“We are organizing party members to help families short on labor to harvest grain.”
During the autumn harvest season, Wu Shunxi, deputy party secretary of Jiama Township in Shannan City, Tibet Autonomous Region, is extremely busy.
This 32-year-old young man is from Guangshui, Hubei. After two teaching stints in Shannan, he resolutely chose to settle in Tibet, becoming a local grassroots civil servant.
Transitioning from a Hubei native to a Tibetan, Wu Shunxi has experienced personal growth and is using his efforts to nurture the flower of ethnic unity and progress.
As a top student, he voluntarily went to Tibet twice for teaching assignments
Wu Shunxi graduated from Hubei University of Arts and Science. Not only did he receive awards such as the “National Scholarship” and “National Endeavor Scholarship,” but he also won prizes like the “First Prize in Hubei Provincial College Student Electronic Design Competition.” Starting from his freshman year, he actively participated in the college’s weekend volunteer teaching team, often going to Qifang Town in Zaoyang City to teach.
In March 2015, while in his junior year, Wu Shunxi proactively applied for a teaching assignment in Tibet. He became the captain of the university’s “Gesanghua” teaching team and went to Shannan to teach.
Upon arriving in Shannan, altitude sickness gave Wu Shunxi a tough welcome: splitting headaches kept him awake all night, accompanied by chest tightness, vomiting, and sometimes even nosebleeds.
But as soon as he entered Qiongjie County Middle School, where he was teaching, and saw the children’s smiling faces, Wu Shunxi felt his altitude sickness symptoms lessen significantly.
In addition to teaching English to two seventh-grade classes, Wu Shunxi used his spare time to help students improve their math, physics, and chemistry grades. He and the teaching team members also proactively conducted home visits.
When there were no audio tapes for teaching, he coached students to perform dialogues based on the text; noticing that many students were reluctant to speak English, he arrived half an hour early every day to lead the class in reading the text aloud.
Thanks to the efforts of Wu Shunxi and the teaching team, Qiongjie County Middle School’s high school entrance exam results in 2015 jumped from third place in 2014 to first place among 13 middle schools in the region. The number of students admitted to inland Tibetan classes also increased from 10 in 2014 to 28.
In September 2015, the six-month teaching assignment ended. To avoid the sadness of parting, Wu Shunxi chose to leave quietly on a weekend. But when the students found out, they came to see him off. Some gave him a basket of eggs, others a box of White Rabbit candies…
Wu Shunxi returned to the snowy plateau in March 2016 with Hubei University of Arts and Science’s third “Gesanghua” teaching team, going back to teach at Qiongjie County Middle School. Less than a week after this arrival in Tibet happened to be Wu Shunxi’s birthday. Forty or fifty students, somehow learning the news, spontaneously gave him small gifts after evening self-study.
To keep a promise in his heart, he settled in Tibet after graduation
“Teacher, after you leave, will you come back to see us?”
In September 2015, as Wu Shunxi was about to end his first teaching assignment in Tibet, a student asked reluctantly in the last class.
This question touched the softest part of Wu Shunxi’s heart. “I can’t bear to leave this land and the people here either,” he thought to himself.
After graduating in July 2016, Wu Shunxi resolutely chose to settle in Tibet. He took the local civil service exam and became a grassroots civil servant.
In December 2018, Wu Shunxi became the first party secretary of Zhongdui Community, Qiongjie Town, Qiongjie County. To communicate better with the people, he worked hard to learn Tibetan.</
