 Thirteen @-@ year @-@ old Wei Minzhi arrives in Shuiquan village to substitute for the village 's only teacher ( Gao Enman ) while he is away on family business . When Gao discovers that Wei does not have a high school education and has no special talents , he instructs her to teach by copying his texts onto the board and then making the students copy them into their notebooks ; he also tells her not to use more than one piece of chalk per day , because the village is too poor to afford more . Before leaving , he explains to her that many students have recently left school to find work in the cities , and he offers her a 10 yuan bonus if all the students are still there when he returns . 
