In China, many public (公立的) schools finish classes a few hours before the end of parents’ workday. So parents can’t work full days or need others to help pick up (接) their children.

To help out working parents, the Ministry of Education (教育部) wants primary and middle schools to close after most parents get off work. Before parents pick up their children, there should be after-school activities in schools. Teachers can help students with their homework. Students can enjoy their hobbies in groups too. But students can’t have lessons after school.

In Nanjing, there are free after-school activities in all primary schools from 2017. In 2021 the schools change (改变) the time from 5:30 pm to 6:00 p.m. so that parents can pick up their kids. About 230,000 children in primary schools do such activities. They are half of all primary school students in the city.

From this spring, Shanghai public schools also change their school hours from ending at 3:00 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. Teachers work for more hours to look after their students after school. “Teachers take turns (轮流) to do the activities,” a 5th-grade teacher in Shanghai says, “and usually I look after the students every Wednesday and Friday afternoon.”

Poverty(贫困) is a big problem around the world. But Chinese people have their own ways to do with it. Let’s learn more about what four of them did.

	Zhang Guimei starts the Huaping Senior High School(高中) in Lijiang, Yunnan in 2008. It is the first free senior high school for poor girls in China. The school sends more than 1, 800 students to college(大学).
	Chen Zaiming, an expert(专家), comes from Zhejiang University(大学). He helps the farmers in Jingdong Yi autonomous county(彝族自治县), Yunnan to grow the small fragrant mushrooms(小香菌). Last year, 22 families in the county made more than 5 million yuan.
	Mao Xianglin helps more than 100 villagers in Xiazhuang village, Wushan county, Chongqing to build the road with their hands. It takes them seven years to build an eight-kilometre road. Mao then asks the villagers to grow oranges. Now 269 villagers are rich.
	Xia Sen is not rich. She lives a simple life and gives her money to the poor students. She donates(捐赠) more than 2 million yuan to help students and schools in need. The “Xia Sen scholarship(奖学金)” makes 182 students study in the college.

Kuang Heng was born in a poor family. He liked reading books very much. He needed to work at daytime, so he had to read books at night. He was too poor, and he could not buy a candle(蜡烛).

One day, he found his neighbour(邻居) had candles, but the light couldn’t go through his room. So he dug(挖) a small hole(洞) on the wall so that he could use the light to read books. From that day, he read books every night until the light went out.

But he finished reading all his books and there were no books for him to read. Then he went to a rich man’s house and worked for him without money. The rich man asked: “Why don’t you want the money?” Kuang Heng said: “Because I only want to ________ your books.” Kuang Heng read the books one by one. And he became a great person in history.