Students from Shanxi learn life lessons on road

For 11 students from northern China's Shanxi province, the best way to celebrate adulthood was a 1,800 kilometer cycling trip this summer.

Geography teacher Lan Huiyun, who organized the special trip for the students from Shuocheng District No 1 Middle School in Shuozhou to commemorate the end of high school has won widespread acclaim among netizens.

It was a special coming-of-age ceremony for the teenagers and also the last lecture they received from Lan before embarking on university life after the summer vacation.

On June 12, Lan and the 11 students set off on the cycling trip from their campus. They passed through the provinces of Shanxi, Henan, Anhui and Jiangsu and arrived at Shanghai, their final destination, on June 28.

Before the trip, Lan bought each of the students short-term accident insurance and prepared all kinds of medicines for colds, diarrhea, heatstroke, wounds and heart problems.

He also inspected the cycling route before they started the trip. As a geography teacher, he said it was great to design a cycling route that would allow the students to receive firsthand experience and learn more about local plants, climates and customs.

Lan also used the trip as an opportunity to hone the students' socialization skills.

"The students will leave home and enter university soon, so it is important for them to learn how to socialize with others," he said. "The students were responsible for bargaining with hotels to find the best room with the lowest price."

On the 13th day of the trip, the students' results in the national college entrance exam, known as the gaokao, came out. About half of the team failed to achieve high scores.

"The mood was not as bad as I had imagined," Lan said. "One student who decided to retake the exam next year even joked that one should lay a solid foundation academically during the last year of high school, so he can go to a good university when he takes the exam again.

"I want my students to know that good grades should not be the only goal for them and the gaokao is not the final destination. Even if they have not performed well in the gaokao, they can still achieve great things if they work hard."

Liu Haotian, a student on the trip, said, "After we arrived in Shanghai, I realized that one person can ride the fastest, but a group of people can ride the furthest."

Ma Xiaofeng, another student on the trip, said, "My academic performance would not have been so bad if I had studied during high school with the same perseverance as in the cycling trip."

Lan previously organized a cycling trip for another batch of students after their national college entrance exam in 2016, accompanying seven on a ride from Shuozhou to Manzhouli in northern China's Inner Mongolia autonomous region.

The 2,600 km trip took them 21 days, but the experience was likely to influence them for their whole lives, Lan said.

"The students often told me that whenever they encountered some setbacks they always recalled the cycling trip and how they overcame the difficulties," he said.

"I never thought a teacher's task was only to teach knowledge from textbooks. One of the important tasks of a teacher is to teach students how to deal with difficulties."