Editor's note: September 10 is celebrated across China as the Teachers' Day.

Lan Songlin, a science teacher for 16 years in Tashi junior high school, looks at his hand-drawn map for home visit in villages, Quzhou city, Zhejiang province, July 4, 2017. [Photo/VCG]

Lan Songlin, a science teacher for 16 years in Tashi junior high school, solved the problem of finding homes of students in villages by drawing a handy map that works better than navigation apps in June 2017.

The families of the school's 583 students are mostly scattered in 130 villages in a mountainous town of Quzhou city, Zhejiang province. Some are remote and some lack transportation.

The village names are constantly changing due to merger of villages. Many names of roads have yet to be uploaded on the digital map. All these add difficulties to the teachers' home visit, especially for a dozen or so non-local teachers who do not work long there.

The map for home visit in villages made by Lan Songlin, a science teacher for 16 years in Tashi junior high school, Quzhou city, Zhejiang province, July 4, 2017. [Photo/VCG]

A new teacher was led to a cemetery by the navigation app during a home visit. While others took it as a joke, Lan decided to create a map after hearing the story.

Having been to each and every village where the students live in, Lan was able to dot the lines to show the villages' locations based on his memory formed through years of experience. Phone calls were also made to village committees to confirm the names.

At the teachers' meeting before last year's home visit, Lan showed the map and received praise from his colleagues and leaders. Since then, a copy of the hand-drawn map has become a must for teachers paying home visits.