“When Mountain Flowers Bloom”, girls in the mountains smile

Author: Luo Qing

On September 10 this year when China marked its annual Teacher’s Day, a newly released TV series-When Mountain Flowers Bloom-hit China and caused a sensation once it was on the screen. It captured the hearts of many fans. Some netizens praised it as “a melodious piece of music about growth, love and dreams.”

 

The work is based on true stories of Ms. Zhang Guimei, a Chinese high school teacher and the founder of a free public school for girls deep in the mountains in southwestern China’s Yunnan Province. For  years, Zhang, the 67-year-old principal of Huaping Senior High School for Girls, has been earnest in looking for solutions to address the dropouts of school girls in Huaping County. Her purpose is pure and clear–to help the girls attend school and to empower them with knowledge and integrity for a better future.

 

Zhang’s stories moved the viewers. Despite mobility difficulties due to illness, she persisted in visiting the dropping out school girls, pleading for their return to schools. For that, she had to walk, ride motorcycles, and even horses on rugged mountain trails. Every summer, rain or shine, she would accompany her students to take the college entrance examination known as Gaokao. She would tirelessly encourage the girls with her firm belief, “An educated woman can stop herself from being a vine attached to others and can choose the life she wants to live”.

 

Zhang Guimei believes that knowledge changes destiny. Taking the Gaokao and going to university will empower the girls form the mountainous areas and change the trajectory of their life. Over the past decade, Zhang has helped and supported more than 2,000 girls out of the mountains into colleges, and a broader world. After graduation, many girls have their jobs as doctors, civil servants, police officers, or teachers like Zhang. The smiles on their faces are the brilliant mountain flowers, beautiful and moving.

 

Ms.Zhang Guimei is one of the excellent teachers and education practitioners in China who have worked wholeheartedly to provide quality education to millions of Chinese children. Just as Mme.Peng Liyuan, wife of Chinese President Xi Jinping and UNESCO’s special envoy for promoting girls’ and women’s education put it, “She is like a ray of hope, illuminating the children’s dream-seeking lives.”