Rural Life, Urban Life Differs in China

Xiaofei Yang, Staff Writer

Who said life is fair?  Sometimes life does not care about what you want. Some children born into a poor village never step outside of  that “circle” through their life, but some born with the “Golden Spoon” live in an environment that they never have to worry about food, clothes, education, and basic needs. They can have everything they want.  Even at this very moment, in this very cold weather, somewhere, there must be children suffering, while we are enjoying the warmth of a nice home.

“I know lots of these kind of things in China, and I love to watch a TV show that talks about the children who are born in the city. Their parents put them into the poorest part in China and live for a month without any technology, any money. Every time when I saw the poor living environment that the children born in the villages have, I could not stop crying. Their school and home is totally different from mine. They even only have one teacher, one classroom at school. But now we at NDA, we have enough technology to use for teaching, studying. We have enough classrooms and teachers. We have warm temperatures in winter, and so much things that they do not have,” said Iris, who is a sophomore at NDA.

From the research, the majority of the people who are 20 to 30 years old do not know that situation, but the people who was 35 or older, actually experienced the two different situations through their life.

“When I was in China, I knew that the children who live in villages far away from the city, if they wanted to go to school, they usually spent several hours going to school on foot every day.They might have to get up at 4 a.m. and cross the mountain or river to get to the school which was always located on the foot of the hill. The schools are built on the base of the hill because transportation is more convenient and they have a better chance to communicate with the outside world. I know one elementary school located in a poor village, in a remote mountainous area in my province, that has only one classroom for students in grades 1 through 6. When I went there for my university requirement, I even cried at seeing that school. They do not have textbooks or study tools,” said Ms. Zhang, the new Mandarin teacher at NDA.

My own mother, who is living in China now, said, “During my childhood, most of us could not finish the high school because of the high tuition. We were too poor to afford that, but now, the education changed a lot. Most kids your age can finish the university. The tuition is not expensive for us anymore. Still you have to see the children who live in the poor. You can learn a lot.”

We were born with a warm family, and parents who gave us the best education opportunity to let us go the Notre Dame Academy which is such a good school. We are expected to be good, to give back the world, to help the people who need help.