Students in the small county of Deqing are in for a big, bright surprise this school year, Xu Junqian reports.

It may take some motivation to get primary school students like Qiu Luya, a fourth grade student in Deqing county in Zhejiang province, excited about the end of their two month summer vacation, but education officials in the county home to some 500,000 people are hopeful something big and yellow will do the trick.

Qiu and the other 5,000 students in the small county mostly known for its pristine mountains and bamboo forests will be getting a nice back-to-school welcome with a fleet of new, brightly colored school buses that, before now, were just things seen in cartoons and movies. Since 2009, the county’s education department has spent 20 million yuan ($3.125 million), as a part of its “Student Road Safety Project”, on 79 air-conditioned school buses that are specially designed and tailored for school children, especially those who are less than 1.4 meters high.

Featuring a glossy colored hard shell and state-of-the-art technologies, like a GPS and automatic doors, the 79 buses can each carry 50 students and cost about 400,000 yuan. Fourteen of them were designed just as those in the United States.

“We borrowed the style of the classic American-style school bus, as it is the most common and proved to be the safest kind of school bus,” said Gai Yulong, the manager of Yutong Bus Company, the manufacturer of the new buses. Before the summer vacation, 44 of the buses were in operation every morning, picking up and dropping off children living and studying in the less-than- 1,000-sq m county.

Before the addition of the buses, most students had to spend at least one hour by van, motorcycle or anything that runs faster than feet to get to school. “We had a student who lives nearly 10 kilometers away from our school in the mountainous area,” said Ni Yuxuan, principal of Moganshan Primary School, one of the most remote schools in the county.

“Every morning, the student had to get up at about 5 am and travel through two caves to get here. And when he finally arrived, he was so exhausted that he needed to take a nap,” Ni said.

“Essentially, we want to provide a sound environment for students so that when they arrive at school, they can focus on what they are supposed to,” said Luo Yongchang, director of the Education Bureau in Deqing. Luo launched the project when he assumed office in 2009. Luo said that each student only needs to pay 1 yuan to take the bus.

The county also launched Yong’an Company, a government- funded company, to manage the 79 buses and drivers. By September, all the buses will be on the road. “We are not the first to think about having school buses, but we are the first to possess and operate the buses,” Luo said.

Many schools in bigger cities independently purchased imported school buses for their students, but because of lack of money and experience most suspended the project.

“Our situation is quite different from that of bigger cities or foreign countries,” Lou said. It’s not traffic jams or crowded trains that Lou is worried about; he says the students don’t have a safe mode of transportation to get to school. “It’s not only a matter of saving time but, more importantly, about safety,” he said.