A Tibetan mother grazes a flock of sheep while looking after her three children in the heart of a grassland in Xainza County, Nagqu City, Xizang Autonomous Region, in August 2012 (CHEN RENJIE)
Aug. 27, 2024 -- The first herder Chen Renjie encountered during his visit to Xizang Autonomous Region in 2012 was a Tibetan mother grazing a flock of sheep in the heart of a grassland in Xainza County. The woman walked slowly, with one baby fixed on her back and two preschoolers walking by her side, hand in hand.
"Why doesn't she send her kids to kindergarten?" Chen, then the newly appointed executive deputy mayor of Xainza County, asked one of his colleagues. The answer was that there was no kindergarten in the village. The nearest one was located at the township seat, which is 30 km away. Many parents were unable to juggle the long-distance commute alongside their farm work, housework and taking care of their children.
"As a father of two, I wanted to do something for the herders," Chen told Beijing Review. It was then the idea of building kindergartens took root in his mind.
Kindergartens on doorstep
Chen, then 44, arrived in Xainza County in Nagqu City in August 2012 as part of a Central Government program to assist in the autonomous region's development. In 1994, the Central Government introduced a new policy to provide greater support to Xizang. Some developed provinces were asked to pair up with specific cities and counties in Xizang and provide assistance in areas such as infrastructure development, agriculture, healthcare and education. Eight years later, 17 leading state-owned enterprises (SOEs) joined the program.
The CITIC Group is one of the 17 SOEs. It's a Fortune Global 500 company engaging in businesses covering finance, energy and resources, manufacturing, engineering contracting and real estate. In 2012, Chen, a manager with CITIC Securities' Jinhua branch in Zhejiang Province, east China, volunteered to work in Xainza for one year.
Xainza lies at the heart of the Changtang National Nature Reserve on the Qinghai-Xizang Plateau, 591 km northwest of Lhasa, capital city of the autonomous region. With an average altitude of 4,700 meters, the county covers an area of some 25,650 square km and is home to over 20,000 residents. A total of 63 villages are scattered across the vast grassland.
Chen visited all these villages in his first three months in Xainza and talked to villagers to learn more about the county's preschool education landscape. During his field investigation, Chen uncovered a strong desire among villagers for kindergartens built on their doorsteps.
Chen soon wrote a report and sent it back to CITIC Securities, which has 50,000 employees. The company started a donation campaign to fund kindergarten construction in the county. Chen delivered speeches to engage his coworkers, who were touched by his accounts of the people in Xizang. By the end of 2013, he had raised 730,000 yuan ($115,323), which was enough to build a kindergarten there. Because of its high altitude, construction costs in Xainza are much higher than those in other areas.
In the following year, the first village kindergarten was built and opened in Metog Village of Paca Township. A total of 24 children were enrolled. "It's a great help to parents, who no longer suffer from the long-distance commute and can focus on their farm work after sending their kids to the kindergarten," Buzado, a 43-year-old local teacher told Beijing Review.
Born and raised in Xainza, Buzado has been present throughout the development of preschool education in the county. When he was young, there were few kindergartens, even in the township. He first entered school at the age of eight. He is glad to see that the next generation in his hometown has access to convenient preschool education.
Chen Renjie and Tibetan pupils of Maryo Township Elementary School in Xainza in September 2012 (COURTESY PHOTO)
Taking root
When Chen left his hometown in Jinhua in 2012, his second child was only three months old. Chen thought that he would be home soon. However, life doesn't always unfold according to plans.
When Chen raised enough funds to build the first kindergarten in 2013, it was at the end of his tenure. He wanted to prolong his tenure to see the kindergarten built. But he hesitated when facing his wife Xu Yinglei, who had taken care of their two children alone for one year.
Xu understood Chen's unspoken dream. Born into a family of virtue, she has always been told by her parents to be ready to help others. Although she was reluctant to continue being apart from Chen, she nodded her assent. "Don't worry. I will look after our kids well. As for you, it's your responsibility to take good care of children in the pastureland," she said.
Moved and encouraged by Xu's words, Chen applied to prolong his tenure and built seven more village kindergartens in the following six years. All funds were raised by Chen among his CITIC Securities coworkers, friends and relatives. So far, these eight village kindergartens, all located at approximately 4,850 meters above sea level, have offered free education to 716 rural preschoolers. In addition, these kindergartens also create jobs for villagers. Every kindergarten hires at least two villagers who graduated from high school to help take care of the students.
Besides eight village kindergartens, Chen also helped build one traditional Tibetan hospital and affordable housing for over 900 herders in the county.
Chen's seven years of hard work was repaid by the plateau in a special way: by providing rich sources of inspiration for his poetry writing. Since 2012, he has written more than 400 poems about Xizang and published two poetry anthologies. In 2019, he was appointed the vice president of Xizang Federation of Literary and Arts Circles. Three years later, one of his poetry anthologies, Between Mountains and Ocean, won the Luxun Literary Award, one of China's top four awards in this circle.
A teacher and her students at a village kindergarten in No.6 Village, Tarma Township, Xainza County, in December 2017 (CHEN RENJIE)
From constructing to empowering
In the following years, more kindergartens were built by the local government. By August 2024, there were 27 kindergartens in Xainza, including 18 in villages. "Now, the gross enrollment rate for preschool education in Xainza is 65.2 percent," Yang Bo, deputy chief of the Bureau of Education and Sports of Xainza County, told Beijing Review. The number for the whole region is much higher, reaching 89.52 percent by November 2023, according to a white paper on the governance of Xizang in the new era released by the State Council Information Office in November 2023.
Starting from 2015, new models have been piloted in the paired-up assistance program. Instead of relying on external support, such as providing funds and building infrastructure, more efforts have been made to a self-sustaining model that includes developing industries, offering technical support and nurturing talent.
"In the field of education, the focus has shifted from constructing schools and updating facilities to training local teachers and offering high-quality education," Wang Lei, an associate professor of economics at Shandong Normal University, told Beijing Review. He has spent more than a decade studying the paired-up assistance program in Xizang.
Based on the needs of local schools, much-needed teaching and educational professionals from other provinces began to arrive in Xizang in groups. In 2023, 400 teachers from 17 provinces and municipalities taught in 21 elementary and middle schools in the region.
To better empower Xizang's teaching staff, these teachers paired up with local teachers, preparing classes together, listening to each other's lessons and discussing how to improve their teaching skills. Local teachers also have opportunities to train in other provinces for six months to one year. "These are good ways to empower teaching talent in Xizang and enhance quality of the region's compulsory education," Wang said.
In 2020, Wang conducted field research in 10 counties and 13 villages in Xizang. A total of 1,179 local people were surveyed. They expressed their satisfaction with educational progress in Xizang, scoring 4.156 points on a scale of 1 to 5.
But the survey result also showed that there was still a shortage of teachers in some remote rural areas. The real issue here lies not in the number of teachers available but in their transient nature—they come and go, leaving some schools' teaching staff unstable. "I think this problem can be solved in the future as policies are also constantly adjusted and optimized to meet actual needs in Xizang," Wang added.
