The Chinese teacher who is ‘mother’ to more than 300 left-behind children
Now back in her home village in Shaanxi’s mountainous north, Ma Jun also grows vegetables with her mother and raises pigs with her father to support the school canteen
It was Saturday night, and Ma Jun was still busy helping children at her school take showers.
“There are dozens staying at school on weekends because they have nowhere else to go,” she said.
Formerly a promising wrestler and college teacher in Xian, the capital of western China’s Shaanxi province, Ma quit the city eight years ago to teach at the village school set up by her father in the province’s mountainous north in 1992 for “left-behind children” whose migrant worker parents have sought work in cities.
Now 34, Ma is now a teacher and “mother” to more than 300 pupils, taking care of the youngest children at Mata School in Zizhou county around the clock, teaching physical education classes to all grades, and playing in a key role in designing its teaching strategies and curriculum.
In her spare time, she grows vegetables with her mother and raises pigs with her father to support the school’s canteen.