Educator recounts years of struggle

Recalling 2022, Zhang Guimei, principal of Huaping Senior High School for Girls in Huaping county, Yunnan province, has mixed emotions.

"In the past year, I have joys and also worry," Zhang, 65, wrote in a signed article published in Xinhua News Agency.

Zhang is one of 29 outstanding Party members who President Xi Jinping conferred the July 1 Medal, the highest honor the Party bestows to its outstanding members, in June 2021.

She has endured a series of sicknesses. One of them, for example, is rheumatoid arthritis in her feet. For a period of time in the past year, the illness meant she needed a wheelchair.

"This made me very sad," she said, adding that she had frequently complained about the problem inwardly.

But that didn't hinder her from carrying on the mission she has adhered to for dozens of years.

"There was not much change in my work and life in the past year. As I did in previous years, I accompanied students in the girls' high school to attend class and review their lessons," Zhang said.

But anxiety was no stranger to Zhang in her work in 2022. The reasons are as they always have been — some poor performances in examinations and the struggles among some students in their studies.

"I was so anxious that I sometimes lost my appetite and sometimes couldn't sleep," she said.

Zhang, however, is grateful that over 100 students graduated from her school in the past year.

"The girls have become college students. They have started new journeys in their life."

Zhang worked as a teacher in Lijiang, also in Yunnan, before moving to Huaping in 1995. In that year, the dedicated educator, whose parents passed away when she was young, had lost her husband to cancer.

A desperate Zhang applied for a job transfer to remote, mountainous Huaping, in a move to avoid seeing anybody that knew her and would remind her of the past.

In Huaping, she found that poverty and outdated perceptions hindered parents in supporting their girls' education. Many girls dropped out of school and got married at a young age.

To change the situation, she decided to establish a high school free for local girls. She established the school in 2008 with government support. The school has so far helped 2,000 girls realize their dreams of entering universities.

"Today's China is a country where dreams become reality," President Xi Jinping stressed in his address on New Year's Eve on Saturday.

The president emphasized that none of a series of achievements China has made in the past year would have been possible without the sweat and toil of the Chinese people.

"Sparks of talent are coming together, and they are the strength of China," he said.

Always cherishing the sweat and toil from the people, the government has established an award system of medals and honorary titles.

"When people respect and advocate heroes, more heroes will come to the fore, the Party and the State have always attached great importance to honoring heroes and role models," Xi said in a ceremony where he conferred the Medal of the Republic and national titles of honor in 2019.

The country has the July 1 Medal, the August 1 Medal, the Friendship Medal and Book of Merit as awards at the national level.

Another laureate of the national awards that has stuck to his post despite aging and sickness is Zhang Boli, head of the Tianjin University of Traditional Chinese Medicine. The 74-year-old won the national honorary title of "the People's Hero" in September 2020.

Zhang arrived in Wuhan, the Hubei provincial capital on Jan 27, the third day of China's Lunar New Year. Due to exhaustion and an irregular diet, he started suffering from cholecystitis and had to undergo gallbladder surgery on Feb 19.

He was urged to return home for recuperation, but he refused. "The battle has just begun. How can I withdraw from the front line at such a critical moment?" he said.

Zhang started working from his sickbed just hours after surgery. Currently, the veteran expert is still busily engaged with the battle against COVID-19.