On March 5, 2020, anti-epidemic hero and professor Zhong Nanshan wrote a letter to Primary school students across the country, encouraging them to equip themselves with knowledge and become the mainstay of all walks of life in the future. When the Primary students at YWIES Shanghai Lingang read this letter, they became more confident and everyone in each class began to reply to Professor Zhong Nanshan. From Grade 1 to 5, students expressed their pure hearts in various forms of letters.

We Sent “Grandpa” Zhong Nanshan over 150 Letters
Before the Spring Festival, many children did not know Zhong Nanshan. However, with the coronavirus epidemic and effective prevention and control, “Grandpa” Zhong Nanshan has become a hero in every child's heart. On March 16, the Primary Chinese Department of YWIES Shanghai Lingang launched this writing activity. In just six days, teachers received more than 150 replies from Grade 1-5 students to “Grandpa” Zhong Nanshan. These letters showed their gratitude, admiration, and care to Professor Zhong Nanshan and all the medical staff in our country. The children were determined to learn from them and to contribute themselves to our motherland in the future. The children wrote letters from the bottom of their hearts and responded to his concern with love.

Writing Is the Carrier of Feelings
Teaching writing has always been a top priority in the Primary Chinese curriculum. Students' lack of life experience leads to dull content, poor expression and lack of true feelings. This writing activity just took a letter from Professor Zhong Nanshan as an opportunity, and students consolidated their writing and expression skills in the letters, combining their own personal experience and feelings. After receiving the students' reply, the Chinese teachers of each grade read, corrected, guided and gave feedback to the students' works. Finally, they selected some representative works and invited them to participate in the audio recording. Finally, a reading video titled "Reply to Grandpa Zhong Nanshan" was finished. This activity received enthusiastic participation from the children, and their writing level has further improved. Many children combined their own recent feelings to express their true feelings. The event enriched the Chinese online teaching content, and also gave us rich materials for the speeches under the flag.

To Learn Chinese in Real Life
Our school shared the wonderful students’ replies on March 30 in the online flag-raising ceremony. This activity was our third speech under the national flag to pay respect to the anti-epidemic heroes. The first speech was titled "A Letter to the Medical Staff," the second was titled "Iron Roses, Female Anti-epidemic Heroes" and the fourth one for next time will be “Offering Memories to Sacrificed Heroes in the Anti-Epidemic War". We are educating students to take pride in and show respect for their country, and also guiding them in character development. We want the children to pay more attention to current affairs and care about society. More importantly, we hope that through this series of activities, we can plant a seed of love in each child's heart so as to help them cherish life, and love their family and motherland.