Nanjing XiaoZhuang University in Nanjing, East China's Jiangsu province has been dedicated to training teachers to help with China's rural education and revitalization.

Over the past 95 years, about one third of the university's 170,000 graduates have become teachers at rural schools. Among them is Yang Ruiqing, who is now the head of Nanjing Xingzhi Education Group.

After graduating from the university in 1981, Yang first became a primary school teacher in Wuli village in Nanjing. "Rural schools have many advantages that urban ones lack, such as cropland," he said. "We have planted many trees and built an 8-mu (5,333-square-meter) tea garden, a 15-mu orchard, as well as a 200-mu lotus garden, all of which are great teaching materials."

The primary school was renamed as the No 2 Affiliated Primary School of XiaoZhuang University in 1989, and groups of graduates from the university have since participated in internships at the school.

The university has through the years launched many projects to support rural education. One of the projects which started in 2006 allows students to stand in for rural teachers, who can then undergo training in the university.

This practice, said Zhang Cehua, the principal of the university, is also useful as it can help students learn about their future work environments. To date, 3,050 students and 1,384 rural teachers have participated in the project.

In addition, the university has been encouraging its students to be volunteer teachers in villages during summer holidays. Over the past two decades, students at the School of Early-Childhood Education of the university have helped children from more than 10,000 rural families.