November 16, 1999	atimes.com

China Community comes to rural teachers' rescue By Antoaneta Bezlova TIANZHUANG, China - Gathered in a tiny classroom full of chalk dust, a group of peasant children repeat after their teacher in a clumsy chorus: ''I deeply love the Great Wall, I love my mother and father, I love my teacher and classmates but most of all I love my motherland.'' It is one of the first lessons of patriotism the Chinese Communist Party teaches to the new generation of children - born in an era free of class struggle but not of ubiquitous ideology. The setting for the lesson couldn't be better chosen. Tianzhuang village in Hebei province is a small island in the marshes of Baiyangdian lake, where once the Communist guerrillas fought a war of ambush and surprise raids against the invading ships of Japanese army. The school hasn't changed much since the time of those heroic days in the 1940s. The unruly classes are still lead by 'minban' or community teachers, with few years of schooling themselves, that became the backbone of the education system after the founding of the People's Republic in 1949. The invisible change though has been in the full withdrawal of the once all-controlling communist state from the educational budget of rural schools. While the communist government still decides on the content of children's textbooks, it has given up financial responsibility for the schools and their 'minban' teachers, leaving local authorities to deal with them as best as they can. In the egalitarian days of the rural communes that Chairman Mao Zedong created in the 1950s, 'minban' teachers were paid in work points, as everyone else. Today, they have to sustain living on a meager stipend of 120 yuan ($14) per month, which local governments regularly delay by four to five months. This unfair lot has made the community educators envious of their state counterparts - the public teachers with a higher level of education that have secured for themselves salaries of 400 yuan ($48) from the coffers of the central government. The poorer the place, the wider the income gap between the state and community teachers. In poverty-stricken areas like Tianzhuang village, 'minban' teachers have to farm their own plot of land to make the ends meet. But for primary school teacher Tian Hezhuang, who like everyone else on this small island is called Tian, even the plot of reeds he received from the village is not of much help. ''My wife will weave mats from the reeds and earn about 100 yuan a year,'' Tian says. ''But we have two children, a son and a daughter, and I can hardly afford their textbook fees. For each of them I need to pay 200 yuan a year ($24). My father is sick. He was poisoned by a coal stove and afterwards he suffered a stroke but I can't get him any treatment. I'm 3,000 yuan in debt ($361).'' World Vision International estimates there are one million 'minban' teachers in China and nearly all of them live in dire conditions. The story of Wei Xianglan from Fuping county in Hebei province might be an extreme example, but it is not the only one. Wei died from lung cancer three years ago, after having worked as a 'minban' teacher for 27 years. He left his family a mud house built in 1937 and some 10,000 yuan ($1,200) of debt. The void of state funding is now being filled by a group of retired educational cadres that have joined hands with World Vision and the China Charities Foundation to set up the Candlelight Project, an advocacy scheme for rural teachers which aims to improve their conditions and teaching skills. The initial spark for the Candlelight Project was unusual. Five years ago, a Chinese researcher living in the United States entrusted $3,600 to a friend to help 'minban' teachers in Baoding prefecture, where Tianzhuang village is. The researcher, anonymous to this day, and his friend, had been sent down to Tianzhuang decades before, as part of Mao Zedong's campaign to drive 'educated youth' out from the cities to the countryside. ''They were all children of senior cadres who were persecuted during the Cultural Revolution,'' recalls Tian Zhensheng, a 55- year-old 'minban' teacher, who worked with the 'educated youth' in the fields. ''But at the time, they were considered inferior even to us, the peasants. They did farming and fishing just like us but they missed the cities.'' Says Shi Shoupeng, former educational cadre in Baoding and one of the core supporters of the Candlelight Project: 'They saw how poor the peasants were and how even poorer the 'minban' teachers were. This anonymous donor wanted to help them.'' Shi and his colleagues distributed the first money among 120 'minban' teachers in three counties. Each of them got 250 yuan ($30). Many of them broke into tears when they received the money just before the eve of the Chinese Lunar New Year. ''But then we thought we should set up an organization to help the needy in a more regular way,'' said Tian Futing, former mayor of Baoding and one of the organizers of the project. They approached World Vision and the China Charities Foundation for help and embarked on a nationwide project to improve the lot of low-paid rural teachers. They chose the name of the project carefully. The 'Candlelight' tag resonates with the urban Chinese by association with a famous couplet of the Tang Dynasty poet, Li Shangyin. Li wrote that ''silk worm spews silk until it dies; the candle drops tears until it gutters''. What better metaphor of the unselfish effort of the teachers? Since its inception in 1995, the project has raised a modest 1.7 million yuan ($204,000), but its impact on the teaching community has been immeasurable. ''The 'minban' teachers feel that there are people taking care of them, they feel the affection of society,'' explained Tian Futing. ''Many of them wrote us letters to say thanks. Some even sent us Chinese dates from the school's orchard.'' (Inter Press Service)

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