How about a five-year-old child?

From babbling to toddling,

from being innocent to curious about the world.

It is the node time for a child who grows from an infant to a juvenile.

It is said that when children are five, 80% of the construction of their personalities have been completed.

In April 2016, FLFC(Free Lunch for Children) is already five years old. The five years was like the growth of a child, hardly but wonderful.

In March 2011, FLFC was not born yet. 

At that time, we went around mountain areas, visited schools, and made preparations for FLFC.

At that time, I served my old company “DUSHIKUAIBAO” who advocates the idea that life could be wonderful with warmth.

“DUSHIKUAIBAO” devoted its force to Nayong county, Guizhou province. In moutains of this area, I went ground with my colleagues, Kangping and Liu Yang, like exultant horses. Everything was fresh for us.

There were what we saw of that time.

▼Schools like this(one)

▼Children 

▼Their classroom

▼（Three children sharing a slat seat.）

▼The blackboard

▼Expressions showing in children’s eyes(how could we forget that)

▼Children’s game(they played with plastic bottle caps)

▼Children were on the way home after school.

▼Children’s shoes

▼Some children’s home like this(one)

（Facilities used for eating, sleeping, and heating, crammed the small room.）

There were more behind these photos.

●The dangerous bidirectional two-lane highway where motorcycles speeded past sometimes.

●Students spent an hour or two in acrossing the mountains before arriving at schools, and they always ate potatoes for lunch.

●Students were almost left-behind children because their parents scattered in city groups in Yangtze Delta or Zhujiang Delta where were far away from them.

●On the walls there were slogans like “it’s illeagal to not let children attend schools”.

●Schools were built on the hilltops where people should carry water from the foot of the mountains.

●In some schools, there were few teachers and among them many were substitute ones.

●Here the most fresh thing was air, extremely refreshing.

▼There were soft drinks that sold in the villages.

（Do you mistake them for products of the brand like Wahaha, MasterKong, and Redbull...）

▼Fueling vehicle like this

All of these, 

doubtlessly, 

it’s a heartquake for a person who grew up in Yangtze Delta Region.

You could not be insusceptible.

You promised to try your best and do your possible.

▼Therefore, we walked on the mountain roads.

▼We took a risk to squelch freshet.

（Xu Kangping, a photographer of “DUSHIKUAIBAO”）

（Liu Yang, a former “Fast Leopard” broadband journalist of “DUSHIKUAIBAO”）

Now he has diverted to the undertaking of image.

▼We encountered hail.

（This was the biggest one we had ever seen, which smashed on the roof of cars, banging and frightening.）

It was worthwhile to make efforts when you saw children had reeky lunch. FLFC developed step by step in five years with efforts from numerous volunteers.

The first time children had formal lunch.

▼In some schools with poor condition, they had to dine on the playground.

Potatoes were no longer the only choice of lunch.

▼The boy stinted on an egg, leaving the egg yolk to be eaten at last.

Zhenzhen phoned me that it’s high time to hackle the past five years of FLFC. Then I found the harddisk and browsed these photos.

All of these were photographed by my instamatic SONY T20. The camera has been retired now.

As an amateur, I just saved these photos on my harddisk, without publishing them in newspapers or processing them with Photoshop.

(On April 3 , 2011. It’s the first report of FLFC, taking up four layouts of “DUSHIKUAIBAO”.)

For FLFC, the proprieter Yang Xing, the deputy editor-in-chief Jiang Xianzheng, and the director Lv Hong of “DUSHIKUAIBAO”, did not hesitate to report it continuously.

FLFC combined with the love organization “Caring Nayong” of Nayong county, offering lunch to several schools in initial two months.

(On May 9, 2011. In Hangzhou a good soul who asked not to be identified donated 2,500,000 yuan directly.)

We were in Guizhou province of that time. When a colleague Ling Tao told us the news, it’s exciting but unbelievable and we even doubted that somebody did it by mistake.

As the donator who is unknown so far, FLFC is a love river accepting myriads of love.

In China, there has been 517 schools in 23 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions join up with FLFC. The number of children who enjoy free lunch has risen from 169 to 143,359.

Recently, Liu Yang asked me that whether I missed the days that we devoted ourselves into FLFC in Guizhou province or not.

I responded, yes, I would miss the details of a scene, sitting in the groggily jarring vehicle, listening to the music, watching peaks outside the window back...Also I missed the smiling face of children who enjoyed free lunch and volunteers of “Caring Nayong”, including Lao Bing, Li Jian, Yu Han and so on.

All of these are the treasure of life.

Initially, we arrived in Guiyang(the capital city of Guizhou province) from different places to meet up Deng Fei.

After paying visits to several countryside schools, we finally stayed in Shaba elementary school.

Deng Fei decided to cook the first lunch here. To start with a Weibo, many minor strengths assembled on the internet, arousing a crowdfunding storm that to help montanic children afford free lunch with 3 yuan per day.

Within several days, Shaba elementary school started offering free lunch on April 2.

From an egg, this school in Huaxi village, Qianxi county became the first one of FLFC.

Afterwards, the increasing number of FLFC schools appeared in different mountain regions of China.

As three media power of FLFC, “DUSHIKUAIBAO”(Hangzhou), “Qianzhong Morning post”(Guiyang) and “Huasheng Online”(Changsha) promoted activities side by side.

（ Photographed by Xu Kangping）

At that time,

Kangping was unmarried.

Liu Yang was young and handsome.

Zhang Yan was a Miss.

Deng Fei’s white hair was less than now.

...

I am still a volunteer of FLFC until now. After completing the first tenure of FLFC management committee, I was selected to be a member of board of supervisors to produce “waste heat” continuously.

FLFC is five. Like each child’s growth, it thrives with the care of all staff and volunteers.

When numerous minor strengths through internet converge into one point, everything will be changed just like the name of the book “Softness Changes China” relating to FLFC.

Right, FLFC is like our child whom we cherish her growing plume.

I still remember that five years ago, it’s an afternoon in March 2011. I have forgotten what the weather was like, but I haven’t forgotten the call from Deng Fei.

He said, let’s go to Guizhou, let’s do something, something could change China.