Like most women her age in China, Liu Fang has only one child.

But at the rural school in southwest China's Guizhou Province where she teaches, students call her "mom" and share little secrets with her they would never tell their parents or friends.

With her artistic talent and an innate love of teaching, Liu makes the classroom her stage. Her classes are like talk shows, triggering roars of laughter among her teenage audience. The fun approach to learning works -- her students often outperform their peers on exams.

"Her writing on the chalkboard was always a highlight," one former student recalled more than 10 years after graduation.

Actually, her writing was messy. She often overshot the chalkboard and scrawled on the wall. Liu Fang had completely lost her eyesight by the time she stopped teaching Chinese language classes.

Liu has never given up hope. In addition to teaching Chinese, she has also been a campus counselor, a published author, and a role model whose story has featured in newspaper articles read by millions. In a country where job opportunities for blind people can be limited, her achievements are profound.

Her novel, "Green Pomegranates," is largely auto-biographical. She has donated all the proceeds from the book to rural schools in Guizhou.

Last year, Liu was recognized as one of the 10 most inspiring individuals or groups through an awards program sponsored by Xinhuanet.com and based on a public vote.

On the eve of Chinese Teacher's Day on Sept. 10, Liu has received greetings from her former students, senior officials in Guizhou Province, as well as complete strangers who are moved by her experience.

INTO THE DARKNESS

Liu Fang was 26 when found out she was going blind.

It was in 1997. Her son was eight months old and she was in her fourth year of teaching Chinese at No. 3 Middle School in the suburbs of the provincial capital Guiyang.

She could not see properly at night, and in daylight she saw colorful ripples. Doctors said it was a rare retinal disease that would eventually lead to blindness.

The diagnosis hit Liu like a thunderbolt. She spent many nights weeping.

But when she appeared in front of her students and colleagues in the morning, she was the same cheerful woman whose laughter could be heard even before she entered a room.

To prepare for total blindness, she learned every word in the school textbooks by heart. The children often saw her holding the textbook upside down while still reading the text out loud without any mistakes.

In class, she told jokes, sang songs and mimicked the characters in the texts. "I had to make my classes lively and interesting so the children follow me, as I could not observe their reactions with my eyes," she says.

Her colleagues would read out the children's writing assignments for her before she gave comments. She always drew a cartoon on their work: a smiling face for a good job, a teary one for sorrow or sympathy, and a confused one for something incomprehensible.

Very often the eyes, noses and mouths were wonky, but she could always get the expressions right: she had taken art classes for two years before she went blind. One of her best paintings was an owl peering into the darkness, which was soon to become the view through her eyes.

Liu read her last novel with her naked eyes in 2001. In 2003, her field of vision had become so narrow that she was almost knocked down by a car. She became totally blind in 2007.

LIGHT OF HEART

Liu's husband used to work away from home, and for many years Liu and her child took care of each other. He helped her with cooking and cleaning and she told him stories. He sang and she danced to the music.

The boy, now away studying at university, began helping his mother cross the street when he was three. Throughout his school days, he escorted his mother to work before going to his own classroom.

"My mother is an extraordinary woman in many ways," he wrote in an essay. "Her eyes cannot see, but there's light in her heart."

Liu Fang appears healthy and robust. Standing 5 feet tall, she walks nimbly and talks fast. She loves dressing up and her favorite color is red. "I'm a Virgo and am meticulous with my work and my look," she says.

After she completely lost her sight, she was advised to quit her job because teaching positions, like any on the official payroll, are highly coveted in the impoverished province. "I refused to leave, because that would mean my life had to end," she explained.

The school principal let her stay and gave her a new job as a counselor.

The rural school with more than 1,300 students badly needed someone in the role, as at least a quarter of the teenagers are "left-behind" children whose parents had moved to cities in search of work. Some children stay with relatives, while others are left to take care of themselves.

Liu's new job involves giving about 100 psychological counseling classes a year and offering one-on-one counseling to those who need it.

In 2009, a girl tried to commit suicide out of despair over her parents' separation. Liu covered the girl's eyes with a scarf and spent a whole day with her.

At the end of day, she asked the girl how it was to be blind. "I've felt my way in the darkness every day for three years but still enjoy my life," said Liu. "You, with eyes to see and such a pretty face, can certainly have a much better life."

The girl cried and promised never to give up again.

Most of rural Guizhou is poor. Liu often faces students who want to drop out of school to join their parents as migrant laborers.

One, Zeng Xianglei, dropped out in the eighth grade. Liu persuaded him to at least finish middle school.

Zeng took heed, and even finished another three years of vocational training. "He had an aptitude for music and art and his writing was great," Liu recalls.

But a few more years of education did little to change Zeng's fate. After graduation, he found a job on a construction site. He died at 21 after falling through loose scaffolding.

In his bag, his parents found a letter to Liu Fang. "Every time I quit school, you came and called me back. You never scolded me -- you lit up my heart instead. I'm so happy to be able to work now, but my heart aches whenever I remember your eye disease. Please wait for me. I'll take you to the hospital when I'm rich. Remember, I'm just like your son. If there's anything I can do for you, please call me and I'll be there for you..."

The two pages were written a week before Zeng died in 2011.

LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL

A typical workday for Liu starts at 6:30 a.m. After getting ready, she waits for her best friend and colleague Mao Yanhong to drive her to work.

She spends her morning typing out lecture notes and the minutes from sessions with troubled students. With the help of talking software, she uses the computer expertly and can type more words per minute than most of her colleagues.

Most of her classes are in the afternoon. She has three rules for her students: "Be relaxed, laugh a lot and learn something."

After dinner, she listens to the news. "Sometimes I hear my name in the local news and soon enough, my mother will comment, 'Oh no, your pancake face is not so pretty on the screen.' She's always teasing me for my round face," Liu says.

Then follows 40 minutes on the treadmill, after which she takes a shower and begins her evening writing session on her computer, which often lasts until 11 p.m. She wants to publish more books.

Liu writes about herself, her colleagues and students. She remembers the distant past and clings to every detail.

"Everything is so fine and life is beautiful," according to a passage in one of her books. "I remember the dust coming out from my bedspread and pillow. I used to complain about it but nowadays, every dust cloud seems like a dancing life, and how I long to see them dance in the sunshine again."

A few months ago, Liu received a letter from a retiree in the central province of Hunan. The man, having read her story in a local newspaper, offered to donate one of his eyes so Liu could see again.

She cried as her colleague read it to her. "The doctors say there's no hope for me to see again, but these loving people have made my life so beautiful."

BUILDING SELF-WORTH, AND CARRYING ON

In one of her latest poems, Liu wrote:

"Disability is my permanent mark,

but a smile is your gilded invitation.

Give me a hug,

and I'm the cloudless sky in your heart."

Liu has worked hard to stay confident and sure of herself.

"Many people are surprised that I'm so cheerful and confident," she says. "They may think a blind person is only entitled to sit on the street and play an instrument, with a bowl on the ground waiting for coins."

Rather than taking early retirement and living on a pension, Liu insisted on staying in her job and working like a normal person.

No one wants to pitied, Liu believes. "We should avoid excessive interference in other people's lives."

Liu and her colleagues once raised money to buy socks for children who live in some of Guizhou's poorest villages. "We thought their families could not afford to buy them socks."

The donations, however, were not well received.

"We were told later the children were used to walking barefoot and everybody thought socks were a nuisance. Moreover, because water was so scarce in the mountain villages it was wasteful to wash them."

Though poverty continues to hold back many parts of rural China, money and material objects are not the only solution, Liu insists.

In a recent survey, she found 68 percent of the left-behind children in her school wanted their parents' company more than more pocket money.

Seventy-seven percent of these children said they worried about their parents.

When asked about their parents' expectations of them, however, 68 percent said they believed their report cards were more important than their health.

Based on the results of the survey, Liu is analyzing the mental wellbeing of left-behind children, which she will share with schools and the local education authorities.

The idea for the survey came from a counselling session with one of her most problematic groups of seventh-graders: of the 44 students in that class, 26 were left-behind children.

"I handed out papers and envelopes and asked each of the 26 students to write a letter to their parents about their hopes and dreams," explains Liu.

One boy wrote that he dreamed of becoming a lawyer, so that he could help his parents claim their unpaid wages. Another girl said she dreamed of becoming a doctor because her heart ached when her parents came home ill or injured.

The most impressive letter was written by a boy who said he dreamed of being a migrant worker, just like his parents.

"Dear Mom and Dad," he wrote. "My dream is so small that you may feel disappointed. But I just want to be a migrant worker because in this way, I can follow you wherever you go and our family will be together forever."

Liu congratulated the children on their letters and showed them a scar on her thumbnail. "I had a lonely childhood just like you," she told them. "My father worked far from home and mother was not always around. I spent most of my preschool years sitting on the street waiting for them to come home."

Once, her father gave her a beautiful glass ball. One day, it rolled away from her and into a pile of garbage. In her haste to find that token of fatherly love, she caught her thumb on some rusty wire, leaving a permanent scar.

She also read to them some lines from one of her poems:

"The tribulation in front of your eyes is not really tough,

just conquer it;

the tribulation your heart can hold is not a tribulation for real,

just take it.

The roaring water will wash away the sand,

revealing pearls."