Xiping Story

I brought the PF's donations to Xiping Elementary School of Langping town, Changyang County, Hubei province for building a planned sustainable production field in order to aid needy children's elementary education in the winter 5 years ago.

The school is located in Xiping village, which is in the depth of the mountain named ‘Ping', actually just a peak full of grotesque rocks with an altitude of 1800 meters, 380 km from Wuhan City . There is no highway from Langping Town to Xiping, one can only arrive at Xiping village by walking more than 15 km along the river road and climbing over 2 mountains.

Xiping, big mountains, small population and barren land, nearly hundred families with a population of 347 live in 11 sq meters of land. Villagers make a living on growing potatoes and tobacco. One third of villagers cannot make production investment, one or two peasants even difficult in buying salt. There is one elementary school in the village, implemented the repeated teaching in grade 1-4. The only teacher of the school, Xiuzhang Xiang has been leading groups of children to pick up edible wild vegetables and herbs for supporting their schooling over the past nine years. Teacher Xiang locked some brief notes as the following in his wood cabinet:

            1995  Farming tuition aid field list: dribbling black mushroom seeds on 210 trunks and                        47 jiao of Tianma (a type of herb) , picking and transplanting 170 heads of                        wild osmund (Weicai), planting one fen of Dangshen and two fen of tea.

            1996 The autumn farming tuition field list: ?120 Yuan from black mushroom,                       ?690Yuan from Tianma, ?100 Yuan from osmund (Weicai), ?50 Yuan from                        Dangshen, ?50 Yuan from tea, ?1010 Yuan in total.

            1997  The autumn aided children list: ?60 Yuan each, ?240 Yuan in total including                         Dandan Han, Kaimei Wang, Donghua Su, Peng Peng; ?30 Yuan each, ?300                         Yuan in total including Haitao Tan, Lirong Zhou, Aiqun Yuan, Qingjin Qin,                         Hongmei Tan, Bing Li, Haiyan Zhang, Wannian Xiang, Daolan Qin and                         Yunyang Li.

There has never been single one needy child giving up schooling for ten years in this village where the average annual earnings per capita was less than ?400 Yuan. The children who got out of the mountain and went to higher schools would be presented a towel, a water pen, a pair of running shoes and a notebook unexceptionally.

During my job, Xiping was covered with the snow; villagers, the teacher and pupils earnestly planed their hearted idea “the bank on the mountain, the school under the mountain” by the side of oil lamp and bonfire. They spent few days in drawing a practical and comprehensive scheme and put into practice. The program developed 10-mu wasteland, planted 689 chestnut saplings while 100 jiao of Tianma, dribbled seeding 1000 trunks of black mushroom and opened up one-mu tea garden. The enthusiasm from the tuition aid program was melting the snow in people's hearts. Teacher Xiuzhang Xiang and Shanglian Qin, the village secretary led quietly the villagers and children to launch the creation of “Green Bank”.

Later, my colleague took over the program follow-up and I have never been back to Xiping since after. We keep in touch with Xiping mainly by 3-month-round mails. With our common efforts the program developed healthily and set up a set of feasible, transparent and open financial systems. In the summer of 2000, teacher Xiuzhang Xiang was invited to be on the Seminar about Rural Community Council tuition Assistance and told the Xiping story to nearly a hundred of rural teachers, community volunteers and local officials from all over the country. Teacher Xiang brought a pile of accounting books recorded carefully and clearly the income and expenses, and the distribution of tuition aid funds of the 1998 program, the 1999 program and the 2000 program.

In 2000 Xiping Elementary School became financially self-sufficient for the first time. The net income of the tuition program reached ?6732 Yuan funding 32 children for their tuition fees of the whole year. All school children went to school for free. The school established its own library for children, changed some desks and purchased 20 pieces of teaching tools.

I received another letter from teacher Xiang dated one month ago. Looking at the wrinkles on the envelope I knew some villager brought this letter out of the village and posted at the town. A piece of cleanness, piles of bonfire and groups of people I recalled again. We deeply keep in mind that they lead a hard and simple life, stay calmness and insistence. It teaches us to be true, modest, self-discipline, and never frivolous and self-renouncing.