"If only I had a pair of comfortable shoes, I could walk faster and further..."

A public welfare program run by website gongyi.163.com undertook a survey on the lack of shoes among primary school pupils in poverty-stricken counties of Southwest China's Sichuan and Guizhou provinces from February to March last year.

The study revealed all students lacked comfortable, warm footwear and what shoes they had were of low quality, neither warm nor anti-slip and cost no more than 20 yuan ($3.2 dollars). Some 94.7 percent had experienced walking to school with bare feet.