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Summary A village primary school teacher acted as boatman to ferry his students from for more than 20 years.
For this villagers call him the best teacher as well as the best boatman.The teacher, Wang Yong, 49, teaches at a primary school of Beigou Village of the Liaoning Kuandian Manchu Autonomous County in Northeast China.He rises at 06:00 in the morning and travels two kilometers to the foot of a mountain to ferry the five children to school.The village is cut into two parts by a tributary of the Yalu River. The more than 50 families lived in the gullies on the southern bank while the school is on the northern bank. A makeshift bridge was built a few years ago but was soon destroyed by floods and the children on the southern bank had to go to school by ferry.20 years ago, the children had to be sent to school and picked up by their respective families. But during the farm busy season, the families would have no time to do so and many children dropped out school. Seeing this, Wang Yong began to take up the job. The county education bureau allocated him a power boat.He has met a lot of difficulties in ferrying the students. Sometimes the power boat stalled in the middle of the river and he had to jump into the 30-meter deep river to fix the propellers. Sometimes the power boat got entangled up with fishing nets and he had to jump into the river to disentangle them.Sometimes he was so tired in the cold water, his feet would get cramped. While he was fixing the boat, he asked the students to read on boat. Sometimes his wife would come to his rescue.Over the past 20 years, a large number of children in the village went to school by Wang Yongs boat. They have grown up and begun their new life, but Wang Yong still stays in the village, keeping to his old job.
