I am a Big Player
Chapter 264 - 262, Support Education in the Mountainous Areas (Second Update)_1

Chapter 264: 262, Support Education in the Mountainous Areas (Second Update)_1

Liu Bing said that, and everyone suddenly understood that the whole tourism thing was just a trap, they were actually here to volunteer as teachers!

The beautiful dreams were instantly shattered by reality, and now that they had arrived, it seemed like they couldn’t disembark from this ’pirate ship’ anymore...

If it’s about volunteer teaching, so be it... They had always heard how tough teaching in remote areas could be, and now they could at least experience it firsthand, and have something to talk about when they got back: What’s the fun in traveling abroad? It’s teaching in the mountains that’s truly interesting, where one can elevate their soul.

However, they still underestimated Ren He. What Liu Bing and the others didn’t know was that Ren He had specifically chosen one of the harshest places...

In his past life, Ren He had already experienced teaching there, although the conditions were not the harshest, and he was merely there to experience life. For Ren He, volunteer teaching was actually greatly beneficial to himself, the lonely and torturous nights in the empty schoolhouse with only a few teachers were the toughest he had ever experienced.

But after the teaching experience, his entire demeanor had changed somehow.

The Qinghe Club members sometimes complained bitterly, and Liu Jiamin sometimes felt the world was unfair to her. Although joining the Qinghe Club had improved her situation a lot, occasionally she still harbored some negative emotions.

Now, making them exercise every day provoked wails and howls of despair, watching as Jiang Haoyang lost weight, the spirits of everyone had improved greatly, but they still lacked a true elevation.

Liu Bing and the others watched eagerly as Ren He’s vehicle entered deeper and deeper into the mountains, and he couldn’t help but swallow nervously, "Bro, just how remote is the area we’re going to teach in?"

"You’ll know when we get there," Ren He said with a smile. ZC county was notoriously impoverished, and the mountain villages within it were some of the poorest in the whole country. By the time they got there, there were no more proper roads, just dirt paths.

If it weren’t for the sturdy pickup truck, they would have had to walk into the mountains.

After bouncing along the mountain road for almost an hour, they slowly began to see another mountain village emerge between the earthy yellow slopes. As the car passed by, Ren He could see children carrying firewood that was half a meter taller than themselves walking towards the village.

The Qinghe Fund’s school building was located at the edge of the village. It was the only building that wasn’t made of mud bricks in the whole village, sticking out prominently, like an oasis in a desert, symbolizing hope.

Liu Jiamin suddenly asked, "Why are they wearing such thin clothes?"

It was mid-January, the coldest months of the year, but the children they just passed by were clothed in thin layers, even their pants had holes without patches, and they weren’t wearing cotton-padded jackets, but rather single-layered clothes.

This was simply beyond belief for Liu Jiamin and Liu Bing.

Ren He said calmly, "From childhood, we are taught that when it’s cold, we should wear cotton-padded jackets, down coats, sweaters, thermal pants, and thick shoes, right? But you may not have considered that some children from these mountain areas have never heard such advice because they don’t have cotton-padded jackets, down coats, sweaters, thermal pants, or even fabric to patch their clothes."

It wasn’t an exaggeration. The reality was that there were still too many impoverished mountain areas in China where children had no food to eat, no clothes to wear, no books to read, and no teachers willing to come.

Here it was, in the year 2006, in this new era, where a volunteer teacher’s monthly wage was 360 yuan, and a substitute teacher’s was just 90 yuan a month. With such conditions, who would come?

Most of those willing to teach had received higher education, and those who had received higher education aspired for higher income – this was the universal value. Who would come here?

So when faced with such situations, money had to be taken out from the Qinghe Fund to pay the teachers.

When Zhou Wumeng first came here and saw how bitterly the children were struggling, she burst into loud sobs, crying like a child with a broken heart, unstoppable by anyone.

It was truly too harsh.

The place to fetch water was a deep well in a hollow twelve kilometers outside the village; to draw water, one had to pull up a bucket from over a hundred meters deep. Drinking water was such a painful process, how could you say they weren’t suffering?

Once you entered this mountain, everyone’s phone lost signal, communication could only rely on shouting, and writing letters.

Some people envied the old days: "The days of yore moved slowly, with horse-drawn carriages and mail, a lifetime was enough to love just one person."

But when you truly move from the modern city to another world, you will find out that it’s just a romanticization in poetry, and no romanticism can withstand reality.

Letters were indeed slow, but a widow might still turn to Wang next door; however, the hardship of poverty was real.

Ren He simply wished for everyone in the Qinghe Club to experience the makeshift life, and then discuss poetry and distant places with integrity. They would be qualified then because they would know what was truly the hardest part, hard enough to bring tears to your heart, hard enough to keep you tossing and turning at night when you think of such a place, hard to the core.

In his past life, he had seen a news story: a rural child got into university, carrying ten thousand kilograms of oranges to pay the tuition fees. Some said it was a publicity stunt, and Ren He felt somewhat disgruntled at that time. Why make a stunt out of it? That’s the state of education in China, why turn a blind eye to it?

Ren He even thought about collaborating with Elder Zhou, wanting to make teaching for 15 days a standard for joining the Qinghe Club, to make it a customary practice.

The Qinghe Club was good, the treatment was fine, but whether in the past or present, it was not a place one could just enter as they wished.

Ren He also believed that those who came out of the Qinghe Club would certainly not be nameless; he had to make these true elites of society understand how many people were still suffering in the world, and if they succeeded, helping others along the way wouldn’t hurt.

Watching the pickup truck head towards the newly built Hope Primary School, many children cheerfully followed behind it towards the Qing He Hope Primary School, and even though their clothes were thin and cold, it seemed not to affect their occasional happiness.

The people in Qinghe Primary School heard the engine outside and came out. Ren He poked his head out the car window and laughed heartily, "Elder, I really did as I said, how about that?"

Zhou Wumeng, with disheveled hair, smiled, "It’s good that you came, good that you came!"

Liu Bing was suddenly shocked; even though Zhou Wumeng was now devoid of any semblance of image, he could still recognize at a glance that this was the grandfather of a classmate named Zhou Muqi from his junior high, the literary giant Zhou Wumeng!

Fuck, the world is simply getting more and more fantastic, Ren He actually knows Elder Zhou too?!

...

Some might think, what’s the point of writing this, it’s boring. This plot won’t last too long, I just want to write about it, and there are interesting parts to come.