In many parts of China’s underdeveloped rural areas, education has been facing challenges due to poverty and a lack of awareness of its importance. And this used to be the situation in Yongku, a small village located in China’s far west Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, where school was nonexistent before the 1960s. But later, the local educational environment was changed by a group of migrant workers, in addition to generations of local people who have been making efforts to create a better life through education over the past few decades.