Poverty crossed the sky,
Leaving painful prints;
Looking back the past twenty-year journey of Project Hope,
Those painful prints are forever unforgettable.
4.Bitter Memory
My Interview Notes
During the end of 1980s and the beginning of 1990s, I had always been walking in the poverty-stricken areas of our nation, from Taihang Mountain to Yimeng Mountain, from Dabie Mountain to Shiwan Great Mountain, from Shanbei to Xihaigu… I visited dozens of national-level poverty-stricken counties and hundreds of village primary schools. Every time facing the yearning look of those children who dropped out of school, my heart couldn't help trembling.
These interview notes dating twenty years ago may be a relatively truthful record of the basic educational condition at that time in the poverty-stricken zones of our country-
Interview Notes I
The Call of the Red Earth
March 1990, the day was hazy and rainy. I walked into the Hong'an County at the southern piedmont of Dabie Mountain.
This is a miraculous and glorious land —
Two chairmen of the People's Republic of China, Dong Biwu and Li Xiannian were born here and among more than 200 generals from Hong'an who have made profound contributions to this country, two have once been the Vice Head of the National People's Congress Committee, four have once been the Vice Premier of the State Council, ten have once been Minister or Vice Minister of Departments of the State Council, twelve have been the Commander or Commissar of the Greater Military Regions and more than 180 have once been provincial leading cadres or were granted military ranks above the position of a Major General.
The land sacrificed greatly for the victory of China's revolution —
The f ames of war once raged across the land, turning it into a scorching land and the depopulated area stretched from the north of the county to the south. During the war, which lasted for more than twenty years, over 100,000 people in this county died and 2,200 were registered as martyrs. Every four martyrs there was one from Hong'an in the long march of the Red Army.
Tiantai Mountain, Laojun Mountain, Huangmaojian… Everywhere is precipitous and continuous mountains. Every mountain once resisted the aggression of the enemy with its own body, composing pieces of heroic songs.
However, the mountains also have some disadvantages. In the peace times, they separated the civilization from the world outside, stubbornly keeping poverty and fatuity in their arms, which caused Hong'an, a land area of 1,800 square meters to become one of the poorest regions in China.
During the second session of the Sixth National People's Congress, Li Xiannian, the Vice Premier at that time came to Hubei Delegation and asked about his hometown. When hearing that a certain amount of people still couldn't have enough to eat and to wear, Li Xiannian obviously shocked, "My hometown is great, but it is poor. Our old revolutionary base areas are poor. It is a universal problem: Jinggang Mountain is in poverty, so is Dabie Mountain, Yan'an and Honghu. We owed people in these regions but local people have never blamed us…"
Qiliping Town — the birthplace of the fourth front of Chinese Worker's and Peasants' Red Army. The town primary school was founded in 1930 and the board read "Lenin Primary School" still hung high. In the presentation room was stored the Chinese text book used by "Lenin Primary School" at that time — the Soviet government compiled the text book, reading "Spring breeze starts to flow and in an instant the autumn breeze is soughing. Strike the local tyrants down and refuse to hand in grains." And "Lenin was the mentor of the whole world proletariat. He devoted all his life to revolutionary cause and under his leadership 'the October Revolution' got success." In the town, some old red guards still have fresh memory. When they entered the Lenin Primary School for the first time, their parents felt like seeing their children off to join the army and the children were all wearing red silk ribbons and red flowers.
It is not because people in old revolutionary base areas don't know the importance of education, but the poverty in which they are shrouded with makes the education situation here a predicament.
Qinluozhuang in Qiliping Town is the hometown of a general in the People's Liberation Army. Standing in front of the general's former residence, I looked around and tried to find the distinctions. However, I was disappointed. What I could see was a dilapidated small village.
One villager, Qin Juhua had a family of six people. The total income last year was: 3,600 jin[4] unhusked rice, 200 yuan earned from oil crops, 200 yuan by odd jobs and 200 yuan relief fund granted by the village commission.
Qin Juhua wore a ragged coat with black cotton fiber exposed outside which was distributed by the General Han Xianchu dozens of years ago when he came to his hometown, Xinji Town. He saw the life of the villagers was too difficult. Therefore, he allocated some coats from the army to them.
Qin Juhua had three sons, and except the third one was in primary school, the other two didn't go to school any more. I said, "Mr. Qin, why did you stop your first and second son from going to school after three-year education?"
"Comrade, to tell you the truth, it is all due to poverty. I am sick all year long while their mother is a mute and my mother is over eighty years old. We have debts every year. Previously, the tuition fees of my first and second sons were both paid by the teacher and until now I still owe Ms. Zhang and Ms. Liu more than 100 yuan."
Qin Juhua's wife lifted up her ragged clothes and pulled me into the house, pointing at the tattered mosquito net and was trying to express something. However, I couldn't understand her.
