Youthful Chapter | Echoes from Xihaigu: Looking for Su Zhiqiang

Cao Guoxiang's hometown is in Xiji County, Guyuan City, Ningxia. All pictures in this article are provided by the interviewees

Can people sense the moment when their destiny is rewritten? For Cao Guoxiang, yes.

In late summer of 1999, a jeep from the county stopped at Xinying Middle School in Xinying Township, Xiji County, Guyuan City, Ningxia. In those days, jeeps were rare, and people craned their necks to see, and then found that something even more incredible had gotten out of the car - the first batch of graduate student teaching groups to help Xihaigu. At that time, it was impossible to have a graduate student in every 10 miles of the village.

The dividing line at the turn of the century also divided Cao Guoxiang's life into two distinct parts. Before the dividing line, he came from a place "more mountainous than the mountains" and had just been admitted to high school with excellent grades. His parents made a living by farming and raised six children. The burden of life was concrete and real.

After the dividing line, Cao Guoxiang followed the volunteer teacher, and his determination to leave the countryside became stronger day by day; more importantly, the teacher also brought him "one-on-one" assistance and financial support from caring people, so his tuition for three years of high school was settled, and he had fewer worries, so he went even further.

Today, Cao Guoxiang has long since left that barren land, won the National May 1st Labor Medal, and has a successful career and family. He sometimes thinks of that time and wants to find that caring person, but they lost contact in the past 20 years.

In September 2024, with the help of Fudan University, he was able to realize his wish - the sponsor was Su Zhiqiang, a graduate of the 1998 class of Fudan University majoring in microelectronics, who is now the general manager of a startup company.

More than 20 years ago, Cao Guoxiang would never have thought that the kind-hearted person who supported him for three years and even changed his life was actually only 5 years older than him, also from the countryside, and the money he used to support him was also earned from working and studying.

More than 20 years ago, Su Zhiqiang would never have thought that a little kindness shown by him during his student days could bring such great encouragement to children more than 1,800 kilometers away. He felt more like he had "won the prize": a seed grew into a towering tree, "I just added a little water when the environment was dry."

Cao Guoxiang has nothing to hide about his hometown and his own poverty. The dusty Xihaigu, which was judged by the United Nations as "unsuitable for human habitation", is his hometown that he left after nearly 20 years and cannot return to.

Cao Guoxiang is the youngest of six children, born in 1985. His parents worked day and night, planting potatoes and peas in the harsh climate of Xihaigu, where droughts occur nine out of ten years, but they could not earn much, just enough to feed a few mouths at home.

After finishing primary school, Cao Guoxiang went to a boarding school for a junior high school 20 kilometers away. He went home once a week and brought back enough pot cakes and steamed buns to last for a week. The dry food would freeze into bricks in winter and turn green in summer, so he had to shave every Wednesday.

Cao Guoxiang cherishes the notebook that his teacher rewarded him when he was in the third grade of elementary school.

But Cao Guoxiang loved to study and could endure any hardship. He couldn't afford to buy a notebook, so he strung the papers together with thread himself; he couldn't bear to use a pen, so he picked up carbon sticks and practiced calligraphy on the dirt playground; when the lights were turned off at the boarding school, he lit a kerosene lamp.

In the year of the high school entrance examination, Cao Guoxiang scored very good scores, but because of the enrollment policy at the time, he was assigned to Xinying Middle School, which was 50 kilometers away from his home and had relatively weak teaching staff.

He even fought for it, riding on a neighbor's bicycle to the county to find the best local middle school, hoping to get admitted. He remembered barging into a meeting that was halfway through, and then coming out with a red face to wait at the door; he remembered the teacher nodding and shaking his head at the handwritten report card after the meeting: "You did very well in the exam, but we can't do anything."

With a poor family background and limited educational resources in school, Cao Guoxiang once thought that he was in a desperate situation. Unexpectedly, he later received three teachers who came from afar and unexpected financial support.

If it weren't for the sudden contact from the teacher of Fudan University Youth League Committee, Su Zhiqiang might have forgotten about this incident which happened more than 20 years ago.

As a middle-aged man in his 40s, it seems that there is no room for trance in his daily life. In the early stages of his startup chip company, he was busy with work; at 5pm, between calls with people, his children kept calling him, reminding him to pick them up from school; on his computer screen, WeChat notifications kept ringing day after day.

On September 3, the WeChat notification sound rang again, and a red dot appeared in the friend request. The applicant claimed to be from the Youth League Committee of Fudan University.

"Do you remember Cao Guoxiang?" the other party asked him, and Su Zhiqiang's thoughts drifted away; the other party added, "He was from Ningxia." He reacted immediately and saw another photo of a young man. In the whitened photo, it was Su Zhiqiang's own immature face, taken when he was in college.

This is the photo that Su Zhiqiang sent to Cao Guoxiang along with a letter around 2000. Cao Guoxiang has kept this photo.

He remembered that it was 2000, when he was a junior at Fudan University. That day, he stopped in front of the central bulletin board of Fudan University and saw that some graduate students from the school went to Xiji County, Ningxia to teach. The teaching team found that some students there were on the verge of dropping out of school due to their poor family conditions, and hoped that kind-hearted people could provide one-on-one support to help the children complete their studies.

Su Zhiqiang's hometown is in the rural area of ​​Hebei Province. During the busy farming season, he was asked to help with the autumn harvest. Although his family was not well-off, it was not a big problem for him to go to school. Despite this, he still understood very well that it was not easy for rural children to go to school.

When he saw the news that poor students needed support, he quickly made a judgment: I am a college student and have the ability and means to make money; if the children over there cannot find a sponsor, their way to school will really be cut off.

Su Zhiqiang "took the lead" and became a sponsor. Through the research and support group connection, he was matched one-to-one with Cao Guoxiang.

This decision was like a butterfly spreading its wings in South America, and the warm wind gradually blew to Xihaigu, 1,800 kilometers away.

In 1999, Fudan University was the first to respond to the call of the Communist Youth League Central Committee and the Ministry of Education, and selected and established the first batch of graduate student teaching teams of the China Youth Volunteer Poverty Alleviation Relay Program, and went to Xiji to provide services at the grassroots level. Pan Xichun and Ding Yi from Fudan University came to Xinying Middle School, and Kang Zhenhui from Northeast Normal University also responded to the call.

In Xihaigu back then, they quickly realized the true poverty. The children in front of them were shrouded in the shadow of suffering and might give up studying at any time.

Around the end of 1999, Pan Xichun and Ding Yi reported the local situation to the Youth League Committee of Fudan University. The school posted a notice looking for caring scholars. Su Zhiqiang got information about Cao Guoxiang during the follow-up contact. He wrote a letter and told the other party that he would become a sponsor.

In fact, when he was in college, Su Zhiqiang was a kind-hearted person who was a little "silly". At school, he couldn't count how many "strange fellow villagers who lost their wallets in Shanghai" he gave money to. His classmates later told him that most of them were scammers. He was stunned for a moment, and then thought that maybe they really had difficulties.

From the perspective of outsiders, it might be Su Zhiqiang himself who was in trouble. In his first year of school, he found his name on the list of people who could receive subsidies. Su Zhiqiang blushed a little, and took the initiative to remove his name from the list of people who could receive subsidies the next year. He also insisted on not asking his family for money, and earned more than 3,000 yuan a year in tuition by working part-time.

Su Zhiqiang did not tell people around him about his sponsorship of Cao Guoxiang, out of shyness. "I was afraid they would think, 'Su Zhiqiang, you've already reached a difficult situation, why are you still trying to be so brave?'" His days at university were a little more stressful, but looking back now, he can hardly remember those hardships.

In his memory, he remitted money to the unfamiliar Ningxia time and time again from Fudan South Campus, with blessings from his heart. Cao Guoxiang said that in the three years since 2000, Su Zhiqiang sent him a total of more than 1,000 yuan for tuition, school uniforms, and textbooks.

They also kept in touch with each other through letters for several years and exchanged photos. In the letters, Su Zhiqiang constantly gave his child confidence, taught him not to worry about money, pay attention to the way of learning, believe that knowledge can change destiny, and work hard to get out of it.

Cao Guoxiang failed to pass the first college entrance examination, so he chose to repeat the year. In the summer after his senior year, he wrote a letter to Su Zhiqiang, hoping that the "study master" across the street could teach him some study methods. Soon after, he received two thick physics and chemistry exercise books from afar, with 50 yuan in cash inside. These were the tutorial books that Su Zhiqiang carefully selected at the Shanghai Bookstore, and later became Cao Guoxiang's treasure, "not available in the county."

But this was also their last correspondence. Later, as Su Zhiqiang moved to a new dormitory for his master's degree and Cao Guoxiang went to the county to repeat his studies, their contact methods changed; Cao Guoxiang also tried to find Su Zhiqiang on Fudan's BBS, and they later had a brief conversation on a public phone.

On the phone, Cao Guoxiang told the other party that he was admitted to Jilin University, and Su Zhiqiang expressed his congratulations. It is difficult for two "grown men" to express their feelings strongly. As soon as this call around 2004 was hung up, it would ring again on September 4, 2024.

At the end of August 2024, Cao Guoxiang accidentally came across the WeChat public account of the "Fudan Graduate Student Teaching Group". He was still in contact with Kang Zhenhui, his closest teaching teacher at the time, but he could not find Su Zhiqiang no matter what.

If you keep thinking about someone, there will be a response. Through the official account, he "dug out" the email address of Mei Yichen, the leader of the 25th Fudan Research and Development Team, and solemnly wrote down the story from more than 20 years ago, attached a photo of Su Zhiqiang, and clicked send, hoping that Fudan University could help find him and let him say thank you again.

The school's Youth League Committee and other parties responded quickly. On September 3, Cao Guoxiang added Su Zhiqiang's contact information as he wished; on September 4, they spoke again after 20 years, and the call lasted for half an hour.

"It was just a small act of kindness during my school days. I almost forgot about it. I didn't expect him to finish school at that time. I just didn't want to see him drop out of school. After all, how small is the chance of him getting through a place like that? And how high is the chance of him becoming a pillar of society after graduating from a good school?" After ending his 20-year phone call with Cao Guoxiang, Su Zhiqiang felt that he was the one who "won the prize". "Guoxiang is very powerful now. He is the deputy director of the factory." Su Zhiqiang said, "It is mainly up to a seed to grow into a towering tree. I just added a little water when the environment was dry."

After graduating from university, Cao Guoxiang went to a car powertrain manufacturing company in Northeast China and became the first employee in the company's history to apply to study testing technology in Japan during his internship. After returning to China, he spent many years overcoming a series of core problems in transmission manufacturing and testing process technology, won numerous awards, and created an innovation studio for high-skilled talents. Today, Cao Guoxiang is the deputy director of the transmission factory of a Harbin automobile engine manufacturing company. He has won the "2021 National May 1st Labor Medal" and serves as a member of the People's Congress of Pingfang District, Harbin. He has been running around in the community all year round, doing research and writing suggestions for the people, and doing good deeds in his own way.

"If I hadn't received the financial support back then, I wouldn't be where I am today," Cao Guoxiang said. "At that time, many people in my hometown thought that if I couldn't continue my studies, I should go out to work. But I always felt that there were kind people watching over me and supporting me. I couldn't go out to work. I had to strive to improve myself and change my fate with knowledge."

Cao Guoxiang's hometown is in Xiji County, Guyuan City, Ningxia.

The story should have ended here. But during the interview, the reporter found that the first research and development group appeared too frequently - if they had not deliberately made the connection, Cao Guoxiang would have found it difficult to get Su Zhiqiang's help.

In Cao Guoxiang's words, "The research and support group that year was like a hurricane in our area." He is sure that he was not the only one whose life was changed by education in the dusty Xihaigu area at that time - in Xinying Middle School alone, in the class that Pan Xichun mainly taught, there was a girl who was admitted to Northeast Normal University in her first year. "It was a miracle that she got in on the first try."

Even after more than 20 years, Cao Guoxiang still remembers the three volunteer teachers. Pan Xichun is from Shanghai, and Ding Yi may be from Jiangxi. When the two female teachers first came, they were neatly dressed, and what made people particularly envious was that they could speak standard Mandarin and even fluent English.

After one year in this barren land, the two pretty female teachers have darkened and become more haggard. After all, they eat potato noodles three times a day, and the toilet is a dry toilet far away from the house. The roof of the school building often makes a rustling sound and looks shaky. They also have to endure sandstorms. Cao Guoxiang said that he later saw the sea, and when the waves hit him, he thought of the sandstorms in his hometown. "When Teacher Pan and Teacher Ding first saw the sandstorm, they hugged each other and cried. It was a dark, doomsday-like scene."

Kang Zhenhui, a volunteer teacher, had the most contact with Cao Guo. He was born in a rural area in Northeast China and knew how to encourage students with his own experience. Kang Zhenhui loved these children very much. Later, when students from Xiji County were admitted to Changchun City where he was, he often gathered them together to ask about their recent situation.

Cao Guoxiang still remembers many details. For example, the knowledge economy lecture brought by teacher Pan Xichun told them why knowledge creates wealth; Ding Yi taught them the Law on the Protection of Minors, telling them that in the face of injustice and evil, they must learn to use legal weapons to protect themselves. In the backward and "chaotic" Xinying Middle School at that time, these concepts were too advanced and enlightening.

Cao Guoxiang will never forget the day when the teachers left. Everyone cried. Cao Guoxiang asked his teacher how to let Teacher Kang and his friends keep some memories. The teacher kindly paid 16 yuan for the students, but Cao Guoxiang and his group actually bought a box of Jianlibao drinks.

At that time, the children thought, Jianlibao, what a good thing! Thinking about it now, Cao Guoxiang couldn't help laughing, "The teacher had been here for a year and had a lot of bags, but we still forced people to take boxes of drinks away. I don't know what they were thinking."

Youth is not far from mountains and seas, and this kind of assistance relay continues year after year. As of September 2023, Fudan University alone has sent 436 people and 435 team members to Xiji County, Guyuan City, Ningxia, Xifeng County, Guiyang City, Guizhou, Baicheng County, Aksu Prefecture, Xinjiang, Yongping County, Dali Prefecture, Yunnan, Xide County, Liangshan Prefecture, Sichuan, and Yushu City, Yushu Prefecture, Qinghai to carry out teaching and poverty alleviation services in six places and ten schools in the past 25 years.

Across the country, there are tens of thousands of college students who have responded to the call to bring educational resources to poor mountainous areas. The seeds sown in these barren lands have long since blossomed and borne fruit, spreading everywhere.

As a member of the first batch of Fudan University graduate student teaching team, many years later, recalling the years in the mountains and ravines, Pan Xichun wrote: "There may not be many people who talk about faith in this era, but even in harsh conditions, people's spiritual power will show its powerful power. As volunteers to work in poor areas, we signed up voluntarily. The purpose is to use our own knowledge to do something practical for the children in the mountains."

More than 20 years ago, Pan Xichun and the school’s Chinese teacher organized a debate at Xinying Middle School. The topic was “Should you stay in Xihaigu after becoming successful?” Among the dozen or so debaters, Cao Guoxiang was the debater on the opposing side.

"Of course you have to leave. I said at the time that your heart should stay in Xihaigu, but you have to go out. Only when you go out can you know what Xihaigu is like." In that debate, Cao Guoxiang's side lost, and he still hasn't figured it out to this day.

Now, he has actually left Xihaigu and cannot go back. Last year, Cao Guoxiang took his children back to his hometown and found that the high school department of Xinying Middle School had been closed for more than five years due to local population loss and other reasons. His hometown, the village that was "more mountainous than the mountains", has also moved from the mountainous area to Helan County, Yinchuan City. Over the years, the local area has continued to carry out ecological protection and restoration construction, and the Loess Plateau is visibly covered with more green.

"I walked out of here. That's how we studied back then... our teacher... a kind-hearted person sponsored me..." Last year, he was still telling these stories to little kids. Now, there is a sequel to the story, he actually found Su Zhiqiang. Cao Guoxiang thought, when the time is right, they must meet.