The Jack Ma Rural Teacher Award ceremony is held in Sanya, South China's Hainan province, on Jan 13. [Photo/zjol.com.cn]

The Jack Ma Rural Teacher Award ceremony was held in Sanya, South China's Hainan province, on Jan 13.

The award recognized 101 rural teachers nationwide this year, three of whom are from Taizhou, East China's Zhejiang province.

Pan Nan, a teacher from the Haishan school in Yuhuan, a county-level city in Taizhou is one of them. At the rural school for six years, Pan is a math teacher of 31 students.

"I already felt fulfilled by working as a teacher, and winning the award is a great motivation for me to stick to my post as a rural teacher," she said in a media interview.

Li Rui, headmaster of the Panlang primary school in Wenling, won the Rural Headmaster Award. Li, 42, has been working in the school for 22 years.

He recalled that after college graduation, he was dispatched to teach Chinese at a township school despite his major being math. Teachers in rural areas at that time were in great shortage, which required them to be adept in more than more subject, Li explained. "With help and encouragement from other teachers, I had a smooth start at my job," he added.

Another award winner from Taizhou is Guo Xionggui. Working as a teacher at the Zhangxiang school in Xianju County for 13 years, Guo has shown proficiency and excellence throughout his career.

None of the students he ever taught have dropped out of school and in 2017 more than 20 students from his class were admitted by key senior high schools.

At the award ceremony, plans for the rural boarding school model rooms advocated by Jack Ma were released. Ma, chairman of Alibaba Group, has awarded this prize to rural teachers in Sanya every year since 2015.

Pan Nan, winner of the Jack Ma Rural Teacher Award, poses with students. [Photo/taizhou.com.cn]