Jiangbian Village, Xiaoshajiang Town, Longhui County, Shaoyang, Hunan, a village where Yao and Han live together in the alpine mountainous area, where the mysterious Huayao lives for generations
At the beginning of last year, Huang Yongjun and Millie demolished their ancestral house and built a college named "Guihe" in the "Huang Family Yard" in the Jiangbian Village at an altitude of more than 1,300 meters.
The class of return is to open up the eyes of Yaoshan children, to know what the city is like, what the children are doing in the city, and how to live in the city
Let the children in the city know that there is a kind of practical and long-lasting joy in the world. Seeds are planted in spring and harvested in autumn.
▲The children from the school returned from the practice class.
Our reporter Yuan Ruting and Xie Ying
What kind of house can be homesick?
It should be built in a distant hometown, with water in front of the house, and mountains behind the house; it should face the field and hear the crisp birdsong; it should have a window, gently opened, with working folks in the distance, near There are playful children everywhere... It was the dream of Huang Yongjun and Millie, and it is what it looks like now.
In Jiangbian Village, Xiaoshajiang Town, Longhui County, Shaoyang, Hunan, a village where Yao and Han live together in the alpine mountainous area, the mysterious Huayao has lived here for generations. The young Huang Yongjun walked out of the mountains, went north to study, traveled across the ocean, and came back here in a young age.
His wife Millie is his classmate, and the two have been studying political science together. They have studied Confucianism and rural culture for many years. Currently, Millie is an associate professor at Central South University, and Huang Yongjun is an associate professor at Hunan Normal University.
At the beginning of last year, the professor and his wife demolished their ancestral house and built a college named "Guihe".
The name is taken from "The Analects of Confucius · Gongye Chang", "The son is in Chen, saying:'Guiyu, Guiyu, the kid of our party is crazy and simple, so brilliant, I don't know why he cut it."
Thousands of years ago, eager to return to his hometown to educate young people was Confucius' way of nostalgia.
"Going back to the Academy also carries our homesickness." Huang Yongjun said.
Build a college to let homesickness meet ideals
19 years ago, Millie, a girl from northern Shaanxi who was still in her junior year, followed her boyfriend Huang Yongjun back to his hometown of Longhui Xiaoshajiang Town, Hunan Province, and saw the scenery she had never seen before. An old lady in Huayao costumes went to the market with a basket of ducklings on her back. Millie found it strange, so the prospective mother-in-law called many Yao villagers wearing similar costumes, surrounded her with a smile, and showed her Huayao jewelry and clothes. She looked.
From then on, Xiao Shajiang became the common attachment of Huang Yongjun and Millie.
In 2003, the two officially did academic research here for the first time and wrote the "Questionnaire Report on Chinese Rural Political Culture." In three months, they carried dozens of kilograms of bags to every village where Huayao lived, recording more than one million words of information.
In the former residence of Wei Yuan in Longhui County, they saw a small private school. "If there is a chance in the future, let's build a school, right?" The two who were still graduate students at that time planted a seed in their hearts.
More than ten years later, the seeds germinated in the golden wheat fields of southern France——
In 2014, the couple who had been teaching in colleges and universities went to Europe to study. The instructor took them to a manor. During the day, they dig potatoes, pick grapes, make jam, and make red wine with local farmers. At night, they drank beer and chatted under the stars.
"That kind of life makes us understand that the countryside is not a backward world, but a living space for growth." After returning to China, Huang Yongjun and Millie decided to "do a meaningful thing" in the remote village of their hometown.
They believe that "only in an era of rural revitalization can we achieve this."
"The ideal of Chinese Confucian aspirants is to use the power of knowledge to teach people, and that is what we want to do." Huang Yongjun, who was admitted to Yaoshan more than 20 years ago, returned with his wife Millie. They decided to conduct a rural civilized education experiment in Jiangbian Village, Xiaoshajiang Town, with a population of three to four hundred households and more than 1,000 people.
The couple worked hard to persuade the elderly in the family to demolish and rebuild the dilapidated ancestral home at their own expense. Soon after, a college was built in the "Huang Family Yard" in the riverside village of more than 1,300 meters above sea level.
The academy has four floors with white walls and tiles, and cornices. The classroom on the first floor looks a bit like an old school with square tables and wooden benches. There is a black piano behind the classroom, but it doesn’t appear to be a violation; Going up, there are wooden high and low beds in several dormitories for teaching volunteers and study families. The roof is open with skylights, and you can watch the stars while lying on the bed. The academy also has a reading room and an intangible cultural heritage experience room... …
The classes of Guiyou Academy are mainly divided into two parts. One is to open all free public welfare classes for children in Dayaoshan during winter and summer vacations, holidays and after-school time; the other is a research project mainly for urban families, which collects room and board. And other basic expenses.
Guiyou Academy is not an established school, and there are no fixed classes; it does not require admission through examinations or complicated graduation procedures-as long as children enter the Academy, they will be welcomed by the couple and volunteers.
"We hope that children whose parents are not around will have a place to go after school and vacation, with someone to accompany, and knowledge to learn." Huang Yongjun said.
Except for teaching and scientific research, Huang Yongjun and Millie spent most of their time in Xiaosha River. Many of their students, as well as more volunteers from colleges and universities, formed a stable and diverse teaching and guidance team. The couple seemed to have delayed their job title review and promotion, but they were reluctant to do so.
A "meaningful thing" makes homesickness meet ideals.
▲Owned to the Academy.
Did you see the longing of Yaoshan children
In July 2019, Guiyu College was officially opened.
The day before the hospital opened, Huang Yongjun's mother yelled from the three natural groups in Jiangbian Village. The couple have no idea, how many children can come? I guess, 30 would be fine.
At 6 o'clock in the morning the next day, Millie was awakened by the twittering voice. She put on her clothes and went to the gate of the college to see that some children were gathering in front of the gate laughing and waiting for the opening of the courtyard.
Huang Yongjun also remembered that morning clearly: Children of different heights ran from all directions along the ridges of rice paddies, some were still small, some were already very tall. They ran to the gate of the college, panting, blushing and a little shy, shouting "Hello, teacher."
"Did you see it? This is the yearning of Yaoshan children." Looking at the children rushing to them in groups, Huang Yongjun asked Millie gently.
A total of 107 children came to the village that day. A villager came and asked anxiously: "The child is not at home today. I should first sign up for him, okay?" The couple promised that as long as the child comes, they will teach.
But what do you teach?
The students returned to the Academy are all ages from kindergarten to high school, and at most 137 children come in one day. As long as classes are opened, there are 50 or 60 people on average. No textbook is suitable for such a class.
As a result, young volunteers from colleges and universities offered their "unique skills" one after another. Movies, animation, music, poems, flower arrangements... They have built a world almost never touched in the mountains.
According to Millie, there are two regular classes and one flexible class in public welfare classes: one is to start one month before each semester, and volunteers will accompany and tutor children to write homework after school, and the other is homework guidance and interest in winter and summer vacations. Classes, the third is for volunteer teams with specialized skills, such as music, art, sports, etc., and classes will be held irregularly based on volunteers' expertise.
The most unexpected course is "garbage picking."
Last summer, Millie gave a small lecture on environmental protection knowledge to children, talking about environmental pollution and garbage classification. In the afternoon, she and the volunteer teaching volunteers took the children out.
There is a gurgling stream in front of the gate of Guiyu College. The children carried poles, iron tongs and sickles, jumped off the ridge, and picked up plastic bags, cigarette butts, and dead branches from the creek.
Jiangbian Village lives by the creek, but few children in the village feel that protecting the creek is their responsibility. But that day, everyone was very motivated and picked up a few large bags of garbage. "Isn't it the meaning of learning to let the knowledge in the classroom come into life, but also let the children find their self-worth?" Millie said.
Classes are varied, but the feedback is always warm and pleasant. Millie still remembers that a volunteer from Central South University played a guitar in a music class. A boy gathered up the courage to step forward and flick the strings lightly. Then he laughed and was happy for a long time.
"No matter what you teach, they are very happy." said Du Qiuyue, a volunteer teaching supporter and a post-95 graduate student, that children in the mountains are particularly satisfied. "If you walk into the classroom and say'today we draw together', you will immediately I heard a pleasant cheer,'Wow, teacher, it's a drawing lesson!'"
Huang Yongjun said that sometimes, they would devote a class to teaching children in the mountains to prevent fraud, take the subway, and even how to cross the road at the intersection of traffic. Because he still remembered that when the young man came to the city from Dashan, he felt helpless and panicked.
"Our class is to open up the eyes of the children in Yaoshan, to know what the city is like, what the children are doing in the city, and how to live in the city," Huang Yongjun said. "We just want them to'see'."
"Seeing" is a gift that cannot be measured by tuition. However, Huang Yongjun and Millie decided that all classrooms facing Yaoshan children would not take any money.
▲Huang Yongjun and Millie took a group photo with the college at home.
Shanshui is here, this is the best classroom
For the children in the city, Gui and Academy have a completely different meaning.
Soon after its opening, the Academy also ushered in its first urban parent-child research group, with about ten families from all over the country. Volunteer Wu Qian remembered that the children started pouting when they got off the bus. "Some are dirty, some don't want to do anything, and many children have a vague sense of superiority."
The academy established a rule to temporarily take away mobile phones and tablets. In a few days, Huang Yongjun and Millie took their parents and children, put on straw hats, picked up sickles, hoes, poles and rakes, went to the mountains to chop bamboos, fences, and then picked the children’s favorite vegetable seeds and cultivated small Plant a piece of land...
Every night, they would light a bonfire to sing and dance, and look up at the stars in the sky at the Xiaosha River at an altitude of 1,300 meters.
Huang Yongjun remembered that there was an eight or nine-year-old girl who came here wearing a pair of brand new white shoes. On that day, they had to hike for two hours to find an ancient village in Huayao. As she walked across the ridge, the girl stepped into the mud and pulled her foot out. The shoe was still stuck in it, and she started to cry. "The little girl felt that the shoes were dirty and didn't want to continue walking. We always encouraged her. The child cried all the way when he went, and when he came back, he wore dirty white shoes and jumped again."
Every season in the mountains is different, and the classrooms of Guiyou Academy are constantly changing. Wu Qian said that they would never "dead" the research courses. Perhaps the theme of this farming experience is to grow radishes, the next one is to chop bamboo, and the next one will become a fence. "No matter what the subject is, those children who came here reluctantly are reluctant to leave."
When she was undergraduate, Wu Qian was also a volunteer in a research project. She was responsible for leading parents and children to visit the campus and give the same explanations. She feels that some research projects "industrialized and process-oriented" are far less interesting and natural than teaching children about astronomy under the stars or by the campfire.
It is not that no parents have raised doubts. Someone asked Huang Yongjun: "Your research projects are very good, and the fees are low. There is only one shortcoming, and there is no schedule."
"Guiyu Academy is not a study and tutoring class. The countryside is here, and the mountains and rivers are here. This is the best arrangement." Huang Yongjun said, "It's like when we take our children to see paddy farms and meet working farmers. For the class, I can only observe other things if I don’t meet them. How to make a class schedule?"
Here, the study class does not assign homework or compulsory writing of experience. Huang Yongjun and Millie believe that what the children see and meet is what they learn and gain. "Does it have to be written in the workbook to be knowledge? It is also knowledge that can distinguish wheat seedlings from green grass."
Thus, there is such a "return to the classroom"——
Watch the sunrise during the day and the stars at night; walk across the crisscross ridges to watch the clouds and the breeze, chase the light and shadow cast by the sun; run up the hillside to pick wild flowers, come back and have another flower arrangement lesson; sit around the bonfire and listen to a certain The story of the planet...
Pao, 6 years old, is from Guangzhou and spent 5 days with his mother Li Hua in Guiyu Academy. That was the first time Bubble knew that there are some children of his age in the world who live in the mountains a completely different life from him.
"Baobao has been in the city since he was born. I always feel that his life experience is incomplete. The world is very broad, not only learning and interest classes." Li Hua said, they once met a farmer harvesting rice, the local The farmer used a windmill to blow away the weeds in the rice. The mother and the son stopped and observed for a long time, “Understanding the steps of turning rice into rice is the growth of bubbles.”
In Huang Yongjun's view, many urban children are facing the burden of "over-education". In fast-paced learning and training, the pursuit of "immediate" efficiency is far greater than the enjoyment of learning itself, and children's anxiety is often a projection of parental anxiety.
However, in each study course of Guiyou Academy, volunteers will tell children like Paobao, "The seeds will not grow up so quickly, but the children who come in the future will eat the vegetables you grow."
In addition to letting the children in the mountains "see", the couple's other original intention is -
Let the children in the city know that there is a kind of practical and long-lasting joy in the world. Seeds are planted in spring and harvested in autumn.
Education is the discovery that every life has light
Huang Yongjun often thinks of a scene: In 2016, he participated in the National Academy of Shanchang Dean Meeting at Wuhan University. Facing the Confucian scholars at the conference, he asked: Where do the students of traditional academies come from and where are they going?
The question fell silent and the audience was silent.
This was a question that puzzled him and Millie for a long time, until Guiyu College let them slowly discover that "return to the countryside" was an answer.
One is the lack of resources, and the other is the overload. And in the small academy connecting the urban and rural civilizations, they saw thousands of possibilities for education.
Many volunteers remember that there were a few rural teenagers with dyed hair and earrings sitting in the back row of the college classroom, their eyes full of rebellion and confusion. They were drowsy in the literature class of poetry appreciation, but they took the lead in the environmental protection class of cleaning the river. They were so active, enthusiastic and lovely.
"To build an academy in the mountains, we are not giving, let alone charity, but seeing." Millie said, "Education is discovery. Discovering that every life has light."
What is the light in life?
Faced with this problem, Huang Yongjun recalled a "survival on the snow" during the Spring Festival this year. It was February 15th. He and Millie took a pair of sons and daughters to climb the Dayao Mountain in the cold of the sky and went into the bamboo forest to "explore". The trembling family of four made a makeshift and wanted to be in the snow. Lit a bonfire to keep warm.
They tried their best to dig out relatively dry bamboo branches from the snowy ground and set them up, soothing each other's anxiety and impatience. They used their hands that were a little stiff to fire again and again. After a long time, the snow finally lit up in the snow.
Huang Yongjun said that the pulsating firelight in the ice and snow is the beauty of the origin of life, allowing children to experience the most primitive warmth and power of life.
This is what the couple have always insisted on-every holiday, they will bring a pair of children back to Dayao Mountain, cutting bamboo, cutting thatch, and plowing the fields in the mountains.
Millie said that children’s world has the most authentic happiness, holding a bamboo pole and chasing chickens and ducks in the yard with friends, you can run for a whole day.
The light of life, in the natural curiosity, in the process of meeting and understanding the world. "We believe that with the most simple and exuberant love of life, children will live well wherever they go." Huang Yongjun said.
Recently, Guiyu College launched the “Watch after School” program for left-behind children. Children in the village who are not with their parents have a place to do homework, read books, play piano, and learn knowledge after school. In order to achieve normal operation, they simultaneously launched the "Left-behind Mothers" program, allowing women who stayed behind at home to come to the college and take care of the children here with volunteers.
One afternoon in late June, volunteer Du Qiuyue initiated a discussion about dreams in the "Watch after School" program.
"We have thought about it a lot, but what's the use?" The child who had never been out of the mountains said discouragedly.
With Du Qiuyue's repeated encouragement and questioning, the children slowly said their dreams. "I want to be a pastry chef and make many, many delicious biscuits" "I want to open a bookstore so that it can be a place for many people to read like a college"...
The simple and beautiful dream made Du Qiuyue, who was also a left-behind child, unable to calm for a long time.
She pondered for a while and told the children in front of her: "The desks are high and the mountains are high. But when you are higher than these desks and over the mountain, you will definitely see a different scenery. Who has a dream? They are all great."
Huang Yongjun and Millie often think of returning to their hometown many years ago. It was a spring when the grass grew and the warblers flew, and the mountains were full of vitality, but in the eyes of the children, there was a faint "barrenness" sprawling.
Homecoming, the countryside will be ruined, Hu will not return?
Return is the nostalgia and ideal of a mountain village college. Huang Yongjun said that they are digging a well. If the college can survive for a long time, the water from the well can flow into the rivers and lakes.
"We want to know whether a well has power into the deep sea." He said.