SCHOOLS KEEP DREAM ALIVE

Despite the poverty and tough climate, the Sanxi region has a unique cultural background.

A Swedish geologist found ruins of an ancient cultural site dating back 4,000 to 5,000 years in Majiayao village of Lintao county in 1924. The ruins include ancient homes, tombs, cattle, tools and painted pottery pieces, and many bear a primitive form of writing.

The locals take pride in this heritage and value reading and writing. Even the poorest families send their children to school.

Until the 1990s, many children could not afford pencils and books. They used little sticks for pens and wrote on the ground.

As a child, Guo Shengxia, from Gansu's Tongwei county, learned to read and write in the dirt.

When she stood out in the national college admission test and entered university, her father gave up smoking and drinking tea and sold every valuable item in their shabby home, even the last drop of vegetable oil in the kitchen.

Six months after she graduated and secured a job, her father died while sitting against the family's outer wall, basking in the sun. At 70, he died peacefully, knowing he had finished the most important job of his life.

But some families have to put one child's fate at stake to secure a better education for another.

Li Manqiang feels he can never repay his younger sister, who quit junior high school and began working in a carpet factory when he was about to enter college.

With her first month's wages, she bought him a pair of leather shoes. When he took the shoebox, he saw many knife wounds on her hands -- still unskilled at her job, she accidentally cut herself from time to time.

Her sister was married off at 17. He did not even escort her to the bridegroom's home, as per the local custom, because their father insisted he should save the bus fare.

On her wedding day, he climbed to the top of the classroom building and tearfully composed a poem for her. "Your girlhood was cut short at 17 in exchange for some betrothal money that was to cover my tuition."

In 1996, Hou Xinmin and Qiao Yongfeng established a school in Jinzhong village of Gansu's Zhangxian county. Its only classroom was a deserted hut with cement stools and planks that served as desks and chairs.

Hou and Qiao gave classes for free and their reason was simple. "Our peers who never went to school could not even tell the men's room from the ladies' when they went looking for jobs in the city."

In a few years, donations and state funding began pouring in, replacing the hut with new classroom buildings and athletics facilities. The government exempted tuition for all children so they could receive at least nine years of compulsory education, including six years at primary school and three years at junior high.

In underdeveloped regions, the government also financed students' textbooks, food and on-campus lodging.

Qiao, now in his 50s, boasted that more than 30 of his students have entered college.