Students prepare to rehearse a ballet performance in the dance studio at a middle school in Anxin county.

Before volunteering as a teacher in Duancun, she used to spend her weekends teaching children or performing at weddings, which earns her about 200 yuan an hour.

The teaching condition in the village is not as desirable as Beijing, but Li says she enjoys the opportunity of experiencing countryside life.

Chen Guang, a professor of trumpet from the Central Conservatory of Music, has been motivating the university's students to participate in the teaching program from day one.

"Almost all our students have gone through strict training for at least 10 years in music before entering college, because the competition is so fierce," Chen says. "But whenever we ask our students to imagine about the wild, they can hardly picture anything. Most of them have never been there."

On Sept 28, all the students from the three villages in Anxin County will move into a new boarding school that Hefeng Art Foundation co-founded with the local government.

Art education will continue there, where a fully-equipped dance studio and music room have been built. The children's performances will include choir, ballet dancing, drama and symphony on the opening night of the boarding school. It will be the first-ever stage performance for the children there.

"I dreamed about learning a musical instrument as a teenager, but it was something impossible for us in the rural area," says Li Fang, mother of a 9-year-old girl who has been taking violin classes with the foundation for three months. "I am so excited about my daughter's upcoming performance that it's keeping me awake at night!"

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