In 2008, Lu Jianfen, a 54-year-old female teacher of the Yi ethnic group, became a problem because she did not have a "teacher qualification certificate".
She was forced to write a "letter of appeal" that spread in the circle of friends.
This has to start in 1995.
Do you know dadu River Gorge? It is located in Jinkouhe District, Leshan, Sichuan, Ya'an Hanyuan County and Ganluo County of Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture.
It is an extremely deep canyon, with a maximum depth of 2675 meters, 542 meters deeper than the colorado sea depth of the world's largest canyon.
Just on the cliff face of this canyon, more than 2,000 meters vertically, there is a cliff village "Erping Village". The five wooden ladders erected on the cliff are its only "heavenly road" to the outside world.
24 years old.
After graduating from junior high school, Li Guilin returned to his hometown of Wanli Village as a private teacher. For five consecutive years, his student grades were among the best in the school district. Hearing of his fame, The Bridge Township Party Committee Secretary Amita found him and played the emotional card:
A mountain cannot be separated by a day, and a river is separated by two families. Wanli Village and Erping Village are across the river, and the children here need a teacher, so you can help them.
The steepness of the cliff village, as a local Li Guilin, is known. He subconsciously pushed back and turned back to help you find a teacher.
Amr Tower is serious, what if you can't find it?
Li Guilin was not good enough to retreat, and said the next sentence that bound him for the rest of his life, if no one really came, I would come.
Polite words, he said.
To teach in Erping Village, one must have culture, but also know Yi language, and more difficultly, it is known to be "a place where monkeys can climb up". He walked all over the village with his iron shoes, and no one wanted to go.
Unable to break his word, he had to harden his scalp and go for a walk himself.
Before dawn, we set off, walked to the Wusi River, crossed the snow area, and went to the Dadu River, which was already three poles in the sun. A rickety chain bridge crosses the Dadu River, and the bridge plate is sparse. Cross the bridge, climb over a hurdle, pass through a village, but there is no road ahead.
A cliff stood in front of him. Next to the cliff is a wooden ladder, erected at nearly ninety degrees.
Reality made him break out in a cold sweat.
Hard, didn't expect it to be so hard.
This is the cliff leading to Erping Village.
Closing his eyes and climbing up, he climbed through five ladders in a row, and finally saw Erping Village in the distance——
A deep mountain village with no roads and no electricity.
The people of the village generally live in such hedge houses and thatched huts that are woven with bamboo and smeared with cow dung.
A bitter and dangerous place, Li Guilin took a look at it and wanted to leave.
Don't talk about teaching, be careful to put your life here. He thought of an excuse, and said to go home to the backpack and never slip back.
As a result, after one day, his selfishness was crushed by the villagers here.
They prepared wine and meat and welcomed him warmly.
In the evening, he was also sent a sheepskin mattress and a sheepskin quilt.
After learning that three teachers could not bear the pain and ran away one after another, Li Guilin understood that this was the big guy who wanted to keep him.
But look at the villagers here, the old man and the old lady are barefoot, the old man is draped in torn felt, and the clothes worn by the old lady are torn into strips of cloth in front, and the chest is open. Middle-aged men generally wear only one pants, torn like a basket.
Some children are seven or eight years old, male or female, and running naked.
Li Guilin said that he is a person who likes to think differently:
If I live on this mountain and my children need teachers, when will this generation of illiterate people and suffering end?
He can't forget the first time he taught the children.
The eyes of those children who were simple and strongly looking forward to the outside world were like sharp sunlight, firmly tightening his heart.
Still gone?
He was like a nail, tied down.
Not only did he not leave, because he was too busy to come, no one wanted to go up the mountain, and a year later, he dragged another man into the "trench":
His wife, Lu Jianfen.
At first, his father, Li Hongyun, was opposed. Li Hongyun did not want his daughter-in-law to go up the mountain to suffer, nor did he want his grandson to suffer with him.
It turned out to be his father-in-law, Lu Xingquan, who had done the ideological work of his family.
Lu Xingquan said:
I'm also a teacher. I know that the dolls there are more pitiful and need more pain.
In order to comfort his wife, Li Guilin said that the ladder in Erping Village is not as difficult as the outside world says, the villagers there are very enthusiastic, the scenery is very good, the air is good, living there, it is not easy to get sick.
Lu Jianfen climbed the ladder on his back to carry his two-year-old son.
It was the hardest road she had ever taken in her life.
The danger of the ladder, she thought. Even more dangerous than she had imagined, she accepted.
What she didn't expect was the danger of life.
After following her husband to the residence, after opening the door, she was overwhelmed by the sight:
The house was surrounded by walls, nothing, a broken desk, no drawers yet.
Only in the corner, there was a mound of dirt, a pot, three bowls next to it.
She burst into tears. Especially when I saw the quilt cover on my husband's bed, with a hole in it, a rat pulling out a lot of cotton.
She couldn't believe that this was how her husband had lived this year.
For them, according to the income at that time, buying a new bed was also a lot of pressure.
Even today, when many people learn her story, they still can't imagine,
At that moment, how determined did she make before she decided to take her child and bet her fate on the cliffs of this poor and remote area?
If Li Guilin ignited the hope of the children in Erping Village, Lu Jianfen's arrival was the whole field of hope.
She's not just a substitute teacher.
She is the wife who takes care of her husband's life and the mother who raises her son to grow up.
She also became a mother of dozens of children at school.
She not only taught the children knowledge, but also taught them the principles of being human, and taught them how to take care of themselves.
The children were sick, there was no doctor on the mountain, and the couple paid for it themselves and carried medicine from the bottom of the mountain. Watch them take their medicine and take water. Even the simplest cold and fever cost more than two hundred yuan per month.
The children urinated on their pants, and Lu Jianfen sent them to the toilet, boiled hot water, and washed them. Washed their clothes and changed their children's clothes.
Because the children are all day schools, the family is poor and does not bring lunch, Lu Jianfen can't bear to see the children hungry there, from 1991 to 2011, for 20 years, their family also accompanied the children, did not eat lunch.
Until 2011, there was a Guangdong Benevolent Enterprise that donated the cost of lunch. Therefore, every day, Lu Jianfen would make noodles on the first day and steam the steamed buns that the children would eat at noon the next day. There were no vegetables on the mountain, so she opened a vegetable garden in the open space of her home.
Between classes, she plays with the children and helps the girls comb their hair.
After school, she often accompanied and carried the children to and from school with her husband.
They often come to the door, like Zhang Guimei in Yunnan, to call back the children who have dropped out of school one by one.
If they can't afford the tuition, they pay for it out of their own pockets.
Their good deeds are seen by the villagers who cannot read big characters, and everyone says that they are great good people.
The old village chief Mu Yuju said: Before Teacher Li and his wife came, everyone here was "blind." I don't even know the money. Go to the toilet on the mountain, and don't know "men" and "women".
It was they who became this isolated mountain village, seeing the eyes of the heavens.
After the story of Lu Jianfen and her husband came out, it shocked China and also touched the world.
Who would have thought that in such a difficult environment, "Tianti Primary School" has been ranking among the top in the county for many years in terms of test scores, enrollment rate, consolidation rate and promotion rate. Many children from other villages, not afraid of the difficult roads, have signed up to study here.
Countless honors began to come to the fore: the couple was successively awarded the "National Model Teacher" in 2007, the "Moving Chinese" in 2008, the "Chinese Education News figure" in 2009, and the "Most Beautiful Strivers" in 2019...
Their deeds were made into the movie "Cloud On the School", which was awarded the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China.
In 2008, with the efforts of the local government, the cliff road and wooden ladder leading to Erping Village were replaced by iron ladders, and most of the sections were safe (although the most dangerous section of the mountain road, because of geological conditions, there was no iron ladder and guardrail, here is a 45-degree inclined cliff road, the roadside is a cliff that cannot be seen to the end, and Li Guilin is also required to send children back and forth every time).
The overall environment of the school has also improved, with cement hardening and the raising of the national flag.
Xu Yan, deputy county magistrate of Ganluo County, said that with the successful conclusion of poverty alleviation, further adjustment of Erping Primary School ("Tianti Primary School") in the future is also imperative. In the future, Erping Primary School will be adjusted to be responsible for teaching only kindergarten to the second grade of primary school. According to the number of students and the wishes of parents, if there are fewer students after the adjustment, the layout will be further adjusted; if there are more students left and meet the relevant regulations, the corresponding number of teachers can be retained.
However, what is the reality of this extraordinary effort for Lu Jianfen and her husband? The children are settled, what about them?
Lu Jianfen, who has 18 years of status as a substitute teacher, takes a meager salary, and every month:
From 60 yuan, it later rose to 200 yuan.
They tighten their clothes, correct their work under kerosene lamps, and use sweet potatoes as a staple food all year round. Not long ago, the self-media person "Qin Beast" went to visit, and after crossing the mountains and mountains and experiencing the thrill of almost getting lost, he was shocked to find that the staple food of the couple at noon on the same day was still:
Sweet potatoes and potatoes.
In 1996, Li Guilin was arranged to study at Huili Normal School, and Lu Guifen had to teach classes and take care of two children alone, but eventually fell ill due to overwork.
There was no doctor on the mountain, and she had to shed tears and take the child down the mountain. This time, her parents tried their best to keep her and did not allow her to return to the mountain.
Lu Jianfen, a mother of dozens of children, did not listen.
Unexpectedly, not long after, the younger son had another accident.
Once when I jumped rope, I accidentally fell and broke my arm.
Considering that the children had been delayed in studying for a while, and it would take an unknown amount of time to send their youngest son to the hospital, they found a native doctor to go up the mountain for treatment.
Unexpectedly, this "carelessness" caused their lifelong regrets.
When the students were on vacation, they sent their son to the hospital for examination, and the doctor said that the radius was not connected:
This hand is already disabled.
This incident deeply stung the couple. Is it worth it to focus on other people's children but delay your own children?
They had planned to leave, but the parents and students who had been retained were moved to tears.
Lu Jianfen recalled a detail:
On a snowy day, there was a child whose nose fell on his lips, and his hands were frozen, but he still held the pen, looking intently at the blackboard, trying to write the word well...
The old landscape swayed before their eyes repeatedly like a movie.
If you can really bear to walk away, why do you stick to more than 10,000 suns and moons in such a bitter day?
They poured tears into their stomachs and made this decision:
Suffering, suffering our whole life; suffering is suffering our family...
It can make hundreds of students of several generations in this big mountain understand culture and knowledge, and not suffer like their predecessors, and the "suffering" of a small family is also worth it.
However, honor, after all, is not something that can be eaten.
Today, both children are ordinary people working in Chengdu.
She and her husband have had low incomes for many years, have no money to buy a house, and now go down the mountain and can only live in their mother's house.
The house in Li Guilin's hometown is already a dangerous house, and his parents live elsewhere.
Once the old man said to them sadly and helplessly:
If you can live in the house you bought for half a year before you die, you will be blinded.
The old man was worried that they could not have a nest of their own.
If they used to work in school and still live in the mountains, now that they are older, will they still live in their mother's house after retirement?
After a lifetime of suffering in the mountains, he could not give his wife and children a home in his old age, which was the place where Li Guilin felt the most guilty.
Their lives are still hard (they still often use dried sweet potatoes and potatoes as staple food), and Qin Beast, a self-media person, has taken a video and lamented that "this is the bitter place where he can't stay for a day".
As far as Lu Jianfen is concerned, she still has a lot of difficulties.
This year, she retired.
According to local standards, whether buying a house or building a house, only a one-time payment of 3,000 yuan and a settlement fee of 3,000 yuan will be paid to Teacher Lu.
According to last year's house price, it can be bought in her hometown of Hanyuan County:
About half a square meter house.
Qin Beast inquired about this standard, the standard for building a house is from 1990, and the standard for settling down is 1988:
It hasn't changed for more than 30 years.
What is puzzling is that there is a local alpine subsidy, which stipulates that the altitude of the township and town governments is the standard. For many years, the township government at an altitude of 600 meters can enjoy a high-cold subsidy of 3600 yuan per person per year for 6 months; while the "Tianti Primary School" is more than 1800 meters above sea level, and the two "most beautiful teachers" have never received it.
What makes Lu Jianfen most upset is that although she was converted to a "regular teacher" in 2009, her current salary is 3700 yuan, plus subsidies, and she can get about 4000 yuan.
However, in the 13 years since the conversion, it has not been carded because it is not a "college degree", and so far I have not gotten one:
Teacher qualification certificate.
Nominally she was a teacher, in reality, she didn't get at all:
Recognition of eligibility.
And because there is no "recognition of qualifications", Lu Jianfen has been holding the lowest salary level of 13 for more than ten years, and has not been promoted to one level in 14 years, and is still the lowest level:
Grade 3 teacher, professional and technical level 13 post.
This means that she has worked hard all her life, and when ordinary formal teachers are promoted to salary according to years and various standards, she will eventually receive a pension according to the minimum post wage standard.
I inquired about the calculation method of teachers' salaries, and the 13 levels varied greatly, the highest was more than 6,000 yuan, and the lowest was only 1,600; not to mention the evaluation of job titles, which required the "hard lever" of college education.
With courage beyond ordinary people, they took over the dreams of hundreds of children in the cliff village, but now, their dreams are shattered in front of some dogmatic "hard bars".
This made Lu Jianfen feel extremely cold.
A generous couple, no more luxury.
Ms. Lu said she only wanted recognition of a "teacher qualification" at the end of her career and a fair pension like a regular teacher.
Is this excessive?
What do you want to say? A civilized society does need a lot of tight rules and regulations, but it is also impossible to lack the manifestation of humanity in special circumstances.
The most heart-wrenching thing is that when it is most necessary to abide by the rules, every time we see the power and money hooking up with each other, and stage many eye-popping "concealment and cross the sea"; and when the green channel that needs human care the most, it always uses the cold wall of "stipulating so" to crush people's warmth with this heart.
I tend to think that those principals who cannot arrange reasonable treatment for Lu Jianfen because they do not have a "college degree" are not deliberately "humiliating" the most beautiful teachers, but are "powerless" in a huge system, and then they are powerless, and then "just like that". But I also always feel that if I really have compassion, even if I can't jump the knot of "retirement salary", I can finally find another way to give a great teacher a dry reward to the times.
There may be people who disagree and think that this is a big deal - after all, Teacher Lu is pensioned, but he just "did not meet expectations", not "old and helpless" in the strict sense. I am really worried that those who are in charge of retiring Lu Jianfen also have this idea, and then choose not to act "naturally".
The next words are for such people:
It's not just about two "cloud" teachers.
It will be seen by more people, how does our society treat these compatriots who have "burned for life", how to deal with this most scarce dedication in human beings?
They are not without a way out, they also have the opportunity to change their own destiny and pursue excellence in life. For example, Li Guilin has served as a factory manager, led the team to repair the road, and also had a mine friend who asked him to join him with high salaries; for example, Lu Jianfen, if she had not become the "mother" of so many children, and far from just shouldering the responsibility of an ordinary teacher, if she was in a city with convenient material conditions, she might not have no opportunity to study in "junior college"; she did not even have to go to this "muddy water", she could have gone far away, her brother lived overseas, and also gave them the opportunity to go abroad. And one of her most eye-catching requests for help was to ask this brother to find money and repair running water for the villagers...
They are only confined to the conscience and blood in their hearts, and when other people's children have no way, they bow down to the cattle and build their own bodies to build a "ladder of flesh and blood" that will send them to the day of birth.
If such a person cannot be treated fairly, it will imply that generations of future generations, and then see compatriots trapped in the Jedi, urgently need someone to pay a fearless spirit to save, and then do this:
Is it worth it?
For the sake of others to live better, their lives should be fully fed; for the happiness of others and sacrifice their own fate to choose, their life path, in this vast population of 1.4 billion people, the world's second largest GDP, should be more solid support.
If such a person is finally emptied by despair, what he gets is nothing but the applause and applause of the void, it will only encourage society to further carry forward the pretense and hypocrisy, and it is bound to extinguish the fire in the hearts of the future sincere people, stifle the light that originally belongs to the scarce spirit of mankind, and force insensitivity and mercenarism to become the mainstream value of society.
If this is the case, it will not only be a mockery of the two teachers, but also a great humiliation to our people who advocate "respecting teachers and valuing the Tao".
I think that's not the voice of most of us.
Based on this, I write this article.
I hope that we can tell Mr. and Mrs. Li Guilin with full concern, listening, and encouragement: 30 years ago, when you had no remorse, sacrificed the diversified life possibilities of a family, climbed this cliff that no one wanted to go to, and pushed open the door of hope for the children; today, when you are alone in the precipice of fate of homelessness, there are also a pair of nameless hands that try their best to hold up the great love ark that reaches the hope of a most ordinary person to "enjoy his old age in peace" for you.
You are praised as the most beautiful teachers on the white clouds.
In your old age, you can no longer be "cloudy".
Thank you.
Feel good friends, help to point out the praise Oh, thank you for raising your hand!