I just got a call from an unfamiliar number. The caller ID said Liangshan, Sichuan. I froze for a moment, then answered with a smile. I knew it had to be those kids.

When the call connected, sure enough it was Gerong Zhabao from sixth grade. It's been exactly a year since I left the mountains. In that time, students have texted and called now and then, and Zhabao has kept in touch with me the most. Honestly, every time I get a call from them, I feel deeply guilty. Last year, not a single sixth grader went on to middle school. After graduating, they all stayed in Exi, that isolated, sparsely populated mountain village, waiting for arranged marriages and following the same path as their parents. The women especially do almost all the housework and most of the farm work. In their twenties, when youth should be at its brightest, their shoulders are already bent under the weight of life, as careworn as Runtu all grown up.

When we first arrived in the mountains, we solemnly promised the students that if they wanted to go to middle school, we would do everything we could to help. Seeing their eager, hopeful eyes gave me a sense of accomplishment. But by the time we left, nothing had changed. The parents would not agree to let the children go to middle school. In their eyes, what you learn by finishing primary school is enough for life in this little village, and stories of students who had left the village to study and then "gone bad" were widely told across the whole area.

I feel ashamed that I couldn't win the chance to keep studying for even one sixth grader. Yet these kind kids never hold it against me. They remember only the good: the poem "Happy Rain on a Spring Night" we recited together, the song "Little Bugs Fly" we sang, and the "Gangnam Style" we danced to. The kids went from shy and bashful at first to open and outgoing, and later even a little cheeky, calling their teachers by name. Far from being annoyed, we were happy about it. That's what kids should be like! The purpose of education isn't to train students into identical robots with no personality. The German philosopher Karl Jaspers captured the essence of education in his famous words:

Education means one tree shaking another tree, one cloud pushing another cloud, one soul awakening another soul. The essence of teaching lies not in passing on knowledge, but in inspiring, awakening, and encouraging.

We hoped to be friends with the kids, to play together and keep each other company, to let them grow according to their nature, guiding only when needed and encouraging them often. I won't claim we did it well, but at least we followed this idea and practiced it as we figured things out.

Zhabao called again in the evening. The signal in the mountains must have been bad, because we got cut off after just a few sentences. His Mandarin still sounded fluent, and his strong Tibetan accent made me happy, like finding authentic hometown hot-and-spicy soup in the south. A few days ago, while watching the movie "No Man's Land," I excitedly told my girlfriend, "That's how Tibetans sound when they speak Chinese. Our kids all talk like that!" She just said "Oh," and that was it. I felt a little let down, but I understood. If you haven't been to Exi, seen it, heard it, thought about it, and missed it, you can't understand that feeling and attachment.

Exi's phone signal depends on two small wind turbines for power. While I was there, one of them broke. I made a special call to Muli County to report it, and the account manager promised it would be fixed within a month. But right up until I left, its blades still drooped, like a windmill defeated by Don Quixote. On rainy days there would be no signal for days at a time. When the sky cleared and the signal came back, everyone eagerly hoped someone would call, or planned whom to call to catch up on everything that had happened.

Now, getting a call from the students makes me as happy as it makes them to call out. That signal carries so much missing and hoping.

Zhabao told me he was at the little village shop. Since graduating, he's just been hanging around at home, and sometimes he goes to look in at the school. No volunteer teachers went there this year, so the school doesn't seem as lively as before. Oh, and with him was Zhexia Yongzong. This quirky, clever girl often amazed me with her wild, boundless ideas, and often touched me with how thoughtful she was. A few days before we left, she suddenly ran over with a big bag of walnuts, dropped it at the classroom door, and walked off. I quickly called her back and asked what it was. She said her grandma told her to bring it, for us to eat on the road. I asked her to thank her grandma for me, and she said impatiently, "What are you thanking her for? She's my grandma, not yours." This little girl left me not knowing whether to laugh or cry. Funny conversations and stories like this happened almost every day. In those days, the corners of my mouth were always turned up.

In the blink of an eye, it's been a year since I left Exi.

That day, before dawn, we left Exi. As we walked onto the big bridge in Exi, the first light was breaking and the mountain wind was hard. Looking toward Kemi, a huge sweep of orange-gold clouds lit up the peaks like fire, and I thought of Rimbaud's line:

Armed with an ardent patience, we shall enter the splendid cities at dawn.