Retired headmaster David Liao spends more than 50 years teaching English.

Now aged 78, Liao has spent the last 24 years teaching English at a rural village called Changjiao in Dabu County, Guangdong Province in China after retiring as a secondary school headmaster in 2000.

Liao, born in Ipoh, a single, was thinking of teaching English in Africa.

But his friend suggested that he teach English in China instead.

His next challenge was to learn Chinese in Hong Kong and later settled down in his grandfather’s village in Changjiao, Dabu County to teach English.

Since 2001, Liao has not only helped the rural Chinese children master the English language, but has also helped develop the village.

He used his grandfather’s ancestral home as the La Salle Study Centre to teach English. Students from other villages can also stay in the centre for free.

It was not a smooth start for Liao, who was seen as a mad foreigner by the local villagers, for wanting to settle down in a rural village to teach English but could not speak any Mandarin.

He had another nickname dumb for not being able to communicate with the villagers until he started to learn the Hakka dialect.

He started with only a few students and focused on teaching students about to sit for examination in three years.

His students scored impressive results, and one of them was even admitted by a university later.

By then, the size of his class began to grow. Parents from nearby villages also sent their children to learn English from him.

Changjiao Village was later known as the English Village, and Liao was awarded China’s “most beautiful rural teacher” in 2013.

He developed a Pinphonic method, an integration of English and Chinese pronunciation, to help his students pick up the language.

“For example, a Year Four student can read a word without understanding its meaning in one week,” he said.

He also converted grammar rules to music which his students could sing.

Besides teaching English free of charge, he also sponsored about 40 students to study at universities.

“I am thankful to my students in Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong who have supported me and encouraged me by telling me to focus on teaching,” he said.

Besides teaching English, Liao also helped develop the village by convincing the villagers to plant pomelo trees when the Chinese government announced that Meizhou City, where Dabu County is located, would be a place to grow pomelo back in 2011.

Growing up in Ipoh, Liao couldn’t have been more familiar with pomelo!

Back then the villagers were still growing paddy instead of pomelo.

Repeating his house-to-house visit strategy while recruiting students, Liao visited the villagers to encourage them to plant pomelo.

Three families agreed to try since it was the respected teacher Liao who had approached them.

Five years later, the three families made lucrative incomes, and this prompted other villagers to follow suit.

The village, where its residents either have to walk or cycle as there are no cars, has become increasingly affluent.

For that, Liao earned another nickname of a land owner without land when he monitored the plantation of pomelo. 

Liao has set the target of teaching English in China for 25 years.

“Dabu County now no longer needs me. When the 25 years is up, I will continue with my next journey,” he said.

He said he wanted to teach in Africa!