Standing in front of the window, Xu Yongguang had meditated for a long while. Suddenly he seemed to see the indistinct and mysterious hills undulating before him, like the distant Dayao Mountain. Precisely, that was it, the Dayao Mountain…
Two years ago, it was a chilly March in spring.
Xu Yongguang, the Minister of the Organization Department of the Communist Youth League Central Committee, led a delega-tion to investigate the impoverished minority regions in the Dayao Mountain in Guangxi.
Each mountain was pouring out their story to them;
Each village was pouring out their story to them.
That day they came to Gonghe Village in the Jinxiu Yao Autonomous County. It was nearly noon, the head of the village said, "Let the guests have lunch first." And then he gave everyone two branches. When taking them, Xu Yongguang was so puzzled but later he was informed that they were used as chopsticks.
A stone pot was set up on some stones in front of the village office. People squatted about the pot. Without bowls, people had to use branches to scoop up noodles without any oil in the pot.
This had been the best food they used to entertain guests. Xu Yongguang came to a primary school and he stood in front of the dilapidated classrooms (the walls of two had fallen in half) which seemed that it had just suffered from an air bombardment. In the biting wind, some children had to huddle themselves up in the straws while listening to the teacher. It looked so miserable that no one could bear to see.
There were only two teaching aids nowadays: a globe, which couldn't move any more, and an abacus with more than half the beads missing.
The principal shared some information with them. There were more than 2,000 villagers but after the Liberation, none had completed middle school. Due to poverty, children dropped out when they were in Grade Three or Four. Among all the eighteen teachers in this school, only two respectively had received middle school and intermediate normal school education. Furthermore, neither was a local villager. Some teachers had just finished their primary school education but they worked here as substitute teachers. Among all the 250 students, last year's examination pass rate of all the courses was zero while the pass rate of a single course was only 14%.
When asked the enrollment rate of school-age children, the principal started to count and said, "Frankly speaking, at most 60%." As for the index of stability, it was even less. There were seventy-one students in Grade One while only five in Grade Five. According to this condition, the index of stability was less than 10% as estimated.
Xu Yongguang visited several poor families. One family had four people with only one ragged quilt; and another family had six people but they only had four bowls and one even had chipped edges.
Xu Yongguang asked them why they didn't send their children to school and those parents answered sadly, "We cannot even have enough to eat and wear. How are we able to care about that?"
The visit to Dayao Mountain left an unforgettable memory in Xu Yongguang's mind.
Xi Jieying and Yang Xiaoyu, as the members of the lecturer group sent to Jilin Province by the central government, had worked there for one year. During the investigation in the impoverished regions, they deeply felt the backwardness of culture and the eagerness for education of the public.
Once, they went to the mountain region in Sipingyitong County to give lessons. They happened to see the funeral of a village teacher named Liu Shenmao. About 3,000 or 4,000 local people volunteered to attend that funeral. The funeral procession was as long as five or six kilometers. A huge couplet was held by people, reading:
A teaching plan, a cigarette, deep affection, fifty-one years of life, material wealth has never been the life pursuit;
Two thatched houses, two thousand students, upright with integrity, twenty-eight years of teaching career, life value has been perfectly fulfilled.
Apart from the couplet, it was the people's respectful praise for the teacher and their yearning for education!
…
These young people gradually had a clear picture about the recipients and the goal of the China Youth Development Foundation.
Xu Yongguang said, "It has been ten years since the reform and opening up and the slogan 'Rejuvenating China' has been chanted for ten years. However, the present conditions of our basic education, especially in some impoverished regions, are so worrying! As a poor nation, we want to develop education at a broader scale but our government is unable to provide so much money for education at present. It is understandable, but the specific index of educational investment can represent the role that education plays in the social strategy decisions of a nation. Our foundation has just established and has little strength. At present, we can only help those who are in the most urgent need."
Then they formed a consensus: to provide timely help-assist children, who lost out on education due to poverty in these impoverished regions, to return to school.