Xuyong Impression

 

-         A Fact-Finding Trip for READ Foundation on Rural Education in an Impoverished Area in China

 

Chun Lai

 

I had never experienced such mixed feelings. On one hand, when I saw how my mere $10 was changing a child’s life, my ego swelled as if I was suddenly 10 times richer – rich in terms of capacity to make a difference. On the other hand, witnessing how widely-spread and deeply-rooted the poverty was, I felt desperate that no matter how many kids we saved, there would always be more waiting in line. We could never turn things around.

 

The two mixed feelings were with me during my entire visit in Xuyong in May 2002. Xuyong is a county in southern Sichuan, bordering Guizhou and Yunnan. READ Foundation, a volunteer-run, private foundation registered in the U.S., sponsors 64 students in Xuyong. READ helps poor children obtain basic education in rural areas in China. The purpose of my trip was to review and verify the implementation of READ’s scholarship program, to visit local schools, and to see the children and their families.

 

I arrived in Xuyong on a rainy evening. A fully-loaded long-distance bus stopped along the road. The bus driver quickly pulled out my backpack from the luggage chamber, jumped back on, and drove away, without saying a word. I was the only passenger who got off at this small town. It was still during the Labor Day’s 7-day holiday. Streets in Beijing and Chuandu, where I came from, were crowded with people and cars. Streets in Xuyong were empty.  A couple of small hardware stores were open, but no sales people or customers were visible.

 

Xuyong is one of the poorest counties in Sichuan. Per capita GDP last year was approximately 150 RMB, or less than $20. The total population is 640,000, made up of 12 ethnic groups in addition to the majority Han people. Unlike neighboring counties in the north, Xuyong has no successful industry. It once tried ironworks and small coalmines. Both were heavy polluters. All major ironworks and most coalmines were shut down by the provincial government a few years ago, leaving a large number of workers unemployed. The only export item that produces meaningful tax revenue for the county is tobacco. However, tobacco farming is a risky business. Its yield relies heavily on the season’s weather pattern, which is not predictable for this region. The good news is Xuyong does produce enough grain to feed its population. But its lack of export products deprives the county of monetary income and isolates its residents from interaction with the outside world.

 

I visited four townships and a half dozen schools. Two of the schools were in very remote locations.

 

Zhai He is a large village of more than 1,000 households in Ma Chan Township. On the map, it doesn’t seem very remote.  The dirt road branching off a blacktopped local highway runs only 5 miles before reaching the village. But it took us an hour to cover the five miles. 

 

Zhai He Complete School has 340 students enrolled in 6 elementary school classes and 3 middle school classes. It is one of a few schools able to offer middle school classes in the township. Students come from surrounding villages. Many have to walk one to two hours one-way. Boarding is limited and available only to middle school students who come from more remote villages. To accommodate students’ commuting, classes start at 10 AM and wrap up by 4 PM. What struck me is that there is no lunch break – the school doesn’t offer lunch and kids have nothing to eat during the day. Imagine a 7 or 8 year old  who walks two hours on mountain trails to school in the morning, takes class for 6 hours, then walks another two hours back home, and in 10 hours takes NOTHING except water?  I raised my concern to the school principal. He politely smiled and said something like “kids here are used to eating only breakfast and supper.” I later found the same situation in nearly all village-level schools in Xuyong. Absurd as it seemed to me, the children I saw in classrooms all looked reasonably healthy and showed no obvious sign of malnutrition.

 

There are 20 teachers in Zhai He Complete School. Most are young, high school graduates. None has a college degree. They come from all over the county. Few had ever traveled outside the county. A full-time teacher in Xuyong earns a salary of 500 RMB a month. Even though that’s much higher than the income of an average farmer, teacher turnover is high. The primary reasons have been the poor living conditions and, more importantly, the intolerable feeling of isolation.

 

The school is in a two-story brick building recently reconstructed out of the township’s budget. It has all the absolutely necessary features and equipment, including windows, blackboard, tables and chairs, lights, and even an unpaved basketball court. Anything that is “optional” is omitted – there is no heat in the winter and no playground. The first floor classrooms are unpaved, and the whole school has only one bathroom.

 

Although Zhai He School is nothing glorious, the village is fortunate compared to Long Feng Village in Ho Shan Township. Long Feng is located 10 miles south of Ho Shan Town. The village has more than 1,300 residents scattered across several adjacent hills. 30% of the village is minority families.

 

As our old Beijing 212 zigzagged up a dirt path along the mountain ridge, I was astonished by the sheer beauty of the scene. A huge cliff looms several hundred meters over a stream, which runs in and out amidst the endless bamboo forest. Without the scattered paddy fields terraced on the hillside and the plowing water buffalo, the place could have been a national park.

 

As we drove into the village, farmers and kids standing by saluted us with their eyes. Villagers here rarely have a chance to see a motor vehicle.

 

Long Feng Elementary School is in an old house in the center of the village. The two-story wooden house was built 90 years ago by a “landlord”, and has not been renovated for at least 30 years. A county agency overseeing building safety labeled this building as “dangerous” long ago. Stepping into a classroom, I had to wait for a moment until my eyes adapted to the dim light. More than 100 students crowded the five converted bedrooms serving as classrooms. There were no glass windows, no electric lights, no running water, and no stairway. The ladder leading to the second floor can support no more than two people at a time, and requires some basic mountaineering training to ensure a successful ascent (to outsiders, at least). Walls between classrooms are see-through and do little to cut down on sounds.

 

Classrooms for the lower grade classes are particularly crowded. Young kids sit at their desks elbow over elbow, reading from their textbooks loudly. All schools in China are supposed to teach in Mandarin. However, what the Long Feng children were reading that day was beyond my comprehension. Apparently the “Mandarin” their teachers taught is not the Mandarin I know.

  

There are five teachers in Long Feng Elementary School. All are “temporary” or “substitute” teachers. The “temp” or “sub” in their title doesn’t indicate substandard credentials or a less than permanent job commitment. Many of them have been teaching for more than 10 years and possess educational backgrounds equivalent to their full-time counterparts in better schools. The reason for their temporary status is that, for the same job, a temp teacher is paid less than a fifth of a full-time teacher, saving the township government a lot of money. When the budget is tight, as it always is, the township pushes off granting temp teachers full-time teacher status.

 

Despite poor schooling conditions, the children sitting in the classroom are actually the lucky ones. Their parents pay 160 RMB a year for each child’s tuition and books - a huge sum in an area where average household income is less than 200 RMB per year. They also have to forgo having their children’s help in the field. In this poor, hilly countryside where all the work is still done by manpower and cattle, every additional pair of hands helps. It surprised me that most families managed to send their kids to school at all.

 

Those families that can’t send their kids to school are the ones facing real difficulties. For them, external help is often the determining factor. The 64 students READ Foundation supports are only in school because of their READ scholarship. Even though READ only covers 60% of tuition and other costs, parents are willing to stretch to make up the difference and to allow their child to be in school.

 

Jiang Yuanjun, a 10 year old boy at Long Feng, dropped out from school two years ago when school costs increased to 80 RMB per semester from 50 RMB. Yuanjun’s father, a young farmer in his late 20s, had never been to school himself. He claimed that 80 RMB was too much for him to pay. Jiang’s family shares a house with the father’s 3 other brothers. Their section includes a window-less bedroom and a small hall serving as a kitchen and living room. A table, a bed, and two chairs are all the furniture they have. Yuanjun’s father didn’t answer my question on their household income. “We have enough to eat. But we have never had 80 RMB disposable money,” he said. Nevertheless, he and his wife are very willing to see their son finishing school.

 

Tao Fujiang is another 10 year old boy who dropped out of Long Feng School. His father went to a city (nobody knows which city) a year ago in search of a construction job. He hasn’t been heard from since. Fujiang stays with his grandfather. The picture on the right was taken inside Tao’s house. The roof was leaking and walls collapsing, as if the house just survived an earthquake. The village is wired with electric power lines, but there is no sign of it in this house - not even a light bulb. “Electricity is too expensive,” Fujing’s grandfather explained. 

 

Not all the parents’ reasons for not sending their children to school win sympathy. In the Song household at Zhai He there are three children, ages 11, 9, and 7. None have attended school. Mr. Song has a problem with alcohol that has drained the family financially for years. A few days before our visit, his wife finally left him and took children along with her. When I asked him what his future plans were, he shrugged and said “don’t know.” He did not sound concerned. Mr. Song has a record of illegally selling seeds, which the government distributed to his household as part of an anti-poverty program, for alcohol.    

 

In Xuyong, Mr. Song is in good company. Alcoholism in rural villages and drug use in urban areas are major social issues. They have left families broke and children unattended. Some children have ended up on the street.

 

To prevent scholarship money from being misused by an irresponsible parent, READ requires that the money go directly to the school to pay the student’s tuition. The parents need to acknowledge the payment of the school fees by signing a receipt. But they won’t be able to touch the money. I verified the process in all schools I visited and found this strategy worked.

 

I was impressed by the people we worked with at Xuyong, particularly the small staff of three at the County Communist Youth League office. The township officials and school principals are also quite devoted to their jobs. Many of whom I met, although underpaid, sponsor poor school children themselves. Contrary to the image of corrupt communist cadres, I found that my hosts live a humble life and work with a passion. Of course they do what they are paid to do; but I believe they bring more to their work than what their routine duty requires. It’s hard not to when you deal with these lovely kids day in and day out, see how they struggle, and think that your work can change their life. To READ, they are trust-worthy local partners. Without them, nothing will happen.

 

They give me hope. However, the hope fades quickly in the face of all the other daunting issues with which the county struggles.  No. 1, a population of two-thirds of a million is too large for such a small, resource-deprived county. There is not enough land to absorb that many peasants. The county is too far away from any big city, therefore, it is unappealing for investors to build industrial enterprises. The county government is deeply in debt, and so are most of the 26 townships. School teachers in some towns haven’t been paid for more than three months. The crime rate is high and climbing. Morale is low everywhere you go.

 

Xuyong is by no means the poorest place in China. Many other counties in the western part of China are worse off. Xuyong’s problems are typical among many remotely in-land counties. They all have too big a population given their resources. They don’t have a niche to become competitive in the market economy. They are too isolated, too plain to attract any attention. They are behind the times.

 

Xuyong’s future is in their children. But their children’s future is not in Xuyong.  The work the READ Foundation and others are doing cannot be judged by how many children under the program end up in college. Although college is in the dreams of many poor kids, and we should by all means encourage that pursuit, the more realistic target is to get this generation out of poverty or, to be blunt, out of Xuyong. They should go somewhere else and never come back. To prepare them for that, we need to help them receive basic education. They need to learn to read and to do basic math; they need to be able to speak a language comprehensible to the outside world.

 

The urgency of this work cannot be exaggerated. The pace and the profoundness of social change which China is experiencing are unprecedented. The children I met in Xuyong and children in other poor regions will soon face a sink-or-swim situation when they inevitably move to a place where their parents have never been. No matter how under-prepared they are, these children will be the first generation migrating out of their ancestral lands and making a living elsewhere. The more we can help them be better prepared, the larger the chance they will survive and be successful. In the end, these children are otherwise no different than ours. The $10 or $20 we send today may not mean much to us, but it can make a difference in a child’s life.

 

Maybe in 30 or 50 years, the terraced paddy field will return to bamboo forest, which is probably as it should be. And the place will become a national park.

 

 

 

July 2002, in New Jersey

 

 

(PS:   If you want to donate to READ Foundation, please visit their website at www.helpread.org.  READ Foundation is a 501(c)3 tax-exempt entity and your contribution will be tax-deductible.)