Wu Xiong, a 40-year-old principal, has dedicated 20 years to transforming a once-dilapidated rural school in the mountains of Guizhou province into a thriving hub for sports and education, CCTV News reported.

In 2004, Wu became the principal of Tangfang Primary School in Baling town, Xingren city of the Qianxinan Bouyei and Miao autonomous prefecture, Southwest China's Guizhou province. At that time, the school comprised of just a dilapidated house, three teachers and 75 students. Worse still, many local children showed little interest in attending school. To address this issue, Wu turned to an innovative solution — sports.

In 2006, the school held its first sports meeting. "We carried a cement slab from 1.5 kilometers away, propped it up with bricks and used wooden boards as a net for a table tennis competition," Wu recalled. Over time, badminton and other events were added to the sports meeting, which proved attractive to pupils.

As investments in local education increased, Tangfang Primary School underwent a significant transformation in facilities and faculty numbers. In 2009, Tangfang Primary School became a boarding school capable of accommodating hundreds of students, which made Wu feel that enriching students' extracurricular lives through diverse sporting activities was even more necessary.

Now, with the total area more than 10 times of that in 2004, the school has 42 teachers and nearly 500 students. The number of physical education teachers also increased from zero to four. At the school, basketball hoops were designed on the playground in three different sizes to suit students of different age groups, while sports equipment storage facilities are never locked up, allowing students to access them freely. Wu also made it a rule that PE cannot yield to other subjects.

With the strong support of the school, students have at least 2.5 hours allotted every day for physical activities. Among the 469 students of the school, only six wear glasses — a remarkably low rate of myopia. Also, by participating in various sports competitions, the students learned how to deal with successes and frustrations properly.

By integrating sports into their daily school life, Wu said the school has the responsibility to balance physical activities with studies while students are required to prioritize completing their academic tasks first. "Allowing the students to participate in sports that they enjoy is not necessarily a bad thing for their academic performance and the development of the school," Wu was quoted as saying by a Xinhua News Agency report.

According to the report, the school's average scores have risen from below 30 in 2004 to over 80 in 2023. Sports offered the students another way out of the mountains. More than 100 graduates of the school have entered middle schools as sports-focused students.

Wu hopes that the happy memories the students share in the school will help graduates feel more bonded with their hometown, and their departure will serve as a prelude to their homecoming after becoming better persons.