(XINHUA)

The story of Zeng Zhaofu, who has been a teacher in a mountainous area for 33 years, touches many Chinese.

Zeng, 51, gave up the chance of being a village head after graduating from senior high school in 1978 and has been a teacher at a primary school in a village of central China's Jiangxi Province since then.

Besides teaching, Zeng takes good care of his students. Many of his students live far away from the school, and Zeng has voluntarily picked them up everyday for 33 years. In 2001, one of his students was about to drop out of school due to poverty. Zeng persuaded the student's family to give up the idea and has helped to pay all the school fees for the student.

Among his students, 15 of them were admitted to universities and two are post-graduate students, an outstanding accomplishment for the poverty-stricken area. Zeng was conferred with the National Outstanding Teacher Award by the Chinese Ministry of Education in 2009.