Beyond the Beijing Olympics: bringing books to the Chinese countryside
April 1st 2008 21:29
There's a lot of fury over the Beijing Olympics and Tibet, with Westerners hollering for boycotts, protests being staged all over the world from both sides, and a lot of speculation over the fallout from the 2008 Olympics.
My own position would be exercise some reasonable thought when getting riled up... after all, it's hard to point fingers at China when Guantanamo Bay is still in operation, and the massacre in the Congo seems to carry on without anyone protesting or lifting a finger.
I suppose a great deal of the anger towards China is that the West sees it as an economic threat, a rampaging pack of wolves that's snapping up minerals and concrete - we've all seen pictures of the new Beijing, with cranes and construction everywhere, tall skyscrapers reaching for the stars, fleets of new cars being bought at a whim.
My memory of China was a little more sober... the contrast in China can be shocking, and when you go out into the country, it becomes apparent that the government is racing towards development, but rural China is quickly being left behind.
My good friend, Tom Stader, has been running his own charity called The Library Project for some years. His goal is to go into poorly funded schools and orphanage and build cheerful, well-equipped libraries. It's an admirable vision, one that targets a forgotten part of Chinese society and gives the gift of knowledge.
Recently, he sent out an email that showed the final results of taking the project into rural China, where the villages are so far away from any major city that the children barely have chalk to write with. Here's a picture of one of the schools, outfitted with a bookshelf full of donated books.
Look at the state of that classroom. It's shocking, especially since education is probably the only thing that these kids will be provided with. It reminds me of Zhang Yimou's classic movie "Not One Less", where the village school is so poor that chalk has to be rationed.
This school is in Liu Lin, a village in Shanxi province. Before The Library Project got there, the school had no books.
Did you hear that - no books. As in zero. One less than one.
This school is so far away that, in order to get the books to the school, Tom had to take a train, truck, boat and then get the kids to come down from the mountain to help pick up the books.
The children, of course, are thrilled. After years of dusty classrooms, the colours and the stories probably do more to inspire their fertile minds than any number of lessons.
I'm so impressed by the work that Tom and The Library Project have done that I'd love to go back to China and help him set up a library in one of those rural schools. Going out into the countryside in China is a totally different experience... people are hospitable and generous, even when they have nothing to give.
So, I'm going back to help build a library. Does anyone want to help?
My own position would be exercise some reasonable thought when getting riled up... after all, it's hard to point fingers at China when Guantanamo Bay is still in operation, and the massacre in the Congo seems to carry on without anyone protesting or lifting a finger.
I suppose a great deal of the anger towards China is that the West sees it as an economic threat, a rampaging pack of wolves that's snapping up minerals and concrete - we've all seen pictures of the new Beijing, with cranes and construction everywhere, tall skyscrapers reaching for the stars, fleets of new cars being bought at a whim.
My memory of China was a little more sober... the contrast in China can be shocking, and when you go out into the country, it becomes apparent that the government is racing towards development, but rural China is quickly being left behind.
My good friend, Tom Stader, has been running his own charity called The Library Project for some years. His goal is to go into poorly funded schools and orphanage and build cheerful, well-equipped libraries. It's an admirable vision, one that targets a forgotten part of Chinese society and gives the gift of knowledge.
Recently, he sent out an email that showed the final results of taking the project into rural China, where the villages are so far away from any major city that the children barely have chalk to write with. Here's a picture of one of the schools, outfitted with a bookshelf full of donated books.
Look at the state of that classroom. It's shocking, especially since education is probably the only thing that these kids will be provided with. It reminds me of Zhang Yimou's classic movie "Not One Less", where the village school is so poor that chalk has to be rationed.
This school is in Liu Lin, a village in Shanxi province. Before The Library Project got there, the school had no books.
Did you hear that - no books. As in zero. One less than one.
This school is so far away that, in order to get the books to the school, Tom had to take a train, truck, boat and then get the kids to come down from the mountain to help pick up the books.
The children, of course, are thrilled. After years of dusty classrooms, the colours and the stories probably do more to inspire their fertile minds than any number of lessons.
I'm so impressed by the work that Tom and The Library Project have done that I'd love to go back to China and help him set up a library in one of those rural schools. Going out into the countryside in China is a totally different experience... people are hospitable and generous, even when they have nothing to give.
So, I'm going back to help build a library. Does anyone want to help?
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I have seen similar in other place (ie: Sri Lanka)
I think the fight between Tibet and China is like two big eggs. It is difficult to work out how scrambled the mix is at this stage and so the best people can do is report on what they read from one source or other.
My interest in the latest riots is to watch and see then comment on what I see. Even the best people find it hard to do this dispassionately and not offer a personal bias.
Certainly I see no real advantage in a boycott of the olympics. It was tried when the USSR invaded Afghanistan and it achieved nothing except a tit for tat boycott later.
The question of what will happen next is something everyone is asking. Beyond that I see no advantage in secrecy, riots, filtered news or even cryptic propaganda.
However it is news and should be reported upon and analyzed by someone.
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