ZHENGZHOU - Mosquitoes and bugs were the first things that greeted Yan Zixuan when she arrived at her classroom for the first time last year.

"The door opened with a squeak and mosquitoes and bugs swarmed out," Yan, 26, recalled. "I will never forget it."

Yan left her job in the city a year ago to teach at Dingzhai Elementary School in Fengqiu county in Henan province, as part of a rural teaching program.

Since 2006, China has been recruiting college graduates like Yan to take jobs at rural schools in central and western regions for three years. The central government fully funds their salaries. The country plans to recruit 90,000 such teachers this year.

Despite the bumpy start, Yan said, she grew to like her job.

Fengqiu county is a State-level poverty-stricken county. There are around 90 students at Dingzhai Elementary School, many of them left behind by their parents who migrated to the cities for work.

A year ago, the school offered only Chinese, math and English classes. The English was taught by substitute teachers from middle schools in the county seat.

The classrooms had insufficient lighting, filthy floors and stained walls. Children often had runny noses and dirty hands.

Yan bought wash basins and handkerchiefs for the students, teaching them to wash their hands and clean their faces regularly.

She also cleared out unused chairs and desks in the classroom, installed a new light bulb, swept the floor and cleaned the walls.

Yan studied fine arts in college and in her spare time created a painting featuring a whale in her dorm.

"The students love that painting," Yan said. "They were eager to pursue beauty and knowledge."

Later she started classes in calligraphy, painting and Chinese culture. Now students' paintings hang on the classroom walls, some with traditional Chinese poems as captions.

"The countryside is no place for vanity," Yan said. "I feel pure and close to nature here."

Ren Mingjie, another teacher enrolled in the program, has been working at an elementary school in Fengqiu for four years since graduating from college.

After class, Ren often volunteers to help students with their homework, plays chess and solves a Rubik's cube with them. He has seven thick notebooks, journaling details of his life teaching the students.

"Young teachers have enriched the lives of rural children and passed on their positive attitude," said He Jinlong, head of the local education bureau.

Henan province plans to recruit 15,500 teachers for the program this year, most under 30 years old. Last year, 87 percent of the teachers chose to stay at the rural school after three years.

"We are coming to where we are needed most," Ren said. "We should be like a torch, lighting the way ahead for these rural children."

Xinhua