A visit to the Xibaipo Hope Primary School

The Xibaipo Hope Primary School is China's first hope primary school established with a contribution largely from fellow pupils in 1993. [Photo: China Plus/Wang Lei]

It is one of the most extensive, influential and widely participated in philanthropic programs in China. Project Hope was launched by the China Youth Development Foundation thirty years ago, with its mission that not a single child should miss out on schooling because of poverty. By 2017, Project Hope had raised 14 billion yuan, or 2.1 billion US dollars, helped more than 5.7 million financially-challenged rural students, and built around twenty thousand Hope Primary Schools. The money has also been used to build Hope libraries, sports facilities, music classrooms, computer labs, cinema projection equipment and kitchens for schools. The first hope primary school was built in May 1990 in Jinzhai county, east China’s Anhui Province. Three years later, the foundations were laid for the first one in Xibaipo, in north China’s Hebei Province.

Hello and welcome to Selfie, the show that gets to the heart of Chinese society, life and the economy. I'm Tony Reid. In this edition of Selfie, China Plus's Wang Lei takes us to the Xibaipo Hope Primary School. Back to April 1993, children around the nation donated the gift money they’d received at Spring Festival to Project Hope so that their peers in the old revolutionary base of Xibaipo could go to school as well. Eight months later, the first hope primary school was indeed built there – so, 26 years after it was founded, what is life like there? And what changes has education brought to the old revolutionary base of Xibaipo? Wang Lei reports.

Two female students help the boys in their class to learn the dance which they are to perform at the spring sports meet. [Photo: China Plus/Wang Lei]

When I arrived at the Xibaipo Hope Primary School, the first thing I bumped into was a group of boys and girls practicing a dance in their physical education class. The young teacher couldn’t help laughing as she saw the boys making such clumsy movements. She urged them to practice more. One boy muttered that they hadn’t been given enough time to learn. Hearing his complaint, the teacher asked two female students – who had learned faster -- to help the boys, one at a time.

Deputy Principal Chen Minglong explains that the school is to hold a spring sports meet for the students. At the sports meet, each class will give a performance to demonstrate their sporting ability. The dance we have witnessed is called Setting out for Happiness, and was chosen by the class teacher from the internet.

As the bell rings for the end of the class, the students all swarm forward to touch my recorder as they are curious to touch the smooth fluff on the windshield of the microphone.

When I ask them what lesson they like best, the girls unanimously say English. When asked why, they say they have a lot of fun in English, learning the language through dance and music.

On discovering that we came from Beijing, one female student proudly says she’s just visited Beijing for the winter vacation with her parents.

The Xibaipo Hope Primary School is China's first hope primary school has 15 teachers and 303 students. [Photo: China Plus/Wang Lei]

As the bell rings for the start of another class, the students quickly wave goodbye to me and go back to their classroom.

In one classroom the teacher, Dong Liming, who came to the Xibaipo Hope Primary School last September, gives a music lesson to the students of Grade Four. He is the team leader of eight volunteer teachers from various institutions directly under the CPC Central Committee. They are teaching various classes to the students here for one year. Dong Liming, who learned to play the flute from his uncle when he was a teenager, was entrusted with the task of teaching music lessons.

One talented boy is asked to sing a segment of the numbered musical notes of a song to set an example to his classmates. The song the students are learning is called the Snail and the Yellow Bird.

The teacher says he hopes the song inspires those who come from a deprived background to make unremitting efforts.

According to Deputy Principal Chen Minglong, students at Xibaipo Hope Primary School come from the neighbouring ten villages. Most can go home every day as they live within half an hour’s walk from the school. But of the school’s 303 students, 68, or one fifth, have to board at school. These students either live far away, or live with their grandparents while their parents work away as migrant workers in other areas.

Chen Rongrong, the school’s teaching supervisor, is teaching Chinese to students in Grade Three. [Photo: China Plus/Wang Lei]

Chen Rongrong, the school’s teaching supervisor, is teaching Chinese to students in Grade Three. The text they are learning is called the Bees, and it was selected from Souvenirs Entomologiques by French naturalist and entomologist Jean-Henri Fabre.

Chen Rongrong, the school’s teaching supervisor interacts with her students in a Chinese class. [Photo: China Plus/Wang Lei]

The teacher then asks the students to differentiate between some Chinese characters that look similar but have totally different meanings.

Deputy Principal Chen Minglong has been working at Xibaipo Hope Primary School for twenty two years, beginning in 1997. He says great changes have taken place in the school.

As well as the regular student clubs such as dancing, sports, calligraphy and fine arts, the Xibaipo Hope Primary School also has a unique club, a club for student volunteer guides to the Xibaipo Memorial Hall.

Chen Minglong himself was from Xibaipo, an old revolutionary base where the leadership of the Communist Party of China was garrisoned from May 1948 until March 1949. During the ten month stay there, the CPC commanded three major battles, drew up the blueprint for a new country and prepared for the CPC's new role as the ruling party. It is known as the place where new China came from and a village to where the destiny of China could be attributed. So when the China Youth Development Foundation launched the country’s first hope primary school established with a contribution largely from fellow pupils in 1993, Xibaipo seemed the obvious location for it.

Deputy Principal Chen Minglong remembers that the project could be dated back to a letter of appeal in 1993 from students of two primary schools in Shenzhen, where the country’s first special economic zone was established in May 1980.

The proposal was warmly received by children nationwide. Within a month, more than 100 thousand students from several thousand schools had donated two hundred thousand yuan, or 35 thousand US dollars. The China Youth Development Foundation then chose Xibaipo as the right place for the first so-called hand-in-hand hope primary school.

The school now has 15 teachers, plus eight volunteer teachers. Chen Minglong says they are also reaping the benefits of the internet age.

Team leader of the volunteer teachers Dong Liming teaches a song titled the Snail and the Yellow Bird to his students of Grade Four in a music class. [Photo: China Plus/Wang Lei]

Team leader of the volunteer teachers Dong Liming says teaching is about coordination between teachers and students. He believes that along with the teachers exercising patience and understanding, students should also reciprocate.

Dong Liming says the students might encounter much better music teachers and make up for the missed music lessons once they move from primary school into higher education. But to develop the ideals for life and a love of knowledge, it’s much better to sow the seeds at an early age. He believes that’s where he can help.

Dong Liming says several girls in his class have learned dances in training courses outside school. They are willing to teach the dances to their classmates. He finds this has a very good impact on the whole class because of peer influence.

Before coming to Xibaipo to be a volunteer teacher, Dong Liming worked in Beijing for the China Vocational Education Association, which aims to provide vocational training opportunities to students in poor areas to help them lift themselves out of poverty. Dong Liming says he is from a rural area in central China’s Henan Province and he has a deep understanding of life in the countryside. He finds he can relate his own experience of learning in many ways to the students here in Xibaipo.

The students of Grade Four listen attentively to their teacher in a music class. [Photo: China Plus/Wang Lei]

Dong Liming says this is the first time he has been a volunteer teacher. And he thinks he’s benefited more from the teaching experience in Xibaipo than the students have benefited from him.

Dong Liming believes that while volunteer teachers can help in certain ways, it is the teachers who stay here that should be given more attention.

Deputy Principal Chen Minglong says while many young teachers want to pursue careers in the big cities, what he and his colleagues dream of is being able to provide better education for children in their home town.

The Xibaipo Hope Primary School is just one example of the twenty thousand hope primary schools built in the past thirty years under Project Hope. Now in China, seven out of one hundred primary schools in rural areas are hope primary schools. At least three out of a thousand Chinese people have been subsidized by Project Hope. Nine out of ten urban residents in China are aware of the project and six out of ten urban residents have donated to Project Hope at least once.

For more information, please click the audio above to find out more about the show and the Xibaipo Hope Primary School.