Marking International Children's Day, which falls on June 1 every year, President Xi Jinping's congratulations this year involved a once-dilapidated elementary school that was located on a steep hill 20 years ago in Jialing district in Nanchong, a city in southwestern China's Sichuan province.

In 2004, the school was relocated with support from Zhejiang province, and Xi, who was then Party secretary of Zhejiang, laid the foundation stone for the new Zhijiang Primary School in May of the same year.

A year later, the new school officially opened with significantly improved conditions, and currently there are 287 elementary students in attendance.

Recently, all the students of the school's class one of the fifth grade wrote a letter to Xi, in which they reported on their studies and lives, expressed their gratitude and stated their determination to be excellent youngsters in the new era.

In his reply dated Thursday, Xi, who is also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, encouraged them to be patriotic, self-reliant and aspiring children in the new era.

Also in the letter, he extended International Children's Day greetings to children nationwide.

Xi said, "Seeing the letter, I recalled the scene of laying the foundation stone for your school 20 years ago."

"I am very pleased to learn that the school has been getting better and better over the years," he said, noting that the students study hard and grow up healthy and happy.

Xi emphasized that children and young people are the future of the country.

"To build up your hometown well and build our country into a socialist modernized powerful country in all aspects, we need your generation to carry on and work hard."