Mr. Ge, the head of Tuanjie Township of this county with a distressed expression told me, "The natural circumstances here are too terrible. You see, everywhere is barren. We only have thousands mu of mountain field and dry land. We live at the mercy of the forces of nature and our infrastructure construction is weak and backward. How difficult! The only achievement this county has made is the family planning work. Due to poverty, many young men don't have enough money to marry. A few years ago, some men bought wives from Hunan Province and Guangxi Province. But these years, many of these wives have nearly all ran away. There are lots of bachelors. Therefore, the population is decreasing. Education is a difficult problem. Boys reaching the age of fourteen or fifteen need to farm in the fields and many girls go to cities to work as nannies."
At dusk, we came to Jing'eryu Village. It was a quiet village and seemed frozen.
We walked into a ruined yard and saw a middle-aged man leaning on a stick while murmuring something and with two hands, making gestures in the air. His name was Ran Pingle. He had a stroke two years ago. He fortunately survived but was half paralyzed.
Ran's family had five mu mountain fields, which then became the burden for his wife alone. Last year they only harvested 1,000 jin grains. In order to treat his illness, they sold a donkey and cut several trees for sale. But until that time they still had a debt of more than 1,000 yuan.
Ran Pingle had three children, Ran Hong, Ran Hongjuan and Ran Hongzhou. Three children all had reached the age of going to school. Ran Hong was both excellent in character and learning at school. However, her father's illness left her no choice but to drop out. The teacher in charge of her class really couldn't bear to lose such a good student. So the teacher paid the tuition fees for her. Less than two months later, her mother said to her, "Child, Mom alone is too busy with the farm work. You had better stay at home and help me."
On the day she left school, the sisters, both Ran Hong and Ran Hongjuan carrying two books (children here usually don't have schoolbags.) frequently looked back after walking a few steps, crying bitterly…
I interviewed Dalinghou Village Primary School nearby. The school hadn't got any office budget for one year and three teachers hadn't got their salary for three months. In freezing winter, they even couldn't afford several pieces of window paper. In the past, they could make some money from the persimmon trees at the gate of the school and they could use the money to buy some coal to light a stove in the classroom. Unfortunately this year the persimmon trees suffered and no fruits were reaped, thus there was no coal for the stove and the students had to just bear the coldness in class.
On the morning of the second day, on the way to Yangjiatai County, we met with three shepherding children. An older one with a ragged military cap was called Zhao Yingshan. The other younger one was called Zhao Douzhong and another was called Zhao Jinyin.
I asked them whether they went to school. All of them shook their heads. I let them write down their own names but they told me they couldn't do that because they had never learned.
I inquired into the reasons. Zhao Yingshan pointed at Zhao Douzhong and said, "He has lost his parents." And then he pointed at Zhao Jinyin and said, "He is now herding bulls for other people and when it comes to spring, he can borrow the bull from other people to plough his family's field."
"Then what about you?"
"My father said we didn't have enough money."
"Are there many children that cannot go to school in your village?"
Zhao Yingshan counted for a while and said, "The number is not small. Only herding bulls for others are seven."
There were totally 1,052 families in Yangjiatai Township but they were scattered in fifty-three natural villages. It was quite inconvenient for launching a school because the area involved is quite vast and there were too many valleys and ridges.
The village primary school usually only had Grade One to Grade Four and if students wanted to continue with their study, they shall go to the township boarding school.
There was a boy named Zang Yanghui in Guanyintang Village. His family had five people. Among three children, only he had the opportunity to go to school. When it was time for him to go to Grade Five, his father had thought he should support his son to at least finish primary school education no matter how tough life was. Later, he realized that he should prepare a quilt if his son went to boarding school. However, his whole family all relied on the only worn-out quilt with lots of patches to survive the winter. Where could he find another quilt? Finally, Zang Yanghui had no choice but to give up going to school.
The county boarding school was located on the hillside behind the township government office.
Zhao Quanmin, the principal told me that there were two grades, Grade Five and Grade Six, four teaching classes and 121 students in this school. Students could go home once a week. Some students lived deep in the mountain and it would take four or five hours for the single trip.
I asked him, "How many students can enter into middle school after graduation from primary school?"
"Half of them, at most." Principal Zhao answered.
