On June 29th, 2021, Zhang Guimei was awarded the highest honor of CPC—the July 1#Medal in the Great Hall of the People. She is the first person in China to set up a free senior high school for poor girls.
Zhang Guimei was born in 1957 in Mudanjiang, Heilongjiang Province. In 1974, she reached Yunnan Province and began to work there the next year. In 1983, she became a school teacher. She loved her job and worked very hard. She was strict but kind to all her students.
While Zhang Guimei was working in Huaping County, she noticed that many girls from poor families couldn't afford to go to school. So she came up with the idea of starting a free school for them. However, many people thought she was crazy at first, because they believed that starting a school was not easy and needed lots of money. In order to raise money, she had to ask for help everywhere and save every coin at the same time. With the help of the local government, she started Huaping Senior High School for Girls in 2008. The school provides not only free education but also necessary daily items（用品） for its students.
Zhang Guimei has been so busy that she can hardly have any time for a good rest since her school was started. She loves her students and there is a special teacher-student relationship between them. Her students all call her"mother".
After years of hard work, the school has made great achievements. In the past fifteen years, as many as 2, 000 poor girls from the school have entered universities or colleges. As a result, their life has been changed.
