As the walkthrough fountain pushes a jet of water more than five
stories into the air, townsfolk gather at its edge and children
scuttle through the spray.
This could be a scene from any town in China, but this fountain
is special because it's in Dongxiang, high on the Yellow-Earth
Plateau, in northwest China's Gansu Province.
Dongxiang has an annual rainfall of 350 millimeters, but four
times that much water evaporates in the same amount of time,
shaping the topography to resemble the wrinkled face of an old
man.
The county is one of the poorest in China, and the main culprit
is unrelenting drought.
Scientists say it was different 2.6 million years ago.
As fossils of tigers in the museum across the street from the
fountain indicate, this land used to be verdant and fertile. Then,
some kind of apocalypse wiped out most of the species and
transformed the landscape into giant pancakes of arid soil. The few
patches of farmland left on the hillside are totally vulnerable to
the whims of Mother Nature.
Ironically, the county is bordered by several rivers, including
one of China's greatest the Yellow River. Villagers had to haul
buckets of water on donkeys and shoulder poles and trek dozens of
kilometres uphill to bring it home.
"Villagers would use the water to first wash vegetables and
rice, and then wait until the sediment is deposited, boil the
cleaner part for drinking and use the rest for laundry," said Ma
Weigang, county magistrate. "What it left was then poured on
whatever is grown in the land.
"The old saying 'each plot of land feeds its residents' is
invalid in our county," Ma added.
The residents on this barren and dusty terrain are mostly of one
ethnicity Dongxiang, or Sarta, as they call themselves. Their
ancestors were women and craftsmen captured by Genghis Khan
(1162-1227) on his conquest in Central Asia. They speak a language
that has no written form.
In 1992, then-Vice-Premier Tian Jiyun visited the county and
approved a project that would make the water surrounding the county
available to those living in its 1,750 ridges and 3,083
valleys.
On a separate inspection, Premier Wen Jiabao said that it would be worthwhile to
invest hundreds of millions to solve the water shortage for a whole
race.
In 1995, the Nanyang Irrigation Pipeline Project took off. Nine
years later, the main artery and some secondary routes were
completed, pumping water to the parched land.
The 560-million-yuan (US$70 million) project consists of 56.7
kilometres of main artery. This branches into four secondary
conduits totalling 40 kilometres, then bifurcating into 14
pipelines totalling 159 kilometres. Along the routes are 24
aqueducts that irrigate around 8,000 hectares.
Half of that area lies in Dongxiang County.
When the project is fully completed by mid-2007, about 120
villages and 150,000 residents will benefit.
"As of now, about 80 percent of our people no longer suffer from
an acute shortage of water," Ma said. "This figure will be raised
to 90 percent next year."
Ray of hope
Poverty and a lack of education go hand in hand.
According to the 2000 census, the average Dongxiang person only
had one year of education. Their 57 percent illiteracy rate was the
highest of all ethnicities in China.
That's where China Daily and its readers and sponsors
have made a difference.
Starting from 1999, China Daily has funneled a total of
3.5 million yuan (US$438,000) into the county, building or
rebuilding six primary schools and one middle school.
The China Daily Reader First Hope School, one of the seven
schools, was built in Pingzhuang Village, where there was no school
before 2003. Children had to walk 3 to 10 kilometres to reach the
nearest school.
Now the new 12-classroom school serves 137 students, 46 of whom
are girls, coming from several nearby villages. And these villages
have an annual per-capita income of only 651 yuan (US$80) and an
average grain possession of 243 kilograms.
Another new school, the China Daily Hope School, opened in
1999.
On a recent Sunday, students assembled to greet a visiting
delegation led by Editor-in-Chief Zhu Ling.
Browsing the computer room where three students shared one
computer, Zhu pledged to fund a 380-square-metre addition to the
existing building.
To bring children into school is the first step, and equally
important is to help them learn.
Of the 25 towns and town-level villages, 21 are inhabited
exclusively by ethnic Dongxiang people, who usually don't know much
Chinese. In the 7-14 age group, fewer than 10 percent understand
Chinese, according to a Yunnan University survey.
This presents a unique problem.
If children are taught in Chinese, as they are now, many
students are unable to absorb much of their lessons. Feeling
hopeless, many drop out.
If taught in their own language, students will not be
linguistically prepared to seek employment outside the county. The
export of labour is a major source of revenue.
In 2002, pilot bilingual education programmes were launched at
the Nalesi Elementary School. Within three years, bilingual
instruction raised the passing rate from a range of 7 to 20 percent
to a whopping 60 percent, said Chen Yuanlong.
Chen is a scholar and education official who compiled the first
Dongxiang dictionary and experimented with new texts spelt out in
standard Chinese, pinyin and Romanized Dongxiang language.
This programme was made possible by a grant from the US-based
Ford Foundation.
By 2003, the countywide illiteracy rate had dropped to 40
percent.
"Every year, we have a dozen charity organizations coming to
help us," Ma said with a tinge of gratitude.
Zhu Yinghuang, China Daily editor-in-chief emeritus,
said: "When I first came here in 1999, it was so poor that some
families dug out holes for their children to sleep in."
"Dongxiang is ridding itself of the shackles of poverty. The
progress it has made in the last few years is astounding," he said
as he handed out "red envelopes" of donations to the poorest
families on a recent visit.
Helping from afar
Helping Dongxiang break loose of these shackles, are also people
and organizations from both inside and outside China.
Seven years ago, Betty Lin was working for Este Lauder, a
cosmetics firm that caters to the cosmopolitan crowd.
In the past seven years, the Singaporean has been living in
Dongxiang, working for a UK-based charitable company called "I
Care." First, Lin and "I Care" helped locals breed and raise sheep,
the main source of meat. Later, Lin worked to grow better grade
potatoes.
Potatoes provide one of the main sources of revenue for
Dongxiang people, accounting for 63 percent of the farmland and
27.2 percent of rural revenue. (Other income comes from raising
sheep, 31.1 percent, and labour export, 24.8 percent.)
"When I first came, people were eating bad potatoes that were
diseased and degenerate. They could not use them as seeds any
more," Lin said. "We wanted to ensure they had something to fill up
their stomachs and also something with economic value so that they
could sell it."
What Lin does daily is a tedious process of planting,
cultivating and multiplying higher-quality potato seeds. She gives
them to nearby farmers at cost.
She and her workers plant seeds imported from Scotland, first in
greenhouses, where they grow tissue culture of their own. With the
good seeds, she hopes farmers can eventually sell their potatoes to
international buyers such as McDonald's.
The ongoing project will bring farmers an additional 7 yuan (88
US cents) per hectare, she calculated. With the diseased potatoes,
one hectare could yield only about 14 kilograms, and now the same
plot can have 10 times that output.
"The prefecture has asked us to help seven counties other than
Dongxiang," said Lin, who witnessed during her stay a huge
improvement in infrastructure spurred by government investment.
"We couldn't imagine so many could have access to water, road
and electricity in such a short period of time," she said.
Lin and her team chose April to plant the seeds.
"We'll plant for farmers before we do our own. They often fear
they would miss the best season," she said. "After planting, we can
only pray for rain. If there's a drought, we'd have to water them
from the pipeline, but the piped water is not available to every
farmer right now."
When asked what drove her to leave an urban and modern life for
endless days in dusty, landlocked Dongxiang, the vivacious
40-something replied: "I'm a Christian. I've been blessed in my
life, and I want to help those who are less fortunate than I
am."
Ma Fucai is the native son with a big heart.
In 1984, Ma left Dongxiang for Lanzhou, selling groceries at a
farmers' market, trading sheepskins and doing other jobs. Later, he
got into the mining business.
"I've made some money. I was also victimized a lot by swindlers
because I didn't have much education," he explained with a heavy
accent, walking with a clumsy, hobbling gait that betrays his leg
deformity.
Ma, an ethnic Dongxiang, cannot forget the children who still
live in his impoverished home county. He wants them to succeed more
easily than he did.
So Ma donated 220,000 yuan (US$27,500) to Dongxiang schools. (He
has also donated another 140,000 yuan (US$17,500) to water projects
and road construction.)
Just before June 1, International Children's Day, he bought
50,000 yuan's (US$6,250) worth of supplies and gave them, together
with 20,000 yuan (US$2,500) in cash, to the China Daily Hope
School, which serves two neighbouring villages.
To help keep children from quitting school, he brought 350 sacks
of flour. Each "poor" child received one, and the "extremely poor"
received two sacks. He also paid for everyone's school bag, uniform
and stationery.
Each girl got an additional 50 yuan (US$6.25) in cash.
"Girls are extremely vulnerable to poverty," he said.
"Whatever I've made, I cannot take it with me when I die, can I?
What really matters is how much I can change the lives of my people
back home."
(China Daily June 20, 2006)