Report on the village of Zhangpojiao (Jianshui)
Date: 2006,11,10
Location: Zhangpojiao
Zhangpojiao is located at the junction of Kaiyuan and Jianshui. Communication is very rudimientary, relying only on a mountain path. Its elements of transport consist on what a man can carry and what a horse can drag. The village has 15 families, about 50 children and are all migrants from elsewhere. The resources are very limited, to which must be added the drought that has occurred recently, the land is barren, so food production is low and the harvest is only a subsistence harvest.
There are no other villages nearby, so the village children almost never get to go to school. In the village, ther is only an old man who can read, and he, when he has time, teaches some reading to children. The class consists of a blackboard hanging on the outside of the door of a house, and the table is a wooden board attached to roots. Because these families belong to the category "black people, black families" (illegal immigrants), no one in town has the official family registration, so they can not benefit from compulsory education, etc. They even suffer social discrimination. If they go to a regular school, they have to pay 300 yuan per year tuition. So now there are no children in the village going to school.
For this reason, we decided to build a Daoming primary school in Zhangpojiao.