Elderly man volunteers to take care of left-behind children for 20 years

The road to school was long and in bad condition

Children were always late or absent from class

In the 1950s, Wei began to serve as the assistant team leader in Huanqiu Village, and has volunteered to send the left-behind children in the village to school since the early 1990s, and helped the school clear its water pipes in the late 1990s. Villagers said, "Wei spent most of his life doing good deeds." Wei joined the Communist Party of China in 1960. Wei, being a member of the party for 50 years, was selected as an excellent CPC member by Xinyi City and Jintong County more than 20 times.

In the 1970s, Wei’s children began to receive education one by one. At that time, there was no road leading to the school, and the only way was on a path through a field that was less than half a meter wide. A stream had to be crossed on the way to school, which was not passable even by bicycle. The trip from the village to school took about more than half an hour. The situation did not improve until two years ago, when villagers cooperated to dig a mountainous road.

Wei’s elderly son recalled that at that time, class began early, and morning reading started as early as 6:30 am. As a result, students had to go to school in darkness by lighting a torch. The ignorant and young children were always scared by the rumors from outside saying that "there are ghosts and tigers on the mountain," and they were very afraid of walking on the fields that were sparsely populated. In order to ease his children's terror, even during the busiest farming season, Wei would first send them to school or down the mountain where there were many people around, and then come back to do farming work.

In early 1990s, villagers began to go to other places to earn money, and as a result, their children were left behind at home for the elderly to take care of. Shimenkeng is a village that is the farthest away from Huanqiu Primary School. Because of long distance and bad road conditions, the elderly cannot take these children to and from school, and as a result, they were always late and absent from class. "I cannot see children continue that kind of life without doing anything," Wei volunteered to take charge of children going to and from school, and started to take them to school and pick up them.

Wei Yaozhong whistles 3 times before daybreak to call the children together for school

His house was higher than most of the villagers' before 2009. He would get up upon hearing the crow of roosters, and blew his whistle at the same time. Hearing the whistle, the parents would get up quickly to make breakfast. Wei showed reporters his cherished whistle, and blew it several times February 25, loud and clear. “As long as I’m still alive, I can not leave the whistle,” he said emotively, twice in succession.

He blew the whistle in a regular pattern. The first time he blew it was at 4:30 am, twice, intended to wake up villagers to make breakfast; the second time was at 5:30, 3 times, to remind parents to wake up their children; the third time was at 6:15 am, twice, to remind children that they should be ready for school. Then, he would call the children together from door to door, and sent them to school.

He moved into a new house in 2009, and the house turned out to be lower than the one he lived in before, so he began to blow the whistle on the roof, but the time and frequency were not changed, except that the third time he blew it, villagers should send their children to his house instead.