“Become the candlelight to brighten the future for children in impoverished regions”

--The story of Du Andong and Cao Xiaohua, a couple who spent 11 years teaching at a 5000-meter altitude

"When the wind blows, it causes the rocks to run; all four seasons we wear winter jackets." At an average altitude of over 5,000 meters, where oxygen in the air is only 40% of that in the rest of the country, this is the highest county in the country, the Shuanghu County in Nagqu City of Tibet Autonomous Region, where many people flinch in front of the harsh natural environment. However, for the married couple Du Andong and Cao Xiaohua, who were born in the 1980s and are teachers at the Shuanghu County Center Elementary School, this is the paradise where they can realize their dreams.

"Our dream is to become teachers, impart knowledge and educate people." Du and Cao are from the same hometown, and they met and fell in love while studying at Xinjiang University. After graduating in 2008, they saw the public recruitment information for teachers to teach in Tibet. Despite concerns over leaving home to work at a faraway and high-altitude place, they nevertheless followed their dreams and both applied for the teaching jobs at the city of Naqu. In March 2009, they came to teach at the Shuanghu County Center Elementary School, where they have stayed for 11 full years.

Departing from Nagqu by car, driving northwest for an entire day, there are finally some human traces. This is Shuanghu County, with an average altitude of over 5,000 meters, also known as "the experimental ground for challenging the limitation of human physicality". The County Center Elementary School is the only six-grade elementary school in the four neighboring villages and towns, where children within a 100km distance all come here to study.

"There is a severe lack of oxygen, electricity is only available at night, and my cellphone often loses signal......after an entire semester, we gradually adjusted to life here." Recalling their first arrival at Shuanghu County, Cao Xiaohua exclaims that the plateau she dreamed of coming is worlds apart from the climate and the living conditions in other areas. She said: "High altitude sickness often gives me a headache, only walking for a few steps would cause me to pant heavily, every day I spend at Shuanghu is an extreme challenge for my body."

Tibetan children from the pastoral area speak limited putonghua (Mandarin), there is a great barrier in teacher-student communication. "I can't always speak, I have to also make hand gestures to let students understand both aurally and visually."

Shuanghu County Center Elementary School is a boarding school. Since it is far from home, many students go home only once every semester. In this situation, Du and Cao act not only as teachers, but also as parents to the students. They would carry students to the hospital late at night, take students to buy daily necessities on the weekends, wash students' hair, and wash their clothes......"Winter is often as low as -20 to -30 degrees Celcius, I can't tolerate seeing students wash clothes in this cold weather and their hands turn red, so I do it myself," said Cao.

To give love also means receiving more love. "Godmother, please come back soon, I miss you!" This is what students wrote on the back window of Du's car in September 2017. At the time, Cao was taking maternal leave in her hometown in Shandong, when she saw the photo sent by Du through Wechat, her nose became sore. She didn’t expect to be missed when she was a few thousand miles away.

"To become the candlelight to brighten the future of children who live in impoverished regions is our biggest motivation for teaching at Shuanghu," Du said. During his first semester teaching here, students from second Grade averaged a score of only 7.8 in Chinese course. "Whenever I stood at the classroom door, my heart felt heavy as if a rock crushed in it."

After 10 years, Du and Cao fumbled and developed a unique teaching method, they sacrificed innumerable resting time and finally ranked top in their teaching achievements. "In one final exam, the 3rd class of Grade 5 achieved an average score of 82.3 in Chinese course. This score became the highest record since the Shuanghu County Board of Education created such a tally,” Du stated proudly.

"I started teaching that class since Grade 3, we built a deep teacher- student connection." Cao remembered that in early 2014, the pressure to enter middle school caused them to persist in teaching make-up classes during lunch break for students for over 100 days. As a result, the majority of students from this class successfully passed the exam to attend the Tibetan class in a mainland school.

In 2015, Du was diagnosed with ventricular arrhythmias. The doctor recommended him to leave the plateau region immediately. Nowadays, Du needs oxygen inhalation in order to fall asleep, yet this did not shake his determination to stay at Shuanghu.

For 11 years, Du and Cao have stayed far from their homeland and relatives, taught students in accordance with their aptitudes, strived to create high quality classes, and devoted to advancing educational development in ethnic-minority and impoverished regions. They dedicated their lives to teaching on the three-foot podium, quietly contributed themselves, and have consistently received honors like "Key Teacher", "Excellent Teacher", and "Educational Experts" from the school, county, and city levels. thanks to their contributions to poverty relief through education, they found themselves on the list of Tibet Autonomous Region's poverty alleviation special award recipients early this year.

"I don't think about whether the road ahead is smooth or muddy. Since I chose a faraway destination, I will march forward regardless of hardship,” Du wrote his thoughts in his diary. He also said that to send more children out of Shuanghu’ pastoral areas to a bigger world is the value and significance of him and his wife's persistence to remain at 5,000 meters above sea level.

Contributed by Karma Dorji,Zhang Yu, Xie Wei

Translated by Zhang Junye