Standing ovations don’t come the way of many high-school teachers. But one educator in Jiangsu has indeed struck such a chord in the hearts of his students to bring them to their feet in a birthday surprise that has gone viral on the Chinese internet.
Students at Xuzhou Shuen Middle School in our very own Jiangsu Province had planned the surprise to perfection. “Mr. Ma!”, one cried out to him down the corridor. “There’s fighting in the classroom!”
But when Ma Weidong, 54 last Friday, 17 February, burst into his classroom to intervene in the supposed kerfuffle, he found only two male students laughing at him.
Just as he thought the prank was all over, the lights suddenly dimmed, the class monitor brought over a big cake and the whole class burst into a round of “Happy Birthday”.
As Ma turned his head to his blackboard, he read the words, “Happy birthday, Mr. Ma; no longer a 54-year-old kid” (已经不是54岁的小孩子), while scores of his students took to their feet in applause.
But the particularly heart-warming part was still to come.
A video of the surprise circulating online has received more than 2.5 million likes and been aired by a number of media outlets. In it, Ma can be seen to stroke back his hair in reaction to the surprise. In reality, he was wiping away the tears he was shedding at his students’ thoughtful actions. The video can be seen in this report published by the Yangtze Evening News.
The backstory to Friday’s fun, though, also tugs at the heart strings. Having accidentally learned that Friday was to be Ma’s birthday, class monitor, Huang Guanpeng, summoned the whole class for a meeting.
Hearing Huang say, “Mr. Ma is from another province; we want him to have an unforgettable birthday in Xuzhou”, cajoled the whole class to unanimously decide to give Ma the birthday celebration. The students then used their after-class time of the day before to make the necessary preparations for the surprise.
Hailing from Xinxiang in Henan Province, Ma came to Xuzhou Shuen Middle School as head teacher of the senior-high school first grade in 2021.
After his surprise, Ma acknowledged that teenage years are indeed the most rebellious and unmanageable, but said that as long as students are treated sincerely, they will feel it. “Only by understanding can you enter their hearts”, said the birthday boy.
