This is only an ordinary stage, but it means something extraordinary to me!

    - A staff trainer shares about a moving lesson in the Resilience Program

In the lesson "Dual-Identity", we encourage the students to accept and appreciate their dual-identities from their rural hometown and city backgrounds. One of the main activities was "My treasure box". We passed around the beautiful "treasure box" (a gift box), and let each student wrote on slips of paper the wonderful qualities they have inherited from their hometowns. At the end of the lesson, these are shared on the "Starlight Promenade" (the stage circled by students in the class).

Many volunteer trainers who are not originally from Beijing are also very moved by this topic. They have non-Beijing hukous and are only studying or working in Beijing. Many of them have rejected their identity as coming from rural hometowns in the past, and have felt very confused and bothered by their identities. As a result, during the training for the trainers, many of them found this lesson very difficult. After learning to embrace her "dual-identities", a trainer from Zhejiang told the students, "Some things in life pass away as time passes, such as good looks, wealth, social status. But some things will stay in your lives forever, and become your treasure of a lifetime. Time will not take those away. Other people will not take those away. What are these things? Now in each of our hands we are holding the treasures we have inherited from our hometowns. Let’s walk on the ‘starlight promenade’, and share with others the treasures we have got! Then we can carefully place these in our treasure box, and let our lives shine gloriously!"

The trainers decorated a runway with stars, and let students stand along both sides. As award ceremony plays in the background, each student is formally invited to go on stage. This activity touched many students. Many of them shed tears while walking on the starlight promenade, and some of them look extra proud of themselves. Xiaomeng is usually a shy girl and talks little, but on that day, she told the trainers privately "Although this is only an ordinary stage, but it means something extraordinary to me! I will never forget this day!"