Primary School Students - New Award-Winning Essays

Author: Qian Fei
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-08-01
Features: I looked out the window following my mother's finger: What a magnificent scene it was—hundreds of red lanterns formed a long dragon, slowly moving. The red lanterns were anonymous. My mother once taught in a remote mountain village in East Chongqing. The entire "school" had only her as the teacher and a single earthen and stone house. There were over 30 students, ranging in height from short to tall, with the youngest around seven or eight years old and the oldest thirteen or fourteen. There were students from first to sixth grade. The mountain students lived scattered and the paths were far, so the children ate their lunch at school. My mother rushed to prepare meals for the 30-plus children in the morning, then continued teaching in the afternoon, and had to prepare lessons for six grades by night. Naturally, her work was very busy. The sun set early in the mountains, especially in winter. The children lived far away, and the mountain paths were rugged. Every day, my mother carried a red lantern to guide them home. Only when it was pitch dark did she return, carrying the lantern, stepping deep and shallowly over the uneven ground. The red lanterns were made by my mother herself—she wrapped red silk cloth around a circle of bamboo or wood sticks, bending an iron wire in the middle to form a clip to hold half a stick of pine resin. Every day, I watched my mother hurriedly carrying the red lantern, leading the children to school, and leaned by the door, watching her return home, exhausted. And the last thing my mother did every night was placing the half stick of pine resin for the next day's lantern inside it. My mother's red lantern gradually became a symbol of my mother. Parents waiting at the door could recognize their children had returned the moment they saw the red lantern. The villagers on the way would know the children had finished school upon seeing the lantern, quickly making way and shouting loudly toward it, "Teacher, you've worked hard!" P29