The Years of a Teacher

One generation's journey through school, a lifetime devoted to education. From a combined-grade classroom in a muddy village school, to the passionate first post at a township junior high, and then to quiet perseverance at a county junior high, Liu Xuemei spent forty years studying and teaching.

In the season of spring breezes, simple school buildings, a battered bell, and a bamboo grove on the playground were the most unadorned sights of rural elementary schools in the 1980s. Innocent children, the warmth of village life, humble families, and devoted teachers: a group of educators upheld the village school and ushered in a bright, happy spring of learning for an entire generation.

In the summer of her youth, Liu Xuemei stepped up to the classroom for the first time, pledging her youth to rural junior high education. Passion, attempts at educational reform, the companionship of teachers and students, and the warmth of village life: countless educators, with their ordinary glimmers of light, upheld the whole world of rural education in the 1990s, while also finding warmth and love of their own.

As autumn deepened, the times changed abruptly. Educational rat races, chaos in private tutoring, and restless hearts swept through schools. Some colleagues left in pursuit of profit, some lost sight of their original ideals, and others went with the flow. Generations of educators like Liu Xuemei remained above reproach amid worldly turmoil and guarded a pure haven amid the tide of educational reform.

In the bitter winter years, a sudden tragedy, an uproar of online public opinion, and fierce social controversy laid bare every painful issue in education, every conflict between families and schools, and every hardship of the era. A truth that arrived too late finally gave the heaviest answer to the perseverance and helplessness of educators like Liu Xuemei.

Spring, summer, autumn, and winter, the seasons turn. This is not only the story of half a teacher's life, but also a true record of four decades of change in grassroots education. It captures the ups and downs of the classroom, the original purpose of education, the warmth of everyday life, and the spirit of the times.