Former substitute teacher Li Jianxin: Before becoming a farmer, he was a teacher丨Don't be confused 2024

Li Jianxin (Nongjian/Photo)

In mid-December 2023, the cold wave came, and the Wei River was still. In Luojiamo Village, Huichuan Town, in the southwest of Weiyuan County, Gansu Province, the pine branches are frozen, forming rime, and the sky and the earth are white. The soil in the field froze, and the winter wheat that emerged was the only green.

Li Jianxin, 63, lives here. He worked as a substitute teacher for 24 years, and from 2005 to 2016, Southern Weekly continued to report on the plight of substitute teachers in the western region, bringing the issue of identifying and compensating hundreds of thousands of substitute teachers into the public eye. After being "cleared" in 2008, Li Jianxin picked up a hoe and became a farmer.

"I used to be a teacher, but now I'm a farmer. Li Jianxin is fully adapted to his status as a farmer. He also felt that farming made him happy - his blood pressure and blood sugar were high when he was not working, and he returned to normal after labor.

The fields froze and there was no farm work, so Li Jianxin played poker with his neighbors at the village stage at noon until the cool hit in the evening, and then he went home.

Page 18 "List of Caring People"

Li Jianxin is 63 years old and has been away from the pulpit for 15 years. On his 15 acres of land, he planted Codonopsis, Angelica, soybeans and rape. He told the Southern Weekend reporter that the price of codonopsis in 2023 is 60-70 yuan per catty, and angelica is 80-100 yuan. In the first two years, the purchase price of these medicinal materials was only a dozen yuan.

The price of agricultural products affects the livelihood of farmers. Li Jianxin opened a drawer on the left side of the TV cabinet, which was full of blood pressure medication and three gout medicines for the husband and wife - Li Jianxin's gout lasted for more than ten years, and once he attacked, his left foot was so painful that he could not walk. Every month, the couple had to go to the town hospital to buy nearly 300 yuan of medicine.

Li Jianxin never thought of leaving the village. "With more than ten acres of land at home, she can't do it alone, her body is weak, and she needs me to take care of her most of the time. Li Jianxin pointed to his wife sitting next to him and said.

In mid-November 2023, his wife fell while clearing snow at the door, and fractured her left wrist, which is still in a plaster cast.

Before becoming a farmer, Li Jianxin was a substitute teacher.

In September 1984, at the age of 24, he officially became a substitute teacher at Fuhe Hope Primary School in Luojiamo Village, receiving a salary of 40 yuan per month. In 2003, he obtained a college diploma and his salary was raised to 80 yuan/month.

At that time, the salary of a public teacher with 20 years of teaching experience in Weiyuan County had exceeded 1,200 yuan per month. The monthly salary of public teachers exceeds the annual salary of substitute teachers.

On November 3, 2005, Southern Weekly published a report on the front page of "Substitute Teachers' Hardships and Perseverance Shake People's Hearts, and the Deputy Secretary of the County Party Committee Writes to the Ministry of Education with Emotion", which attracted public attention to the plight of substitute teachers in Gansu.

On November 15, 2005, Li Jianxin received a donation of 100 yuan from two graduate students of the 2004 class of the Department of Journalism of Sichuan University. He has an A5 notebook, the first line of the first page reads "Caring People Fang Directory", which is densely packed with records of the donations received from 2005 to 2008, and details the address and zip code of each donor. Most of the donors were not named, a few had phone numbers, and most donations amounted to $100-200. He wrote 18 pages.

The report also established more connections between Li Jianxin and donors. In the years that followed, he maintained close contact with some of his donors. Xue Dong from Tibet, Qian Xiaoyi from Shanghai, and Wang Xiaoyun from Beijing ...... "He treasures these donors who have more connections." In 2006, after his son was admitted to Fudan University, Qian Xiaoyi also visited the school and took a group photo.

As for his treatment, after the report was released, it was raised to 120 yuan/month.

"It's a little bit close to turning positive"

Li Jianxin has been a substitute teacher for 24 years, and compared with public teachers, in addition to lower salaries, there are also fewer guarantees. There is no heating subsidy, no year-end bonus. He had always hoped to become a public teacher. Unfortunately, the policy of the 1990s required that teachers who had taught before December 1984 could be converted to public teachers by examination, and the documents indicated that he had been appointed in April 1985. Not even eligible to take the exam.

By August 2008, Li Jianxin and others came to "retreat".

In May 2001, the State Council promulgated the Decision on the Reform and Development of Basic Education, which mentions the "gradual elimination of substitute teachers". By March 2006, the Ministry of Education had announced that it would dismiss 448,000 substitute teachers over a three-year period.

Li Jianxin is also one of them. He was dismissed along with two other teachers from the same school, Zhang Shuiqing and Qi Jian, who were also from Luojiamo Village and six or seven years younger than Li Jianxin.

After being dismissed, Zhang Shuiqing left Luojiamo Village and worked as a TV maintenance worker in Weiyuan County. Three or four years ago, when Zhang Shuiqing repaired the TV for Li Jianxin's younger brother's house, the two met once. Li Jianxin learned from the surrounding population that in September 2021, Zhang Shuiqing had a sudden cerebral hemorrhage, was hemiplegic, his speech was slurred, and he was taken care of by his wife and children.

In the month of 2022, Li Jianxin met Qi Jian when he was shopping for New Year's goods in the town, and he felt that he was "very energetic". Qi Jian said that he has been to Xinjiang, Qinghai, Shaanxi and other places over the years, moving bricks and stirring ash on the construction site.

Li Jianxin revealed that since 2008, nearly 100 substitute teachers in Weiyuan County are still discussing explanations, from the county to the province, asking to solve the problem of dismissal subsidies for private teachers, and in 2019, he saw them on Kuaishou.

Li Jianxin didn't participate, he felt that it was unnecessary, "the family can be well fed and warmly dressed." In his simple cognition, "teaching is just a meager contribution, and people don't care about you, which means that you are not good enough at work, and those advanced people on TV, they do better." But he also understands those who don't give up. He learned that most people are struggling, and some teachers have children who have not yet completed their education.

Li Jianxin is quite satisfied with his current life. Previously, when his family was struggling, he envied those teachers who had successfully turned into public schools, "they had a pension of four or five thousand yuan a month, and we still had to work in the fields."

It's history

On the evening of December 14, 2023, Li Jianxin came to the outside of Fuhe Hope Primary School and took a tricycle from his home, which only took 5 minutes.

Snowflakes fell on his shoulders. In the three-story school building, there are also three classrooms with lights on. The doorman was gone, and the teacher he knew well had been transferred. He looked through the curfew and from a distance. He pointed to the school building and said, "The dolls don't finish class until half past five."

In the corner of the school, there are a few parents standing tightly covered, and several electric tricycles are parked aside. Outside the teachers' dormitory, there were also four or five cars parked.

The sixth-graders were taken to town, where there were sixty or seventy students and ten teachers. The students come from Luojiamo village and neighboring villages, and the teachers are "from outside," Li Jianxin said, adding that although the school has arranged dormitories for teachers, the teachers live in the town and drive 20 kilometers round trip.

Occasionally, Li Jianxin will miss the time he was teaching. He remembers that when he first arrived, the school was a courtyard house, and it was only a two-story building in 1988, when it had more than 300 students. Li Jianxin teaches mathematics and has 24 classes a week, and he is only free to do farm work on weekends.

At that time, the students of Fuhe Hope Primary School had good grades. Among the 16 primary schools in Huichuan Town, the results of Xiaosheng were among the best. The class of 2007 made him very proud, from the first grade to the fifth grade, it was Li Jianxin, and the pass rate and admission rate were the first in the town.

In 2020, Li Jianxin once heard that Fuhe Hope Primary School had been withdrawn, and he was worried that if it was withdrawn, the children in the village would have to go to the town to study.

Substitute teachers are a thing of the past.

In June 2019, the "Opinions of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council on Deepening Education Reform and Comprehensively Improving the Quality of Compulsory Education" stipulated that "qualified non-enrolled teachers shall be accelerated into the staff, and no new substitute teachers shall be created". In 1997, there were 860,000 substitute teachers in primary schools, and in 2020 there were 163,000, the proportion dropped from 12.9% to 2.8%.

After 2020, the China Education Statistics Yearbook will no longer count substitute teachers separately.

Looking back on his 24-year teaching career, Li Jianxin still feels that it is "worth it". Take the bus from the village to the town, and if you meet a student who has taught, you will rush to buy him a ticket. Among so many people, just buying him a ticket, he feels that the weight is still different.

Once, Li Jianxin met a student, and the student introduced to his own child, "This is the teacher who taught me." The doll is curious: how does the teacher who taught you farm at home?

Li Jianxin could only smile.

How to go from "confused" to "not confused", Li Jianxin believes that the key lies in labor. In his view, farming is not only a physical exercise, but also a mental tempering. When he was first dismissed, he needed to find friends to drink tea and chat to relieve the depression in his heart. Now, he feels that the days of farming are simple and simple, "I just think about how to grow soybeans and medicinal herbs, what pesticides to use, and what fertilizers to use."

On September 10, 2000, the Weiyuan county government issued Li Jianxin with a certificate of honor as an outstanding teacher, and 23 years later, when Li Jianxin showed the certificate to a reporter from Southern Weekend, there was no yellowing or creases on it.

Southern Weekly reporter Wei Cuicui

Editor-in-charge: Wu Xiaoyu