On the 118th floor of the Shanghai Tower, outside the towering observation hall, the Huangpu River passes through the neon-dazzling city like a winding jade belt. Inside the glass curtain wall, a low-key charity dinner was going on. Wearing a custom-made suit, Li Yuanshan held a champagne glass and softly discussed a new project to digitize rural education with several entrepreneurs. The watch on his wrist is an ordinary mechanical watch he bought five years ago. There are minor scratches on the edge of the dial.
"Mr. Li, how many schools has your 'Starlight Project' covered?" Asked a media person.
"By the end of last year, there were 2,174 schools," Li Yuanshan said in Mandarin with a southwest accent that is difficult to completely eliminate. "This year we plan to add 500 more schools, focusing on the mountainous areas of southwest China."
On the other side of the banquet hall, a documentary on the development of Zhiyuan Technology was played on a huge LED screen. The picture flashed through cave dwelling classrooms on the Loess Plateau, stilted primary schools in the mountains of Yunnan, and the futuristic R&D center of Zhiyuan Technology Headquarters... And finally settled on a yellowed old photo: a thin boy carrying a worn schoolbag, walking on a winding mountain road, with rolling gray mountains behind him.
The camera zoomed in, and there was a line of faded small words in the lower right corner of the photo: September 1, 2003, the first day of school, 12 years old.
The boy's eyes were astonishingly bright, as if he had seen the sea beyond the mountain.
