Book sharing opens a chapter of progress

Duan Mengyuan knows a good story when she sees one, especially if it involves helping people to read. The graduate student of social and cultural psychology in the London School of Economics and Political Science is one of 544 volunteers that helped the same number of students, on a one-to-one basis, in rural China to finish reading a book over long-distance communication in November.

The 21-year-old shared Japanese author Keigo Higashino's The Miracles of the Namiya General Store by phoning Yu Yanli, a 14-year-old girl from a village school in Nanjian Yi autonomous county, Southwest China's Yunnan province, once a week.

Since childhood Duan has wanted to become a volunteer teacher in rural areas, but she is not able to spend a whole month there, usually the minimum requirement.

"Everyone is eager to do something great. So am I," Duan said.

Her opportunity came when she learnt about a project after reading a recruitment request this year. The reading-tutor project was initiated in 2016 by a volunteer teacher with the Teach For China program. The program recruits young volunteers to serve as full-time teachers in low-income, rural areas to help students boost the academic and life skills they need in life. The program has been launched in provinces of Yunnan, Guangdong, Gansu and Fujian, and Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region.

The reading tutor and his/her student will use the first two calls to get to know each other and select a book that they would like to read. In the following four weeks, they will finish reading the book by phone, making contact once a week, usually at the weekend.

So far, a total of 2,752 reading tutors in China and abroad have been recruited to accompany rural schoolchildren, aged from 11 to 16 years old, to finish reading a book in a month via electronic means of communication such as phone calls or video chats.

Recalling this experience, Duan felt "a little bit upset" because her efforts didn't seem to receive enough feedback from Yu when she tried to share with the seventh-grader more of her philosophy of life.

But she remembered the chuckling over the phone when Yu described how her request for an easier math test, to enable her to get better scores, was refused by the math teacher.

You see, this was inspired by a plot in the book they had read.

"At that moment I realized that as long as my work has an impact on her, that's enough," Duan said.

In a letter written to Duan, Yu said in real life she is an introverted person who is not good at expressing her ideas, is nervous and blushes easily.

"I'm a very ordinary person and you changed me. Thank you for your company over the past weeks," she wrote. "In the future, I will do more thinking and study hard and take step-by-step efforts to realize my dream."

Seven students in Hu Wanlai's classes also applied for November's reading project. Hu, a former programmer, now teaches Chinese for two classes of 58 ninth-graders at a boarding school in a mountainous town in Chengxian county, Longnan city, Gansu province.

"Many students want to read books, but they either have few books available or do not know how to start reading a book. They need more guidance outside the classroom," he said. There is a marked improvement already among the students, especially in their ability to express themselves.

As one of eight volunteers responsible for the project's recruitment work in October and November, Hu is considering arranging an offline meeting between the students and their tutors.

Growing up in rural China, Hu has a strong thirst for knowledge which was not satisfied until he went to college. As a mechanical engineering and automation student, he spent most of his time reading literature works in the library.

"I can tell from my personal experience how much difference it can make on a student's view of life if they know more about the outside world," Hu said.

Two years ago, the 28-year-old decided to apply for a two-year volunteer teacher post at the program when he saw a 20-second video advertisement in a cinema in Qingdao, Shandong province. He was waiting to watch the movie Coco.

Hu acknowledges that both hardware and software facilities have improved a lot in rural schools. But he still feels a sense of frustration when some students tell him that they believe they can only become migrant workers in the city or stay in rural areas as farmers.

"As volunteer teachers from different walks of life, we want to tell them through our work that they should expect more of life in the future," he said.

But he points out the very real challenges these students face.

"Most of them are being taken care of by grandparents. For those who live with their parents, the parents are so busy making a living they can provide very limited help in their children's study," he said.

According to the report, Child Welfare and Protection Policy Stocktaking 2019, China had 6.97 million "left-behind" children in rural homes. These are children whose parents work in cities to support their families and 96 percent of the children are taken care of by grandparents.

Analysis conducted by the State Information Center said that lack of family care, hidden safety hazards, lack of home education, psychological problems and poor education conditions are the five major problems facing these "left-behind" children.

"Education runs through the whole process of one's growth and qualified education is not the only thing absent for rural children," Hu said. "I sincerely hope more and more excellent young volunteers can join and offer a hand to education in rural areas."

Lu Xun, a Chinese writer known for his critical thinking, once wrote: "Send out as much light as the heat inside can produce, even though it may well be as dim as a shimmer, so that we will retain a tiny glow in the darkness without having to await the arrival of a firing torch."

This is also what Hu believes.