Zhang Song the Chinese lad hails from a remote township in Zhuxi County. He joined the class at the beginning of the second term of high school (2011) because of his outstanding academic merits. Year 10 students are restreamed based on their performances and on their academic orientations. Some choose to study science; others the arts. One class is dubbed Super-Fast, five classes Fast, and the others Average. Zhang Song is in one of the five Fast classes.

Dream

He impressed me in his first English talk to the class.

Standing on the platform, the boy went ahead tentatively, shy and timid. After he was done, I raised a number of questions. I asked him what the name of his township was. He said that the town was so insignificant that it could not be located on a Chinese map. Then I commented that his hometown must be rustic with fresh air and trees everywhere. He responded to my comment this way, “Teacher, my hometown is ugly. Folks there are dirt poor.” When asked about his dream, Zhang Song said that he was to earn billions of yuan so that his family could live a life of ease. The boy must have been racked by the gap between the affluent regional capital and the abject poverty of his rural community.

Before he was dismissed, I said jokingly that in the summer holidays I would backpack to his home village.

Family Roots

As the term progressed, I dug out more about the boy mainly by reading his English journal entries. The bits and pieces of his life gradually came out and completed the jigsaw puzzle on my mind.

The teen’s home village nestles in an isolated corner of the county, where Hubei Province and Shaanxi Province border each other. The family roots, however, are somewhere in what is today’s Huanggang City. Known as Huangzhou in ancient times, Huanggang is located in the southeast part of Hubei Province. Zhang Song’s granddad migrated to this part of Hubei from Huangzhou in the 1940s due to the wars (the war against Japanese aggression and the civil war between KMT and the Communists) then. His granddad and his two great uncles relocated to the mountains in the area, where the clan built their new homes and started a new life. Over the decades, they eked out a living by hunting as well as by farming.

In the mountains of Greater Shiyan, a lot of families are not indigenous. Throughout Chinese history, peasants migrated here mainly to escape war and fighting on their ancestral land. Warlords and bandits overran farming communities easily on the plains. Access to the mountains, however, was much more difficult, and therefore folks dwelling way out in the boondocks were sheltered from conflicts and strife, which would otherwise have ravaged them just like those in other parts of the country.

This migration has left behind an interesting linguistic legacy. Most folks in this area speak a dialect close to the Henan variety, but the vernacular in Zhuxi is very much the variety heard in southeast Hubei Province. It surprises many that people in Zhuxi curse and swear the same way as their cousins in southeast Hubei.

Even today, Zhang Song’s granddad still keeps a hunting rifle at home. He used to shoot a lot of game with it, but rarely has the gun been fired since Zhang Song was born. Occasionally the granddad takes out his firearm, oils it and polishes it. Once or twice a year the elderly man goes on a hunting trip into the mountains, weapon on shoulder.

Samaritans

The Zhang family are charitable, like the Samaritans. In the village, they helped a neighbouring household over the years. What they did is highly commendable.

The neighbouring house was headed by the father, who did not manage to find a spouse until he was in middle age. Then a matchmaker introduced a woman to the man and they started a family. The woman was way younger than the man though it was her second marriage. She had lost her first husband to disease.

For many years, the couple saw no child coming their way, so they adopted from another hamlet a boy with a disability. The boy was not able to speak clearly; neither could he walk or jump normally. Although the family of three were beset by hardships, love abounded among them.

Some years ago, the father was doing a thorough cleaning for the approaching Spring Festival when he missed his footing and fell off the ladder. The man got critically injured. Zhang Song the lad happened to be home at the time. He witnessed the entire accident. There was blood all over the neighbour’s head when Zhang Song rushed over at the alarming cries next door.

Zhang Song’s father and granddad managed to carry their neighbour on a makeshift stretcher over to the local infirmary. Unluckily the man died there hours later, either because the injury was fatal, or for a lack of equipment or expertise at the facility. Hospitals and clinics in China’s rural hinterland still fall far short of national standards.

After the man perished, his wife and their disabled son had difficulty maintaining themselves. It was Zhang Song’s family who helped them through thick and thin over the years. When they could not make ends meet or ran low on food supplies, the Zhangs shared with them staples, such as corn, rice and wheat, though they themselves were not well off. Were they in an emergency, the Zhangs would never fail to come to their rescue.

While Zhang Song was in primary school, the local government put the needy family, the woman and the disabled son, in the Old Folks’ Home, sited at the township. Mother and son were well provided for and looked after at the institution. Unfortunately, soon after they moved in, the woman died there, leaving behind the disabled son alone in the world.

Having done primary school, Zhang Song left his home village behind for the township, where he attended middle school. Knowing his ex-neighbour was a resident at the Old Folks’ Home there, he paid a visit to the man sometimes. On his very first visit, the ex-neighbour recognised him and was more than glad to meet the preteen. The years they were neighbours back in the hamlet, Zhang Song had played and chatted with him a lot.

In a few days, summer vacation will start. Zhang Song, in his English journal, expresses the hope that in the holidays he will go and see the neighbour again.

Access to Uni

Over the years I have worked with a lot of teens whose families are like Zhang Song’s. Born in farming communities in Greater Shiyan, they are eager to make their lives better through education. In most cases, their dreams come true. I have no prejudice against children from well-off or privileged families, but being able to help an adolescent in need is of significance to me because of my own family background and roots.

In recent years, the student population has changed very much. The percentage of teens from underprivileged peasant families is falling where I work. A more common sight in the classroom today is smartly dressed and well-fed adolescents, who snack, text and game. The school’s admissions policy was to blame, to a large extent, for this difference, with the leaders attempting to build the school into a national best. They claim that funds have to be raised by enrolling pupils from wealthy families. Another cause of the change is that more and more Chinese peasants no longer hope to send their kids to uni. To keep a child in uni is too costly for them; vocational education is an easier, quicker and more practical approach. In the past few years, the central government has implemented favourable policies to expand vocational education, offering grants and scholarships to those who opt for the vocational avenue.

Throughout history, China has found its roots in its rural communities. Chinese culture and legacies originated largely from an agrarian society. It is well known that a lot of Chinese leaders, scientists, doctors and engineers, among others, across all the social strata came from a Chinese village somewhere. They ascended the social ladder from the bottom to the top rung.

Urbanisation has been transforming China. Consequently, the rural population is dwindling, resulting in migrant workers from rural China raising their kids in a city. But these kids are no urbanites in a real sense. For one thing, they are not eligible to sit the university entrance exam, outside their province, where their parents are temporarily employed. They have to take the trouble to go back to their native city in their home province to do it.

Whatever the causes of the change, we should not turn a blind eye to the fact that the future backbone of the nation will be confronted not only with urban China but with the rural areas as well. Therefore, we should not have today’s peasant kids’ right to uni curtailed or denied. We should provide it or facilitate it where it is jeopardised.