"A full 55-minute privilege" is the headline that Iao Tun-ieong would choose for his memory of President Xi Jinping's visit to the Premier School Affiliated to Hou Kong Middle School in the Macao Special Administrative Region on Dec 19, 2019 — one day before the 20th anniversary of the city's return to the motherland.

As the principal of the affiliated school, Iao was the only school administration member who accompanied the president throughout the visit, and ever since, he has treated the experience as a beacon for navigating the school's development.

"From afar I had already caught sight of the president's car approaching, a quite heavy type of vehicle," he recalled. "But the president turned out to be most affable. We took the lift together up to the library on the first floor."

President Xi was then greeted by a three-part exhibition, which opened with a display of school textbooks and must-reads on Macao, spotlighted a miniature Great Wall made by the students, and ended on a forward-looking note with a showcase of young ideas for innovative inventions.

The textbook and the model of the Great Wall struck an enthusiastic chord with the president, who leafed with "close attention" through pages about Chinese history, virtue and citizenship, and who described the miniature Great Wall as "heartwarming", said Iao.

Most of the textbooks that the school chose for display were published or copublished by the People's Education Press.

Iao spoke of the choice of textbooks as an echo of the school's deep patriotic roots, as well as a hallmark of its patriotic education.

One of Xi's key hopes that was etched in Iao's mind was to keep up the efforts of history education, thereby firmly laying the groundwork for cultivating strong patriotic minds.

"Xi instructed us to continue enabling the youths to know the nation's uninterrupted history spanning over five millennia, to understand the trajectory of national rejuvenation, to keep abreast of the nation's achievements, and to ultimately develop strong national pride and cultural confidence," Iao said.

As Xi reached the end of the library tour, before going upstairs to observe a history class, he presented as a gift to the school a colossal collection of books and musical instruments.

Most boastworthy of all was a 1,500-volume set of Siku Quanshu — the complete library of the four branches of literature compiled in the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). It is now enshrined in the school library's newly built court named Wenxi, which embodies Xi's hope for carrying forward traditional Chinese culture at the school.

"It now serves as a potent lever for us to step up our history education endeavor," said Iao. "We have been organizing our students and teaching staff to relish the work through composing reviews, calligraphy pieces and paintings, and even invited university professors to expound on the books' profoundness."

He added that the school is now compiling some of the best works of the teachers and students, hoping to present them to the president as a tribute to the upcoming 25th anniversary of the Macao SAR.

Youths inspired

Another heartfelt item that brought about Xi's 2019 visit to the school was a letter to the president from a group of pupils, who had the idea to do so when asked to write a thank-you letter to anyone of their choice as a traditional celebration of International Children's Day, which falls on June 1.

Among them was Liu Kai-leong, one of the two students who designed the letter cover, on which he hand-wrote eight Chinese characters in neat calligraphy that read "A letter to President Xi".

Liu said that the drawing on the letter cover, which featured many iconic landmarks in Macao and those of the mainland woven together, was intended to embody "the close and indissoluble bond between our city and the motherland".

On the day of Xi's visit, Liu joined some 50 other students to give the president a special send-off at the school's main entrance.

"It was surreal when President Xi came up and shook my hand before leaving the school," Liu said. "No one expected that he would shake hands with every single one of us students, but he did. For that moment, he was real, an amiable and caring elder, not a figure only seen on television."

Liu, then a sixth-grade primary school student who stood out for his calligraphy skills, has now grown into a vigorous, 1.75-meter-tall 17-year-old.

Chinese history should be viewed as "general knowledge that all Macao youngsters should acquire with a sense of mission and responsibility", said Liu, who is now focusing on his application for the medical program at Peking University.

According to Liu, he and many of his peers in Macao are poised to go the extra mile to learn about and integrate into the country by seizing study opportunities at higher education institutions on the mainland.