Children reap benefit of rural educators' devotion to duty

FUZHOU－At 6:30 am every school day, Zhuang Guigan wakes up the 83 boarding students at the Xijin primary school. Zhuang, 64, is used to being greeted by the children's delightful laughter in the morning.

"As the children returned after the Spring Festival holiday, the school came back to life," says Zhuang, the school principal, who has been an educator for 47 years.

The school in Shitun township, Zhenghe county of East China's Fujian province, has 167 students. Among them, 86 are "left-behind children", 83 of whom are boarders.