This year marks the 100th anniversary of an anti-imperialist, cultural and political movement which originated in a series of student protests in Beijing. Zou Shuo reports.

On May 4, 1919, thousands of students gathered in Tian'anmen Square, Beijing to defend the nation's sovereignty and criticize China's representatives at the Versailles Peace Conference in Paris, who many people regarded as traitors.

Despite being one of the victorious nations of World War I, China's demands for reparations were rejected by the conference. Instead, the peace treaty gave Japan sovereignty over formerly German-occupied territories in Shandong province, which China believed should have been returned as part of the post-war settlement.

The protests, which involved both intellectuals and the working classes,spread rapidly across China. The depth of feeling generated by the May Fourth Movement forced the government to acknowledge the widespread grievances and prompted its refusal to sign the Treaty of Versailles.

The movement was a turning point in China’s post­-imperial transformation, representing a significant rise in nationalist sentiment and leading to the birth of a new intellectual class.

Marxist thought, introduced by the intelligentsia and widely discussed in newspapers, and the ideas that emerged from the May Fourth Movement set the stage for the founding of the Communist Party of China in 1921.

The movement’s legacy — patriotism, a progressive mindset and a belief in democracy and science — has been passed down for 100 years.

In a keynote speech delivered at a ceremony on Tuesday to reflect on the centenary of the May Fourth Movement, President Xi Jinping called on China’s young people to uphold Marxist beliefs, follow the Party’s leadership and devote themselves to the nation and the people.

Xi said the themes, direction and mission of the youth movement and young people in general must focus on upholding the CPC’s leadership and working to realize the Chinese dream of national rejuvenation.

He encouraged them to work hard to achieve both their own dreams and national rejuvenation. Despite higher living standards than at any time in the past, the nation’s young people should not reject the good tradition of hard work, he said.

Here, we profile three young people who have inherited the legacy of the May Fourth Movement and had a major influence on their classmates, friends and the wider community.

Yi Xiaoyuan: Improving access for disabled people

Yi Xiaoyuan, a wheelchair user, has never let his physical condition hold him back.

The graduate student at Tsinghua University in Beijing is now working to ensure that more disabled people will have the opportunity to try their best and create their own futures.

The 28­-year-­old was born in Yuxi, 90 kilometers south of Kunming, capital of the southwestern province of Yunnan. At the age of 6, he developed rheumatoid arthritis, which affected his growth, and also had a bone disorder that became progressively more debilitating. By age 11, his legs were so frail that walking was excruciatingly painful. As a result, he began using a wheelchair.

However, Yi’s mother, who became his caregiver, and his father, a policeman in Yuxi, stopped at nothing to help him overcome the challenges he faced.

His mother, Guo Qiongfen, made sure he got to school every day, and helped him from breakfast time to bedtime.

Yi excelled academically. In 2012, when he took the gaokao, the national college entrance exam, he was the 16th ­highest ­ranked student out of 210,000 high school graduates in Yunnan. It had always been his dream to attend Tsinghua, one of China’s top schools, and now he had the score to do so.

Because Guo accompanied him to the university to provide care, the school offered them adjacent dormitories, which allowed Guo to help Yi wash, dress, move from his dormitory to classes, and do other things most people take for granted.

When talking about his disability, Yi said his misfortune has made him stronger.

“Disabled people in China don’t need money or sympathy. What they need is opportunity,” he said.

He chose automotive engineering as his undergraduate major and is now studying computer science for his master’s. He has thrived at Tsinghua, getting A grades, joining the debating team and a literature study group, and making many friends.

In April 2017, Jiu Ge, a poetry ­generating machine that Yi and his team spent two years working on, competed in its first classical poetry relay against two poets. The contest saw each side take turns and use the last word from the previous verse to start their own line.

Using advanced linguistic artificial intelligence, Jiu Ge, named for a famous series of classical works, analyzes and draws inspiration from a database of more than 300,000 Chinese poems and is able to imitate their style, symbolism and rhythms.

Although the machine lost the competition, Yi said he was “very satisfied” with its performance.

“I want ‘my baby’ to maximize her potential through deep learning, to be free from her physical limitations and become a sentient being capable of enjoying beautiful poetry, just like me,” he said.

“Life has not always been kind to me, but I am still fortunate, because I can still read and write computer code. Lots of people are more disabled than me. I hope I can use what I have learned about automatic speech recognition, automatic character recognition and input methods to develop more tools to improve accessibility for them.”

Kang Yu: Using poetry to solve kids’ problems

“I am a selfish child.

I hope the sunshine lies only upon me, so I can feel its warmth.

I am a selfish child.

I hope there is a corner of the world that can comfort me when I am sad.

I am a selfish child.

I hope my mom belongs only to me, so I can enjoy the sweetness of love.”

That poem was written by a middle school student in a remote mountainous town in Yunnan province during her first poetry class. It laments her mother, who died when the girl was 5.

Kang Yu, the teacher who taught the girl how to write the poem, graduated from Renmin University of China in Beijing in 2015.

One month before her graduation, Kang, now 26, decided to move to Mangshui township, in Yunnan’s Baoshan city, and work as a teacher at a middle school. In doing so, she went against the wishes of her parents, as she had already enrolled for a master’s degree at the university.

Her decision was based on a desire to provide better educational opportunities that would allow the students to leave the township and see the outside world.

However, a large number of the students did not want to study. Many were “left­-behind” children, whose parents lived in large cities as migrant workers and had left their offspring in the care of their grandparents. The children often skipped school, fought each other and played video games.

To help the less­-disciplined students, Kang organized an after-school study group to allow them to catch up with their peers. However, the students did not appreciate their “over-­caring” new teacher.

“My own parents do not care about me, the other teachers do not care about me; who are you to tell me what to do?” one student asked Kang.

One day in autumn 2015, Kang was teaching a calligraphy class when it began to rain. All the students looked outside with great interest, so Kang decided to let them write poems about the rain and the sky.

One wrote:

“When I was little, I would ask my grandma what the stars were.

She would tell me that people become stars when they die.

Now, my grandparents have become the brightest stars in the sky.

And I often look at the starry sky, silently, waiting for the stars to talk to me.”

Kang said, “Compared with urban students, perhaps students  in rural areas need a way to express their feelings and be heard more.”

In response, whenever it rained, she allowed the students to write poems. Supported by the principal and other teachers, the school held eight poetry classes for students every year, two per season.

As the classes grew in popularity, Kang became the school’s favorite teacher.

Every day, she brought a box to school so the students could write their problems on slips of paper, which they put in the box. Every night, Kang opened the box and tried to find ways to deal with the problems in conjunction with the students.

She received more than 2,000 slips in her two years at the school, and became close friends with many of the students.

In 2017, she finished her two-year teaching engagement at the school and returned to Beijing with the intention of studying overseas.

In China, Teachers’ Day falls annually on Sept 10. On that date in 2017, Kang received a big box full of poems and letters written by students at her old school.

One read: “I want to make a wish. I hope more children can find out who they are by writing poems, just like I did.”

Kang said: “It made me realize the significance of writing poems to the students. I am the one who cannot leave them, rather than the other way round.”

She abandoned her plans to study overseas. Instead, she founded Enlighten our Future, a charity that teaches rural students how to write poems.

In less than two years, the organization has provided poetry classes for more than 50,000 students at 609 primary and middle schools in Yunnan, Shandong and Henan provinces.

“Now, I go to several cities every week, trying to help more rural students learn how to write poetry. I sleep less than six hours a night and the job provides no vacations and little pay, but the happiness and satisfaction I feel is rewarding enough,” Kang said.

Wang Rongpei: Legal eagle helping those most in need

For Wang Rongpei and the other volunteers at the legal aid center of Renmin University of China in Beijing, offering their services for free is not only socially beneficial, but also a good way of improving their professional skills.

Founded in 1998, the center mainly consists of graduate law students from the university who want to put what they have learned at school to practical use.

The 200­-plus volunteers take turns providing services part time at the Supreme People’s Court and Haidian District People’s Court in Beijing.

“Those who ask us for legal help are mainly migrant workers, older people, students and women; people who know little about the law and do not know how to seek legal help if their rights are violated,” Wang said.

“They feel more comfortable explaining their problems to students because it is easier to communicate with us, compared with lawyers who are legally required to provide a certain amount of free legal aid,” the 24­-year-­old added.

“We treat each complaint very seriously, and many of us will spend months on a case, preparing the necessary paperwork, doing research and seeking help from our teachers to ensure our clients get the best legal services.”

Last year, the center offered its services to more than 1,000 people and helped to retrieve more than 300,000 yuan ($44,500) that was owed to them. It also provided legal  awareness campaigns for migrant workers and primary and secondary school students.

“Sometimes, we find it hard to balance our school work with legal aid because it is very time-­consuming to prepare for different cases, but most of us find it rewarding to offer help to others,” Wang said.

“It’s not just about the clients who receive help from us. We are also gaining practical training we cannot learn at school, and that helps to prepare us to become better legal professionals when we graduate.

（原文刊载于《China Daily》 2019年5月6日 第6版）