School drive in Ningxia is a lesson in how dreams come true

YINCHUAN－About 20 years ago, a diary account chronicling the struggles of a teenage girl from rural China was published at home and abroad and became an instant hit.

In the book, The Diary of Ma Yan: The Struggles and Hopes of a Chinese School Girl, Ma described scenes like how girls had to cross mountains to reach school every morning on an empty stomach. The longing for a change of destiny through learning and hard work was inspirational for many readers.

"Mother, my tears would never dry if I couldn't go to school," Ma wrote in her diary when her mother, Bai Juhua, suggested the 13-year-old drop out of school and learn tailoring or hairdressing skills.

Ma cried and asked her younger brother to read her diary to their mother. The mother gave up the thought. To support her daughter, she traveled far and did odd jobs to earn money.

Ma's hometown, Zhangjiashu, is a mountainous village in Tongxin county, Ningxia Hui autonomous region in Northwest China. It is part of Xihaigu, a barren region that was deemed one of the most unfit places for human settlement by the United Nations in the 1970s.

The conditions described in Ma's diary have undergone tremendous changes－a whole new world has been forged.

"Now, all children have got access to free education, thanks to the implementation of the country's nine-year compulsory education policy," says Ma Ruyun, principal of the Third Middle School in Tongxin county where Ma Yan once studied.

A new concrete building with bright classrooms equipped with digital blackboards and the internet are now in place. Students can attend online classes taught by teachers in bigger cities. After class, students are seen having fruit and snacks and some playing basketball.

Ma Yan wrote in her diary that she and her classmates used to bring steamed buns as the only food to school. Now, students do not need to do so. In the canteen, they line up to fetch meal sets that include rice, meat and vegetables. They can enjoy free lunch after a national initiative was launched in 2011 to improve nutrition for rural students.

"My parents also give me pocket money," says Li Dongmei, an eighth grader.

Her family used to be on the registered impoverished household list. But thanks to the country's poverty-alleviation campaign, life has got much better.

Dongmei is a boarding student and visits her home on weekends. She has a cozy bed in a dorm shared by four girls and 24-hour access to warm water. She likes writing diaries. The notebook she uses was bought online, and the entries are mostly about interesting things such as teachers showing them movies.

Ma Yan wrote in her diary that not a single student was able to put on a simple performance when the teacher asked them to. On the contrary, Dongmei had never encountered such a moment in her life.

"The school holds extracurricular activities like reading competitions, speech contests and sports," Dongmei says.

Ma Chengqi, Ma Yan's classmate from middle school, says: "Every village has young men and women studying in universities now."

Through education, Ma Chengqi has become a government employee, instead of working the land like his father and grandfather.

Recalling a moment from his childhood, he says he once saw his cousin weeping at the doorstep because the family had no money to pay for his tuition. "Villagers at the time were more concerned about filling their bellies and only a few understood the importance of education," he says.

Now even kindergartens, a concept Ma Chengqi never heard of when he was a child, are popular in rural areas. Statistics show that the enrollment rate of preschool education in Ningxia exceeded 88 percent in 2020.

"Today no girl drops out of school to get married," Ma Ruyun says. "Their parents are ready to send them to a vocational school to acquire skills even if they fail to gain admission to a senior middle school."