The Chinese have a profound faith in education. High and low and rich and poor are absolutely of one mind on this point, and if a boy is not sent to school, it is either because the parents are too poor, or because they have not sufficient authority over him to compel him to study… In the West there are many ways by which a man may rise to eminence… In China they are all narrowed down to one, and it is the one that leads from the schoolhouse.

Rev. John MacGowan, Xiamen missionary, 1913

Leading the Global Desertification Battle

Photos from my first visit to the western end of the Great Wall show a land as yellow and sun-baked as the Great Wall itself, and it was probably just as desolate 1,000 years ago when camels trod this remote stretch of the Silk Road. The walls are still yellow in my 2019 photos but now set against a green backdrop. Even the city has a large forest, neighborhood parks, and landscaped roads. When I asked leaders their secret, they said, “We studied Israelis. They’re masters at recovering deserts!”

But increasingly the world is turning its eyes to China’s own fight against desertification.

The UN warns that global desertification is now 30 or 35 times historic levels, and a European commission warned that over 75% of land is already degraded and this could exceed 90% by 2050. Yet China, the most populous nation, has managed to green even as it has achieved unparalleled economic growth. And West China’s Jiayuguan is a model of how China has also tackled another global problem: unequal regional economic growth.

Coping with Unequal Regional Growth

A leader in Warsaw boasted to me recently that Poland was Europe’s 7th largest economy and the only EU country to avoid recession during the financial crises of 2008/09. While the statistics are impressive, I’d also talked to rural Poles to see the reality behind the statistics. Several said, “Yes, we read about our ‘economic miracle’, but only city people benefit from it.”

Poland’s rural inland development lags behind urban and coastal growth because, as in other countries, companies must invest near the best infrastructure. The EU’s “economic miracle” of Poland still faces this problem even though it has been the largest beneficiary of UE infrastructure funds—some 208 billion Euros from 2013 to 2020. If Poland struggles bringing prosperity to areas only 100 km from a city, China’s success in developing regions thousands of miles from the coast is all the more remarkable.

China is nearly 31 times larger than Poland yet in three decades has built the world’s vastest highway, hi-speed train and internet networks—and China’s infrastructure reaches not just cities and towns but even, as we saw in Inner Mongolia and Ningxia, the very doorsteps of mountain villages.

I saw this firsthand when I revisited West China’s Jiayuguan in July, 2019. The city was not only greener than before but also as modern as cities in the east. Beautifully designed apartment buildings lined wide paved streets that were landscaped with shrubs, flowers and grasses illuminated at night by solar lighting, and the shops offer not only local specialties but products from all over China, as well as imports.

But it was the adults’ and children’s cheerfulness and optimism that moved me most. They were both proud of their city and confident in their children’s future—probably because they have teachers like Ms. Yan Guizhen, a middle school teacher whose passion for education was kindled when, as a child, she was quite literally carried on the back of a teacher who was passionate about her.

Jiayuguan citizens were delighted when Teacher Yan was chosen to represent them at the 18th National Congress in Beijing in 2012. She has inspired such devotion and passion in her students that during 15 consecutive years, 90% of them tested into college and 100% succeeded from 2002 to 2004. Three of her students scored the highest in the entire province.

Yet in spite of awards and media attention, Teacher Yan remains indifferent to fame and fortune, living so frugally that even on her modest salary she has donated over 300,000 Yuan to needy students. But what led a young Manchu minority girl from N.E. China’s Liaoning at the opposite end of the Great Wall to devote her life to poor children in the far west of China?

Longing to Study

Teacher Yan was born in 1962 in Liaoning to a poor rural family of 10, including parents, grandmother and 6 siblings. China had 800 million farmers, but much of their communal farms’ produce went to feed workers and soldiers in the cities, so farmers had little left for themselves. “We were very hungry when I was young,” Ms. Yan said. “But we were creative with potatoes! We ate potato soup, shredded potatoes – many potato dishes. Sometimes we’d get a little corn and grind it for porridge. We honored our elders by giving grandma the thickest portion and we children ate the watery bit left over.”

Guizhen’s great escape was reading, so she was dismayed when her father told her to quit school to work the fields with adults and earn work points. “I longed to study,” she said, “but I obeyed my parents. But just at that time an official, Uncle Zheng, came to help our county. He said to dad, ‘Your daughter is too small for work but she’s a good student, so let her study.”

“We have no money,” Guizhen’s father said, but he agreed when Uncle Zheng paid the tuition from his own pocket, though it still meant hardship for the family.

One Room School

“I was so grateful that I worked very hard. Though China was vast, Mao Zedong had made sure that every village had a school, however small. Our village had over 20 students from grades one to six all in one classroom, but our teacher planned well so when she taught one grade the other five always had something to do – math, writing and drawing. Such was my education environment.”

“Was it effective?” I asked, skeptical.

“It was very good!” Ms. Yan said. “Nowadays, families have only one child and we are over-protective, with few outings lest students have an accident. But we were less constrained back then. Our teacher had over 20 students, aged 6 to 17, and she often took us on Spring outings. But it was a long trek to the mountains and at six I was so small I could not keep up. Yet instead of having me stay home, she carried me on her back! From first to sixth grade, she carried me on every spring trip!”

“Her warmth moved me deeply and showed me that education needs love.”

“I’ve never heard of such devotion!” I said, “carrying a student six years!”

“Yes, I feel emotional just talking about her. To this day, every time I return home I pay my respect at her grave. General Secretary Xi said a good teacher can influence a student’s life. My teacher influenced my entire life. Our rural area was so poor that we had no blackboard, so teacher Wang made one by fastening boards together and smearing them with ink. She exemplified the philosophy of Confucius, who over 2,000 years ago said, “Education is for all!” She made sure every child had the best learning opportunity and never ignored a child because she was too small, or for any other reason. And when she saw I was so small that when I sat on a stool I could not see over the table, she went right out and made me a stool with high legs. Then I could see! Those are some of my fondest childhood memories. But even in high school I was still blessed with a teacher who cared for me.”

Decision to Teach

Ms. Yan’s rural home was very remote and they were too poor for a bicycle, so many of her cousins dropped out of school. “But my dream was college, and escaping life in that poor valley. I’d rise before dawn on cold snowy days, eat my mom’s porridge, and take a bowl of it to school. At noon, when my high school teacher saw I’d carried this porridge 30 miles for lunch, he asked me, ‘After such a poor meal, how will you have energy to study? How will you ever make it to college?’ He left the room and returned a bit later with a large bowl of white rice, which he was allotted as a technical secondary school graduate. ‘Eat this,’ he said. ‘It will give you energy to study for university.’ My eyes teared as I bowed my head and ate the rice given to me by a teacher who had such high hopes for a girl from a poor valley, and I vowed that I’d overcome any obstacles to become a teacher like my own teacher.

“General Secretary Xi has said we should never forget our original aspirations. This was the source of my original aspiration to become a teacher.”

After graduating from college in July, 1991, she returned to her poor county as a middle school teacher with a salary of 38 Yuan. She used 10 Yuan for living expenses, sent 10 to her mom and gave the remaining 18 Yuan to needy students. “The children were as poor in the early 1980s as I had been,” Ms. Yan said. “Many had no shoes or winter clothes or money for school fees. “So I passed on my teachers’ love for me to them by helping them by food or clothes or books.”

As Ms. Yan taught school, she was caught up with Mao Zedong’s vision of a prosperous China. She watched patriotic movies, read patriotic books, and heard the call for youth to help distant areas, but they only wanted boys. “What about girls?” she thought. “If I get the chance and China needs me, I too will volunteer to teach in remote places. And I got that chance!”

Teacher Yan glanced out the window at the beautiful buildings and landscape. “Jiayuguan today is very beautiful but it wasn’t this way 30 years ago. In 1958, Mao Zedong built one of the Northwest’s largest steel mills and when production restarted in 1985, they recruited engineers from all over China but they did not have teachers for their children. When I heard this, I told my parents I was going to the Northwest.”

“Did your mother agree?” I asked.

“No, she did not agree,” Yan said. “My mom was herself a poor, rural woman but she had heard China’s far Northwest was even worse off. She’d heard they carried guns and was terrified that I’d be killed.

‘Mom,’ I said, ‘there are steel mills, and if technicians and others can live there, I can too – and they badly need teachers.’ Mom finally agreed because she knew I’d made up my mind. But mom wasn’t the only one to try to dissuade me. My school’s principal and Party secretary didn’t want to lose me. I had joined the Party and the principal had said that I was a good teacher and worked hard and he wanted to continue training me. But I persisted, saying the Northeast was full of talent but the Northwest needed teachers badly.”

Journey to the West

Ms. Yan rode the “hard seat” train for a full week, but she didn’t have the money for a seat so she stood the entire week, sometimes curling up under a seat when she was exhausted. She was hot and hungry, and so relieved to finally reach Jiayuguan, only to find it was vast and empty—no people, just Gobi Desert.

“Jiayuguan had only two modern buildings for the steel company leaders and engineers; all other buildings were unbaked mud brick. But I was relieved to see the market had potatoes! At least I would not starve! And they had planted drought-resistant trees like poplars. If those trees could take root, so could I!

“But what really motivated me to stay in the Northwest was the old man in his 50 s who met me at the station on a rattling bicycle, its chain half falling off. He rode up the dirt road and said, ‘You are Yan Guizhen from the Northeast? Hop on!’ He dropped me off at the dormitory and then returned shortly with a kerosene stove he’d just bought for me and some noodles from his home. As he patiently showed me how to use the stove, I wondered who this old man was. I was shocked to learn from other teachers that he was Director Zhang of the Jiugang Education Department—the very leader who had sent the ‘help wanted’ notice across China! It turned out that he personally cared for every new teacher in the same way. At that very moment, I knew in my heart that the second half of my life would belong to the Great Northwest and its children because they loved and valued teachers. That is how Director Zhang moved me. But I also learned that he was a very selfless Party official.

Although Director Zhang’s salary was only a few hundred Yuan and he had three children, he spent little on himself. He knew life was hard for the teachers from other parts of China so he often dropped by to see what they needed and he’d buy it for them, or buy nutritional supplements for a sick child. “If a student lacked school fees,” Yan said, “he’d pay them from his own pocket. He was my role model!”

Only after Director Zhang’s retirement in his 70 s did she learn the true extent of his sacrifices.

Generous to Others, Frugal with Self

When Ms. Yan visited Director Zhang in his home in 2009 she was shocked to find he was terminally ill and living in very poor conditions. “He should have made at least 2,000 Yuan a month by then. He was in his 70 s and his son was married. Yet his bed was just boards placed across two stacks of bricks. I felt so badly that I wept. ‘Director Zhang, why sleep in such a bed? Had I known, I would have bought a comfortable bed for you!’ He had been so generous to others but so frugal with himself. No wonder the common people love and support our leaders. Director Zhang was my role model, and his influence and teachings, etched deeply within my heart, reinforced my desire to commit the rest of my life to the students in Jiayuguan.”

“I can see what has led you to give so much to others,” I said, “but what does your husband think about you giving away all your money to the poor?”

Like-Minded Husband

“We two are very like-minded!” she said. “He is a technician from Shaanxi who was recruited to help but he also had a bitter childhood. His father died of cancer when he was only nine, leaving his widowed mother with four children. So he understands these children really need help and he is completely supportive.

“Some students’ fathers have died so I organized students to help the needy mother. Salaries were very low, so donations totaled only 800 or 1,000 Yuan, but the gesture was powerful and gave the children and mothers hope. And I’ve urged needy children to aim for college and overcome obstacles so that one day they will find good jobs and then can serve their country and help their parents.”

As Ms. Yan’s salary increased over the years, she helped more and more children. When children scored well on the entrance exam for college but could not afford to attend, she’d help cover the costs and had no qualms borrowing the money when her own funds ran short, and put them on the train herself. Yan smiled broadly as she showed me photos of students. “To me, every student is like my own child, and when I see them leave on the train, I know this will broaden their horizons and their lives will be wonderful.”

Lady in Green

Ms. Yan was the “Lady in Green” during the 1990s because she wore the same dress for five or six years. “Man-made fibers don’t wear out easily!” she said, laughing. “Parents looking for me at school were told, ‘Look for the lady in green clothes!’ But I was happy to have any clothes, and to eat plain steamed buns and gruel. Some female teachers had 1,000 Yuan of cosmetics but I was happy with a 1.5 Yuan sack of Yumeijing. In this way, I saved over 300,000 Yuan to help give children a way forward and hope. More than that, I gave them power.”

Over time, Yan’s story was reported by the media and she was given local and national honors with prizes that eventually totaled over 500,000 Yuan. “But I kept none of them,” she said. “I gave it all back and asked them to help needy or sick women and students.”

200,000 Yuan Teacher’s Day Award

Teacher’s Day 2012 was especially memorable. When told she’d receive an award, she declined to attend the ceremony. “I’d already received too many awards and wanted them to recognize young teachers, but the Education Bureau insisted. After the leaders’ speeches, Secretary Zheng gave me a big trophy, a child gave me a bouquet of flowers – and they gave me a large sign with many zeroes on it – a prize of 200,000 Yuan for the Promote Jiayuguan City Basic Education Special Contribution Award.”

Yan was astonished. “Secretary Zheng, you can’t give me so much money. I’ve not done anything worth that!”

Secretary Zheng replied, “Your contribution to Jiayuguan has been far too great. This is the city’s award to you.”

“I cannot take personal credit for my work,” she insisted. “It is the result of the Jiayuguan government’s many years of education support and the selfless dedication of over 2,000 educators, and the hard work of countless parents and students. This award belongs to the city of Jiayuguan – so I will use the entire 200,000 Yuan for something special.”

Yan Guizhen Charity Education Foundation

Thunderous applause followed her speech, and afterwards many people asked what she’d do with the money, but she really had no idea until someone suggested she start a foundation so she could help even more children. She shared this idea with Mayor Liu when he visited her home at Chinese New Year, and he gave the foundation a name, “Jiayuguan Yan Guizhen Charity Education Foundation”.

From that March, every day after class Ms. Yan visited departments, factories and neighborhoods to collect donations. “In March, Jiayuguan sandstorms are so strong the sky is dark, and I could barely pedal my bike against the wind, but I persisted. Two institutes each promised 100,000, and in July she told the Civil Affairs Bureau she wanted to start a foundation, only to learn the minimum was 2 million Yuan.

“Don’t worry,” Mayor Liu said. “Raise what you can and the government will provide the rest.” But Yan knew the mayor had enough pressure already and determined to resolve the problem herself.

“At that time, our director of Civil Affairs, a former soldier named Wang, hit upon a brilliant solution. “Don’t change a word of the foundation’s name, but make it an association instead of a foundation. An association only needs 30,000 Yuan.”

As Yan collected the required 50 signatures from 50 units, she was humbled by the people’s reactions. “Grandfathers selling fruits and aunties selling drinks said I was doing a good thing and tried to give me their fruit and water for free, but I threw the money at their stalls and raced off. They needed the money themselves. Even taxi drivers wanted to take me on trips for free.

“Don’t you feel like you’re begging?” someone asked her.

“Not at all!” she replied. “So many children still need help that I have no embarrassment going door to door!”

Ms. Yan obtained the 50 signatures in only two days. “That journey was the most unforgettable experience of my life,” she said. “I saw that when you do good, people will help you.”

Reaching Beyond Jiayuguan

The association paperwork was completed in August but there were so many needs in the community that Ms. Yan decided to strike while the iron was hot and raise more funds. She was overwhelmed by the response. By October 21, 2013 she’d raised 3.28 million Yuan, but then she had children from areas near Jiayuguan ask for help with surgeries.

“This association was formed for Jiayuguan children,” her associates said. “If we help children of other places, we’ll run out of money quickly.”

“I did not listen,” Yan said, smiling. “I donated 30,000 Yuan for the children’s surgeries, and then raised tens of thousands more.”

“One of my own students got leukemia when he was 18 and the doctor said he’d live only three months if he did not have a bone marrow transplant, but his parents could not afford the medical care. After her own school’s 3,000 teachers and students donated over 90,000 Yuan, the Education Bureau encouraged all teachers and students to donate. Even grandmothers in their 80 s heard of the need and donated from their pensions, and 2- and 3-year old children gave money through their mothers. Within two weeks, we’d raised 579,000 – just shy of the 600,000 the child needed. This was amazing for such a small city. Jiayuguan is truly a city with great love.

“So what happened to the child?” I asked.

“The disease was cured!” Yan said.

Afterwards

I was deeply moved by Ms. Yan’s story, but her devotion to education and her selfless generosity are not new to China. Even villages near my home of Xiamen have stories of poor children who centuries ago showed potential, and their studies were funded either by wealthy merchants or by the poor farmers who pooled their resources.

I gather that China has survived the ages precisely because Chinese have always valued education and built their society and government upon it—and education is China’s future as well—even in the most remote regions of the planet like Tibet, where people like Liang Nanyu are even bringing life to the Dead Zones.