Riding for 24 years is just for children in the countryside to write "the most beautiful Chinese characters"
In the past 24 years, Mr. Qin’s wheels have run over rugged country roads countless times, and he has also fallen into the mud in rain and snow, but the end of the journey has not changed-he opened a writing charity class for rural children.
Qin Xiang was born in Yingxian Town, Linquan County, Fuyang City, Anhui Province. He loved hard pen calligraphy since childhood. Over the years, he has traveled to at least 34 rural schools, coached more than 7,000 students, and ridden 3 bicycles and 4 electric bikes.
The blue electric car in use has been repaired more than a dozen times. The front windshield and side body are covered with scratches. The black rearview mirror was replaced later. The tire rims and mudguards are made of wire. Temporarily fixed with rope.
Teacher Qin is of medium build, wearing jeans, white shirts and sandals for some years, plus 1300-degree thick lenses, to outline the entire image of the 44-year-old private teacher. In the three-year-old handbag, he contained his "baby": hard pen standardized Chinese character writing textbook, two newspaper exercises to be copied, and the student's award certificate in the calligraphy competition.
During the flood season of the Huai River this year, Qin Xiang went to the left-behind children classroom at Dongzhuang Primary School in Chengguan Street, Linquan County. During the 40-minute journey, electric vehicles drove through the stagnant water section many times. When he arrived at school, his trousers were wet with mud and water, so he had no time to rest, so he went to copy the exercises first. At this time, more than 30 students had already sat down, looking out the door with great expectation.
In class, with the clatter of chalk writing, neat Chinese characters appeared on the blackboard one by one. In the not spacious classroom, every child looked up at the podium. After class, the students gathered around the podium, some asked for homework, and more people said goodbye. This is the class scene that Qin Xiang has repeatedly experienced over the past 24 years.
In 1994, Qin Xiang, who was still in his second year of high school, left school due to physical discomfort. Wei Guian, the principal of Weizhuang Primary School in the town, approached him and said that the school did not have a language teacher and wanted to ask him to replace him. Qin Xiang agreed with a try. In the first class, he discovered that his classmates had already bought all kinds of tutorial manuals on the street, and the books were all traces of sketches and circles.
The children were wearing shabby and unfit clothes, holding long and short pencil heads, but with eyes eager to learn, Qin Xiang was touched. He had never been a teacher before, and he encountered a lot of confusion, and the classroom effect was not ideal. On the fifth day of work, he rode a bike for 15 kilometers, seeking help from his enlightenment teacher and elementary school head teacher Li Caiping.
Teacher Li gave his teaching materials to Qin Xiang and told him: "Do it!" Qin Xiang trembling hands took the "Teacher's Teaching Book" wrapped in a brand new cover, and said goodbye in tears.
Since then, Qin Xiang has not left the podium. He also taught himself agricultural knowledge and provided free technical advice to the villagers. He found that the children’s writing was crooked and crooked, and some students couldn’t even recognize the words he wrote. He had the idea of opening a calligraphy class, but the school’s funding was difficult and there was no way to pay another course. Qin Xiang said: I don’t want to be paid. !
At the beginning, Qin Xiang had no systematic calligraphy teaching guidance, so he could only use the "stupid way" to demonstrate over and over again, allowing the children to copy and learn.
In 1996, Qin Xiang learned from the broadcast that the Anhui Provincial Institute of Educational Science was conducting a seminar on the teaching of hard pen calligraphy for primary school students. He rushed to the town to call, through the 114 inquiry desk, to find teacher Zhou Genbao of the teaching and research institute.
"Whether the last stroke of the word'out' is upright or point? When writing the word'five', why does the middle one slanted to the left, so what should students do if it is easy for students to write upright?" After the call was made, Qin Xiang asked eagerly many problems. He still can't remember the warm voice of Zhou Genbao on the phone. "We have the "Trial Teaching Newsletter" here, and I will send it to you. Calling is too expensive, if something happens, we write to communicate."
From the "Teaching Newsletter", Qin Xiang saw a set of hard-written Chinese character teaching materials that matched the Chinese textbook. He bought it at his own expense and copied the content. At that time, there were no photocopiers in the countryside, so he put wax paper on the steel plate, first used a stylus to burn the text, and then copied with a mimeograph. Since then, Qin Xiang's handwriting class has for the first time a student "textbook".
He taught fifth grade students. After a semester, the other four grades clamored for Teacher Qin to take writing lessons. After that, Qin Xiang has to take at least 20 writing lessons a week.
At the end of 1997, 48 classmates from Qin Xiang's class went to the town to take the unified Chinese test, and all the test papers were rated as writing first-class papers. At the review meeting for the assessment, a leader of the town’s education office said: “Each school must bring a copy of the test papers of the fifth-grade students in Weizhuang Primary School to take a look at other people’s writing and rolling!”
Qin Xiang never gave up on improving himself. He went to work and read TV University. In 6 years, he never missed a face-to-face lecture. After hard work, Qin Xiang not only obtained the coveted teacher qualification certificate, but also obtained a bachelor degree in Chinese language and literature education from Beijing Language and Culture University.
However, in the process of promoting the standardized writing of hard pen Chinese characters, Qin Xiang did not rarely run into a wall. In February 2007, Qin Xiang came to a private school in the county seat and gave a public welfare class of hard pen calligraphy excitedly. After the mid-term exam, school leaders expressed dissent, and the school wanted results. Qin Xiang refused to give in. In the end, he was fired from the school. This was the first time he lost his job for "writing". On another occasion, Qin Xiang went to a school for promotion, and the teacher in charge of educational affairs mocked him as a "idle."
Later, in the "Opinions on the Development of Calligraphy Education in Primary and Secondary Schools" and the "Guiding Outline of Calligraphy Education in Primary and Secondary Schools" issued by the Ministry of Education, both pointed out that "hard pen and brush should be combined, and practicality and aesthetics complement each other." Qin Xiang observed that in many schools around, the atmosphere of encouraging students to learn hard pen calligraphy became stronger. He pondered that he had to continue to improve his teaching level.
In 2015, I heard that experts from Xiling Yinshe Publishing House came to Fuyang to train calligraphy teachers. Qin Xiang, who was not in the training scope, came from the countryside more than 60 kilometers by bicycle. Teacher Xu Xiaojun from the publishing house heard Qin Xiang talk about his experience and confusion and was very moved. Not only did he recommend Qin Xiang to participate in training, teaching and research activities, but also helped him find some teaching materials and monographs. This strengthened Qin Xiang's determination and confidence to take root in the countryside, and he also explored more systematic and rapid ideas and methods.
"Teach students the sitting posture and writing posture first. Only after this test can they teach strokes, structures, and words, so as to achieve the teaching goals of standard, correctness, neatness, and a certain speed." Qin Xiang said.
In fact, Qin Xiang is not in good health and his legs are unstable when he walks. That's because he suffered two injuries when he went to the countryside to teach, and he continued to go to the countryside without waiting for the injury to heal, "for fear of delaying class."
Because he was too busy, he gave up his hobby of literary creation, and he seldom accompanies him even during the critical stage of his son’s junior high school and high school entrance, and his wife’s surgery and hospitalization. The son once lost his temper to Qin Xiang: "Do you want to be exhausted on the way to support education?" Gradually, his wife and son also acquiesced to his "stubbornness." In recent years, Qin Xiang, who has never shopped online, has often received courier packages, all of which are Chinese medicinal ointments sent by his son who is a graduate student in Wuhan, as well as educational books and calligraphy teaching materials. When it came to this, Qin Xiang choked up. He felt that he owed too much to his family.
Since 2015, Qin Xiang’s average monthly salary for teaching has been only 1,300 yuan, and at the highest he received only 1,800 yuan. Over the years, he was frugal, and did not buy new clothes when his clothes faded, but he insisted on ordering newspapers and teaching materials for students at his own expense. In order to reach the supporting school faster, he bought the first electric car for 2,600 yuan, which was equivalent to his three-month substitute salary.
Once, when a private elementary school promoted public welfare classes, the principal originally did not support it, so he asked the monitor to ask "public opinion." The monitor came to the class and asked: "Do you want to learn to write? If you learn, you will have more homework than others!"
"We are not afraid!" All 63 students in the class raised their hands and voted "yes." At that moment, Qin Xiang felt that all his efforts over the years were worthwhile.
Qin Xiang's father, Qin Youen, was a former rural private teacher and has always insisted on providing supplementary lessons for students. When Qin Xiang was 6 years old, his father taught him how to write the word "person", and said earnestly: "When writing an adult with one stroke and one flick, you are dignified and honest."
In the past 24 years, Qin Xiang always gave a grand and simple "writing ceremony" every time he went to a school to give public welfare classes. He can write neatly with chalk: I am a good teenager (child) in China, and I love the great motherland. Speak Mandarin well and write well in standard words. The children read aloud.
Immediately afterwards, Qin Xiang will explain the evolution of Chinese characters such as "Guo", "Xue", "Xi" and "Love" from traditional to simplified Chinese characters, eliciting the beauty of the form, sound, and meaning of Chinese characters, and encouraging students to have "guo" and "home" ", study hard.
In 2001, Qin Guimin, a third-grade student led by Qin Xiang, won the third prize in the National Primary School Pencil Writing Competition. She was the first rural baby taught by Qin Xiang to win a national award. "Gui Min's family is very difficult, but she studies very hard and is a good seedling. After winning the award, she became cheerful, who was not good at speaking, and volunteered to become a representative of calligraphy. But after graduating from junior high school, her parents let her drop out of school to work, which is a pity !"
This incident hurt Qin Xiang's heart. He always wanted to reach out to more rural students and do something for them. In 2017, the Linquan County Committee of the Communist Youth League Education Poverty Alleviation Project "Dream College" recruited volunteers for teaching support. Qin Xiang was a substitute for teaching in 3 private schools, but he still signed up and chose to support teaching in the remote Luzhai Town and Huaji Town.
"Actually, learning hard pen calligraphy is not boring. You can taste the beauty of Chinese characters and make students confident, focused, and persevering." For a long time, Qin Xiang has also explored the combination of calligraphy teaching and appreciation of poetry works. Lu You's "Shi'er", Yue Fei's "Man Jianghong", and the lyrics "There would be no New China without the Communist Party" are all compulsory content in class.
Over the years, many students led by Qin Xiang have won prizes in hard pen writing competitions at or above the provincial level. Students or parents often report good news to Teacher Qin. During the epidemic, a student Qin Xiang taught 14 years ago added Qin Xiang's WeChat. "I just learned that you have been running this charity class for more than ten years. Thank you for giving us the basic skills. Now I find it really useful!"
Getting up before dawn to sort out the lesson plans, and going home in the dark at night, 24 years of hard work made Qin Xiang look older than his actual age. He frankly said that in the era of popular computer typing, he insisted on teaching hard pen calligraphy, which is regarded as feelings, but also a responsibility.
In the room of Qin Xiang's hometown, there are no bookcases, but there are always a few wooden boxes and cartons, which contain more than 20 handwritten lesson plans, some students' homework, as well as his calligraphy works and teaching paper awards. In 2007, the flood struck and destroyed part of the lesson plans, but he was not willing to throw it away. His persistence and love for rural education are all condensed in it.
China Youth Daily·China Youth Daily reporter Wang Haihan Source: China Youth Daily