YINCHUAN, Dec. 24 (Xinhua) -- Plato wrote: "If a man neglects education, he walks lame to the end of his life." And Pan Hongke, a 53-year-old teacher in northwest China's Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, is resolute that his students won't follow that path.
The right side of Pan's body was permanently disabled due to infantile paralysis when he was nine. Relying on a walking stick, he went through college and helped thousands of village children leave the mountains.
"Since I'm handicapped, I couldn't help my parents with farm work. The only thing I could do was study hard," he said.
His right hand was disabled, so he practiced writing with his left hand. He couldn't walk a long distance, so he slept on the floor of the room where students went to refill their bottles with hot water every night for three years.
He became the only student to finish high school among his primary school classmates.
In 1985, he became a teacher in the primary school of his home village called Yaotao. The shabby school had already "scared away" several teachers before he came.
To keep Pan, the village gave him a piece of farmland, but couldn't afford a salary. For Pan, this was more than enough.
"I like teaching. I only need to worry about feeding myself," he said. His aspiration to become a teacher in his village emerged after an interesting episode during the Spring Festival one year.
It's a tradition for Chinese people to paste red paper with different auspicious words on doors of houses, a kitchen, or a corral during the festival. But a farmer in the village mistakenly pasted one reading "thriving livestock" on his house door instead of his cowshed. And no one seemed to notice, because no one could read.
Pan noticed it and was not amused.
To lift more people out of illiteracy, he took his teaching job seriously. To improve his teaching skills, Pan gave lectures Monday to Friday and attended education training on weekends in a nearby county several kilometers away. He obtained a college degree with excellent grades at the age of 37.
In 2000, he was finally qualified as a teacher and began to receive government subsidies. The once dilapidated school has been renovated as well.
Though his students kept leaving with their migrating parents to study elsewhere, Pan stayed. And this year, he only has three students -- two at kindergarten age and a first-grader.
Despite only having three pupils, Pan believes everyone is entitled to an education.
"It takes time for children to switch from thinking in terms of images to logical thinking," Pan said. Thanks to his continuing self-education, he now teaches mathematics through counting peas and playing games rather than focusing on boring digits.
"Left-behind children are usually from poorer families and have fewer choices in life. Therefore, education is even more important for them," he said.
He was given the title "inspirational role model of Ningxia" in 2014, an annual government award to people who make contributions to public interests.
Besides knowledge, he knows that spending time with his students is really important when their migrant-working parents are not around. He sings with them after school and supervises their exercise as well.
"A healthy body and a wholesome personality can get them far," he said.
