The reporter's trainee Zhu Lingjun's Nishui Village went on fire without warning.
On the evening of October 23, a topic of "26 people with doctorate and 34 people with master degree in one village in Anhui" rushed to the hot search on Weibo, and the amount of reading was amazing.
Nishui Village, an originally unknown village located in the deep mountains of Chashui Town, Qianshan City, Anqing, Anhui Province, suddenly attracted many people because of its reputation as "Doctor Village", and the development of cultural tourism projects soon began in the town. Shang, proposed an idea to build a "doctor town".
When interviewing in the town, when people listen to "Doctor Village", they will immediately show a suddenly realized expression and smile approvingly.
Recently, dozens of videos of "Doctor Village" have suddenly appeared on the short video platform. The few videos of Nishui Village are played in a loop in the form of a slideshow, accompanied by exciting music.
Facing the ensuing visits from all walks of life, the village party secretary Wang Jiefa was a little tired, but still talked freely: “There are 29 doctoral students in the village, 54 master students, and 273 undergraduate students.” Among them, the number of doctoral students was repeated. Emphasize.
"The data circulating on the Internet is from 2016, and the latest one should be 29 people." Wang Jiefa told reporters with a slight triumph.
Behind the hustle and bustle, this doctor's village also has another bleak side.
In Nishui Village, every household remembers the words of the old party secretary: "Only reading is the only way out for our mountain village." Over the years, many talented people have emerged from Nishui Village. They have grown up and enlightened in the village and used their own efforts to get out of the mountains. It seems to have been left in place, becoming a distant hometown in their memory.
The vast majority of the people who stay in the village today are the elderly and children, and a large number of young adults go out. While the "Doctor Village" is famous, it makes people worry that "it is difficult to get a doctor."
The village against the water still needs to continue sailing against the current.
"Can't Get Out" Mountain Village
Even on the hot search, in Qianshan, Nishui Village is still not well-known, but the name "Doctor Village" is more popular.
Since the resumption of the college entrance examination in 1977, this mountain village with a population of more than 3,000 has produced a large number of highly talented students, and more than 350 people in the village have a bachelor degree or above.
It takes more than an hour to drive from Qianshan City to Nishui Village for more than 60 kilometers. The rolling mountain road is surrounded by dense woods.
It is located in the hinterland behind the Tianzhu Mountain. Due to the top of the mountain, the river in the village flows from east to west, hence the name "Nishui Village".
The village is blocked with traffic, the land is barren, and the per capita arable land area is less than 1 mu. It used to be a typical poor village.
Poor, thinking about change, going out of the mountains has become the simplest wish of the villagers, and studying and studying is the best way.
There has long been a saying in the local area that "Huashan has a road since ancient times, and changing its appearance depends on reading." "If you are poor, don't lose your books, if you are rich, you don't lose pigs."
There are folk songs in the village: the lion elephant puts the water in the mouth and the sword into the dragon's head.
The lion, elephant, dragon head and sword, describe the shape of the mountain heads on both sides of the upstream river.
In 1978, Nishui Village had the first college student since the resumption of the college entrance examination, and the villagers rushed to tell.
But at that time, the teaching conditions in Nishui Village were very difficult. The junior high school was in a small col, and there were only a few dilapidated adobe houses as classrooms; the primary school was located on the other side of the river far from the highway, and the classrooms were two-story dilapidated wooden buildings.
The school buildings are dilapidated and it is not safe to go to school on a daily basis. Students also have to help the family to produce labor while going to school. There are also cases of dropping out.
Chu Zhaoyi saw it in his eyes and was anxious in his heart.
Chu Zhaoyi is a native of Nishui Village. After graduating from high school in 1973, he was assigned to teach in the village until his retirement in 2014.
He has been teaching for more than 40 years, and many of the doctoral candidates in the village and most of the village cadres in the village are his students. The villagers respect him as the "old principal".
Chu Zhaoyi is well aware of the importance of knowledge to change destiny, but in that difficult era, this is somewhat idealistic.
In fact, it is not only his expectations of the students, but also his own ideals, to get out of the mountains.
In the 1990s, the then village branch secretary Haochuan made a decision: “Only reading is the only way out for our mountain village.” He served as the chairman of the village-run enterprise Haochuan Forestry Development Company, and he did two things to develop education in the village. An important decision.
Since 1992, the tuition, miscellaneous fees, and educational surcharges of the village-run Nishui Primary School students are free, and the company will bear all expenses.
At the same time, set up the teaching assistant award fund: 200 yuan per student for high school entrance, 300 yuan per student for university entrance.
This was not a small sum at the time. Under such encouragement, the children's learning enthusiasm was very high.
In 1996, in order to improve the education and teaching environment, Chu Haochuan allocated 300,000 yuan from the company for the relocation and construction of Nishui Primary School.
A year later, the four-story torch-shaped teaching building of nearly 1,000 square meters was completed. It was the best building in the village at that time. Such a magnificent teaching building was rare in the city at that time.
After moving into the new site, the campus has a completely new look, with laboratory equipment and multimedia equipment all available, which can be regarded as a collection of the best local educational facilities.
Secrets of "Doctor Village"
Chu Haochuan is 83 years old, and he still remembers what happened back then, and he remembers time and characters clearly.
The relevant paper materials were neatly stored in folders after being sorted out by him in chronological order, like carefully cared-for collections. When turning the pages, they were also careful not to let others touch them.
When the reporter met Chu Haochuan at his home in the city of Qianshan, he seemed to be still spirited, and apart from a little deaf, he was not obviously old.
In Chu Haochuan's own words, it is because he always cares about the growth of the next generation, and his mentality is always young.
After Chu Haochuan retired from the company, he worked as an extracurricular counselor in elementary school. He returned to school every semester to participate in two activities, and he was impressed.
Except for Chu Haochuan, most of the retired teachers in the village like to go back to the village school in their free time.
When the reporter was interviewing at the Central Primary School of Nishui Village, he met several retired teachers sitting around and chatting.
In their view, the ethos of respecting teachers and education may be the "biggest secret" of Doctor Village.
The retired teacher’s financial reserve should tell reporters: “The best house here is the school. Here, the teacher is a symbol of knowledge, and the status of the teacher is the highest. Parents treat the teacher as relatives, and the teacher treats the students as their own child."
Not only that, as early as the 1990s, Nishui Village unintentionally began to promote the balanced development of urban and rural educational resources.
At that time, the village proposed that the village's private teachers' remuneration was funded by the village-run enterprise and guaranteed that their salaries would not be lower than that of the public teachers. Teachers who taught in the village's 5 teaching points and village primary schools would be rewarded as long as they performed well in education and teaching.
This not only greatly stimulated the enthusiasm of teachers, but also attracted excellent teachers from neighboring areas to teach, and promoted the formation of the local atmosphere of respecting teachers and the development of education.
"For a long time, the quality of teaching in our village primary schools is better than that of many primary schools in the city." When he said this, Chu Zhaoyi raised his head slightly and was full of energy. Many doctors from the village were students from the primary schools at that time. .
In 1998, Nishui Village Central Primary School moved to a new location, and he served as the first principal of the new primary school.
In the following years, the village primary school continued to expand its enrollment, and each grade had 6 classes. This was also the "golden age" of the Nishui Village primary school.
The villagers remember that at the climax of the educational development of Nishui Village, education was always given top priority. Children are not better than food and clothes, but better than studying. Whose children do well in their studies is the "honorable family" in the eyes of the villagers. ".
Someone in the family was admitted to college and walked straight out of the door.
For example, the villager Cao Longfei is often envied by other villagers: "My two children are graduate students, my younger brother is a Ph.D, and my sister’s daughter and son-in-law are also Ph.Ds. The conditions at that time were relatively difficult, and they depended on their own efforts. Go to the doctor." In a more fashionable way, this is a "Versailles literature" speech.
In order to encourage their children to learn and advance, many villagers deliberately hung up banners at their homes that read "Struggle against the current and retreat with a slacker".
Chu Hao, 27 this year, told reporters that when he was in school, there were many children of the same age in the village, and it was easy to compare grades, so the atmosphere of learning and competition was also very strong.
Not only is the atmosphere good and the competition is fierce, the children in the village are also very focused on learning.
In 2003, a reporter went to the village to interview and was surprised at the children's concentration in learning.
He wrote in the report: "The children in the village are famous for their love of learning and discipline. I remember the first time I went to school, I thought that when strangers appeared, the children would be very curious by nature, but surprisingly, they He just looked up, and then his attention returned to the book."
"The learning atmosphere at that time was very good." Chu Zhaoyi can still clearly report the names of most PhDs, and even remember their grades back then.
"In the past few years, we have produced many doctorates in Nishui Village. They are all talents who have grown up on the land of Nishui Village. Although their talents depend on their own active efforts, the enlightenment education in their hometown has also laid a solid foundation for their growth. The foundation of this." Chu Zhaoyi said.
Hometown of "Can't Go Back"
Now, the situation in the village seems a little different.
The school building of the Central Elementary School of Nishui Village still retains the original appearance, although it has been strengthened several times, it has become a crumbling building.
The originally complete and advanced venues and facilities now look somewhat old.
There are too many teachers. Except for full-time music teachers, the allocation of teachers in other subjects is quite complete; but there are fewer students, and there are only less than one class left in each grade.
Even in the activity time after class, there are few people on campus.
Occasionally, the sound of children laughing and playing came from the activity equipment in the corner, echoing for a long time in the empty playground.
"There are not many children in the countryside, and even fewer children stay in the village to go to school." During the interview, Chu Hao showed helpless expressions many times.
In 2015, he returned to Nishui Village to teach after graduating from Fuyang Normal University in Anhui Province. He was the only college graduate in the village who returned to work.
If the Nishui Village Elementary School once stood on the high ground of the quality of education in the buried hill, the gap between the Village Elementary School and the outside world is all-round.
What impressed Chu Hao most was that when he taught children to do third-grade math problems last year, someone seriously asked "What is a bus?"
On another occasion, when he was teaching the word "speed", he found that most children didn't know which mode of transportation was fast, airplane, train, or car.
"Suddenly confused me." Chu Hao felt that the most intuitive reflection of the current imbalance in educational resources may lie in the cognitive aspects of children, and the limitations of insights have destined them to pay more than other children. Much effort.
However, because there are not many children in the village, the lack of competition makes it difficult for them to detect this gap, and they fall into a vicious circle of complacency.
He even pessimistically believes that Nishui Village, known as the "Doctor Village", may be difficult to get a doctorate in the future.
Chu Zhaoyi once wrote in an article reviewing the development of education in Nishui Village: "In the past years, the education in Nishui Village has experienced from a few high school graduates in the 1950s to less than 100 high school students in the 1970s. Until today, doctors, masters, and other talents have spread all over the world. This is a huge change and leap.” However, under the aura of these doctors leaving Nishui Village to enter the world, the development of Nishui Village itself shows some loneliness and helplessness.
Most of the people who stay in the village now are the elderly and children, and more young people have gone out.
Many exquisite and beautiful small houses have been built in Nishui Village.
But most of the time, the doors of these buildings are locked and only a few are open. Through the cracks in the door, you can see the old people in the room playing cards.
Even in the Spring Festival, Xiaoyanglou might not welcome young people who are working hard outside, because many of them may have already settled in the urban area of Qianshan or farther and larger cities.
In Nishui Village, not only the young people who went out to work hard, including the Ph.D., left, even for Chu Zhaoyi and Chu Haochuan, who had worked hard for the development of the village, Nishui Village seemed to have become a hometown that "cannot go back".
Chu Haochuan moved to the small villa he had previously purchased in Qianshan County. He read books and newspapers every day, and led a comfortable old life.
Chu Zhaoyi moved with his son to Huaining County not far away, and enrolled in classes at the local university for the elderly to study erhu, photography and other courses, fulfilling his dream of continuing to study for many years.
The future of Nishui Village
Compared with Chu Hao and Chu Zhaoyi, Wang Jiefa is much more optimistic.
Regarding the changes in Nishui Village, Wang Jiefa felt that this was an "inevitable result of rural development."
On the one hand, 29 doctoral students, 54 master students, and nearly 300 undergraduates have emerged in more than 30 years. This is not only the epitome and achievement of local rural education development, but also a sign of the development of Nishui Village; The talents who go out may also plant new seeds for the future development of Nishui Village.
Recently, taking advantage of the heat of the "Doctor Village", Nishui Village is actively seeking deeper and more frequent exchanges with talents.
Wang Jiefa thought that one day these Ph.Ds might be able to gather together for a forum to discuss the future development and way out of their hometown.
At the same time, in the face of the sudden popularity of the "Doctor Village" IP, Chashui Town also ushered in the developers of cultural tourism projects, wanting to build a "Doctor Town" and use this as a starting point to promote the local cultural tourism industry .
In recent years, with the advancement of the integration of the Yangtze River Delta, the local area is actively deploying, seeking to create a healthy back garden in the Yangtze River Delta with eco-tourism, healthy agricultural development, and rural civilization construction as the entry point, but it has been suffering from the lack of features and specific plans.
"Doctor Village" became popular on the Internet, perhaps it is a new opportunity.
In the center of the village against the water, the river gurgling past the river.
On the banks of the river, there are stone steles that "go against the current, or retreat", shining in the sun.
On the road of seeking development, the people of Nishui Village still need the spirit of sailing against the water.