Written by Lin Yi，Famous Photographer
I always remember the girl living in the depth of the Daliang Mountain.
It is a beautiful and lovely girl with red face like an apple, a pair of bright, clear and delightful eyes. She has a very poetic name –Luogu Ziluo. However, her life is not poetic.
Last June, I travelled with Pengzhong Public Welfare Fund Chairman Yang Weidong to Zhaojue County, located in the depth of Daliang Mountain to carry out public welfare activities. It was the first time for me to meet Luogu Ziluo and her classmates.
ZiLuo always quietly sat among Yi and Han pupils in clothes stained with clay. Delicate and charming, her dusty face with bright piercing but deep hesitant eyes made me have a feeling as if it seemed so long ago now.
ZiLuo is a 7 years old girl now, her mother died of illness and her father is now in prison because of drug trafficking. She lived in a ramshackle house and a straw paved bed is all of her belongings and sprouting potatoes are the food she most often eat.
Buqie Village Primary School where ZiLuo is studying is located at a remote mountain village in Zhaojue County of Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture in Sichuan province in Southwestern China. Zhaojue County is 167 kilometers away from Xichang and it takes 6 or 5 hours to drive there due to the muddy mountain roads. Buqie Village is 8 kilometers away from Zhaojue County and it takes at least 4 hours to walk there.
Buqie Village Primary School is situated on a hill at more than 2,000 meters above sea level. When entering Buqie Village Primary School along the muddy road, what we saw were the low enclosing walls, mottled walls and painted-off desks. The whole school children’s faces, without exception, were dusty, and the only old bulb that used to illuminate the classroom was swinging in the wind. Seeing so simple and difficult educational conditions made us let out a sigh, the grim reality engraved in the heart caused even more headache on us: so many left behind children, seriously lack of teachers. Common stationery for children in the city is a particularly precious gift for the children here. When we gave the children the school supplies, they were so glad that cheered, jumped just like they spent Chinese New Year.
What we saw and felt made us resolve to care for these children living in the depth of Daliang Mountain.
Pengzhong Public Welfare Fund made quick decisions to help them: 44 children selected from Buqie Village Primary School will be transferred to study at Tangqie Central Primary School which has better educational conditions. These selected children are all above 3 graders, eager to study and their families are poor. The 44 children are arranged in the same class, named Pengzhong class. Pengzhong Public Welfare Fund is responsible for their basic necessities of life from now till their graduation.
Young children Like ZiLuo are temporarily unable to go downhill to school. Because of missing them, soon we again went up the mountain to Buqie village. At 4 o’clock on the afternoon of that day, we arrived at the Buqie village. The children lined up to welcome us, it seemed that a hurry meeting in June gave them a deep impression.
Looking at these children under the age of 9, I felt very sour, could not say any word and I only focused my camera on them. In order to improve the learning environment for the children under grade three, the people of insight built a new school: a white gate, inside the gate there is a yard of nearly 400 square meters and three newly built classrooms. Though the desks in the new classrooms are still mottled, the learning conditions are improved a lot. When we come into the depth of DaLiang Mountain to meet these children, we not only care about their food and clothing, but also pay attention to their healthy growth.
Thinking that Ziluo and her classmates will be studying at the new school in the near future, I relax a lot. At the same time, we deeply feel that it is really too poor, more assistances are needed from loving people to help the children get through the difficulties.
The children are very eager to see us again. During our stay in the Daliang Mountain, the most common words we hear from them are: when do you come back? The children are grateful for our help. When it was time for us to leave, Pengzhong class children drew a big shape of “Loving Heart” with chalk on the playground and wrote “I love you” in it.
The children have a good vision for the future life. On the leaving day, the children drew many balloons outside around the big shape of “loving heart” and wrote their own ideals in the balloons, hoping the balloons carrying their ideals to fly into the sky.
I try my best to help them fly higher......
(From SSCLF’s Quarterly “Change”, first issue in July, 2016)
