program. 

Mr.Wen showed up a few seconds later and invited us to his room. We managed to squeeze in the little available space we had, and began our speech. 

Mr.Wen looked at our proposal and frowned.

“Okay…… But I don’t understand why your program is important to our education. These children…… They are already struggling with their three main subjects: as you know, the educational system puts special attention to us due to our situation, so my students have to work extremely hard to get an ideal score. I don’t know how your program can help my students…” He hesitated and licked his lips, trying to phrase his sentence rather mild.

I started to wonder if our decision to teach these students was correct. They already had a hard time working on their own life and school work, while we were trying to push them and introduce them a subject which they had never encountered before. I leaned back, deciding to pass the negotiation to Wendy. She took the power, looked at me, and smiled. 

“I understand your concern, Mr.Wen,” she said, “and I hope you can also understand that what these students need isn’t simply basic education. We are introducing them to a new world, and we are hoping that our teaching can make a difference. For example, they may perform better in middle school since they’ve already learnt most of the knowledges… Yet I can’t make sure what exact difference we can provide them, but expanding the horizon of these students’ views on the world is always beneficial. I’m not sayin’ we are the ‘messiah’ or ‘heroes’: they deserve to receive the same education as normal primary school kids.”

Mr.Wen nodded and seemed to approve our point. Wendy kept on explaining something, but I wasn’t paying much attention. The idea of a “new world” lingered for a long time in my mind.

Leaving Linbu, I could still see the curious faces with eyes stuck on our car from the rear windshield. Waving, they became smaller and smaller, and finally disappeared from our sight. 

They are just children who mean nothing to us: we won’t receive anything, and they are just like any other kids. But for them, we are the essential bridge introducing them to a whole new world, a brand-new reality.

There isn’t much difference between them and me. We are all human, and we all have the same right to receive the same education. However, it was the environment they grew in that shaped a part of their future, as if they were destined to born and die in that environment. I wish I could do something for them. Even though what I taught was only the most shallow knowledge of what I knew, it still meant a lot to those children and it might change their future.