Random Thoughts on My Seven Visits to Shandan

It was late April, 2006.While Beijing had not got rid of repeated attacks of floating dust from the north, I was on board of the K43 train running towards the Tengger Desert in the northwest, with Shandan in the Hexi Corridor of Gansu as my destination.

This is my seventh trip to Shandan. The small town on the ancient Silk Road in between the snow-capped Qilian Mountains and the mixed red and green Yanzhi Mountain had a glorious past. It had been mistaken as the Chinese capital by the Arab merchants, but waned later to a desperate state with her people living in sheer poverty and misery for decades till the 1940s. The founding of the PRC brought in good social order and economic development. But poverty and unfavourable natural conditions kept Shandan from extricating itself from the status as a recipient of the “Poverty Alleviation Fund” from the Central Government for another 20-30 years. Had there been no such “legend” as Rewi Alley’s success in creating the Shandan Bailie School, a new type of education integrating study with production in the wartime, Shandan would not have been known to so many people in China and won so much support overseas. For a staff of the CPAFFC like myself whose work involves lots of traveling, I would never have thought of going to Shandan, let alone tied myself with such a place so closely in the late years of my career.

My first trip to Shandan was in June 1982. I accompanied Rewi Alley and Bob Spencer, the New Zealand doctor who helped build the school hospital of the old SBS as interpreter, to attend the celebration of the 40th anniversary of the birth of the School and the opening of the new Shandan Museum for Alley’s donated cultural relics. It was the first time for the teachers and students of the SBS to reunite in Shandan since the school closed in 1951. Also the first time for the public to see over a thousand pieces of historical treasures of Rewi Alley’s collection on display in this small county. This special occasion turned to be a grand festival for Shandan and Gansu Province as a whole. It aroused tremendous interest and had a very positive impact, lending a great impetus for soliciting support from various circles to re-establish the Bailie School.As a result, when I went there the second time in 1987, a new Shandan Bailie School devoted to training personnel specialized in agriculture, animal husbandry and forestry, opened on April 21, the day of Rewi Alley’s arrival in China. For years Rewi Alley thought hard over the feasibility of reestablishing the school, in the hope of training young workers to shoulder the task of improving the poor environmental and living conditions of the Northwest. To his disappointment, Rewi Alley was not able to join the students in celebrating the opening because of poor health. Soon after this in September, the International Committee for the Promotion of Chinese Industrial Cooperatives (ICCIC or indusco) also announced its revival in Beijing, another fruition in getting the wartime Gung Ho movement reborn in China since 1952. Now the two life-long wishes of Rewi Alley―reviving Gung Ho and the SBS, have all been fulfilled.

It was sad that Rewi Alley had passed away when I made my 3rd visit to Shandan in 1988. I was then among the people representing Chinese and New Zealand governments and Rewi Alley's friends and relations to attend the funeral in his memory. Out of love of his second home, Rewi wrote in his will that he would like to have his ashes spread in Siba Tan where the SBS school farm was. Alan Alley, Rewi's adopted son, spread part of the ashes from a helicopter first, followed by a ceremony for laying the other part of the ashes to rest in the Rewi Alley-George Hogg Graveyard by the Ruoshui River. He would be happy to rest in peace with his young colleague, the beloved English headmaster of the SBS who died in Shandan in 1945.

In the 10 years from 1989 to 1999, I went to Shandan 3 more times. By then, I have retired from the CPAFFC and become a volunteer of the ICCIC working for Gung Ho. Apart from my concern of the SBS, I formed a new work relationship with the Shandan people of different fields, because the county was chosen to be one of the 3 Gung Ho experimental cooperative centres by the ICCIC. The 3 visits were mainly for attending project meetings, organizing trainings and experience-exchange seminars, or making study tours of various coops. Each visit contributed to drawing me nearer to the economic and social life of Shandan. What impressed me most was the ordinary Shandan people. They are sincere and forthright by nature, tough, hard-working and fearing no hardships in their prolonged struggle for a better life. However, the long years of poverty and isolation from the centre of the country have restrained them from bringing out their pioneering potentials and creativeness into full play. Lack of ideas of seizing every opportunity, weighing pros and cons carefully and paying attention to work efficiency have hindered their progress, while “waiting, relying and demanding” as a recipient of government aid have formed a habitual mode of thinking for many people. This could be seen in many cases in the Gung Ho experimental projects. I think it is of crucial importance to re-examine the subjective as well as objective factors for the failure in achievingthe expected results of the experimentation in Shandan. It will serve as a good lesson for the healthy development of Gung Ho in the long run.

With the change of time and events, Shandan seems to be out of the focus of the ICCIC's attention since the new century begins. When I feel the approaching 20th anniversary of Rewi Alley's death and try to brush up my experiences in the work related to Rewi Alley's legacy in China,I suddenly discover my impressions about Shandan are quite out of date. “I must go and renew my knowledge about the situation of the school and the Gung Ho coops in the period of China’s western development!”

Hence my seventh visit. This time I did not go with any assigned task, but as an individual tourist. No ceremony and formalities, just frank exchange of views and information. I was more than happy to have such a free come-and-go trip that never happened to me before.

I was fortunate to have pretty good weather while I was there. Every day I woke up to see a blue sky. The sandstorm never came as forecasted, just wind sweeping up the dust on the road. Downtown Shandan has taken a completely new look compared with the street scene in the l990s. Brand new buildings rose along the central cross road. Snack stands and rental billiard tables that used to make the roadside crowded now disappeared. Replacing them are tidy restaurants and computer and mobile phones stores, photograph studios for wedding and small supermarkets with all kinds of daily necessities. A 6-lane avenue with coloured pavement and blind track is under construction, leading to the Yanzhi Mountain highway in the north and to the newly built South Lake Park in the south. The road looks so impressive, may be a bit “luxurious” at the moment for a small county whose population is only some 50,000 in downtown―the other 150,000 being in the surrounding rural areas. I didn't see many cars on the road, but taxis already started business on private basis. Motorcycles rushed through the streets at ease, apparently taking no notice of the traffic rules. A sort of 3-wheel mini-car “bengbeng che” are most popular here. It cost me only 2 yuan for a 2-kilometre-ride from the SBS to the guesthouse where I stayed.

I spent a full day after my arrival in visiting the school campus accompanied by Headmaster Chen Xinlu. The newly constructed electronic education lab building is apparently what he is most proud of. This project received a contribution of 900,000 yuan RMB from the remaining funds of the Rewi Alley Memorial Cooperative Foundation before it terminated its operation last December. Some teachers were busy with installing and testing new computers when I dropped in. They wanted to get the school networking system going and set up the SBS website as soon as possible. Headmaster Chen told me that the school was reorganized into a middle-level key vocational school of Gansu Province in 1997,

Education has been developing very fast and become more flexible. Now they have combined middle with higher education, broadened schools’ capacity of teaching and practice by establishing regular links with vocational schools and colleges in Tianjin, Qingdao and certain enterprises, so the SBS students can make use of their facilities to further their practice. They also organized short-term training courses on various subjects for adults. The curriculum has been extended from focusing on agriculture, animal husbandry and forestry to multi-branches of learning, including electro-mechanics, communication, computer science, applied electro-technique, automobile maintenance, tourist English, hotel management etc.. All these measures have helped promote good reputation of the school. Nearly hundred per cent of the graduates got jobs after graduation in the last few years.

The expansion of the school campus and updating of equipment are indeed remarkable. I am particularly impressed by the change of mentality of the girls who used to be shy and ill at ease when meeting strangers. Now they look full of vigour and self-confidence, as keen as city girls in pursuit of new emerging things. Though I didn't have time for face-to-face conversation with them, I distributed a questionnaire with the help of teachers to 12 students of different classes. The answers show they are happy about having qualified teachers and good living facilities in the school. Some mentioned they chose to study in SBS because of its special grants for children from poor families, high employment rate after graduation, favorable conditions for studying English with NZ teachers and opportunity of going abroad as exchange students. However, there are also answers beyond my expectation. The majority of students prefer getting a job in the city to working in Shandan after graduation. The reason is:Shandan is “too windy and dusty”, “shortage of water and pollution makes me unpleasant”. This reminds me of the awkward situation that SBS faced with― the failure to enroll any student for agriculture and forestry in the last 2 years and the 1,000 mu school farm has been laid in waste for having no students to do practice on the farm and no water for irrigating the fields and the orchard. This situation really worried me.

I was delighted though, to read a total different answer when a girl wrote in the questionnaire: “Should I make lots of money with my knowledge and skill I’ve learned, I would give my all to the poor regions, including my home village. I love planting trees, and am willing to turn my native place to a sea of trees.”What a comfort it would have been to Rewi Alley if he had heard of these bold promises from a little Shandan girl! The values of young people are shaped primarily by the education they received and the influence of social atmosphere. I am sure if the students are taught to understand what environmental protection really means to everyone on this globe today and what we can do to stop crazily consuming all natural resources man have to live on, they will no longer follow the “advice” that their future lies in the big cities and that there is nothing much to learn in agriculture and forestry. In fact, the SBS should take the lead in Shandan to publicize the basic knowledge of environmental protection and the necessity to strengthen the teaching of agriculture and forestry.

To review the work of the Shandan Gung Ho experimental cooperative centre, I went to the office of the Shandan Federation of Gung Ho Cooperatives where Director Chen Zhinian briefed me on the latest development of Gung Ho in Shandan. In 2005, the ICCIC launched a new training programme with the support of the CCA to help the 7 existing experimental coop enterprises regulate their management along the line of internationally acknowledged coop values and principles. The training contributed to boosting the morale of these enterprises to revitalize Gung Ho in Shandan, but there is still a long way to go before they can really put in effect the ICIS principles in action. Unlike the Gung Ho call “work & work together”, each did “work” hard to keep itself going, but hardly “worked together” with others. The discordance of institutional structure with regard to the relationship between the coop enterprises and the federation remains to be a problem.

While the ICCIC training project was carrying on, the new emerging Farmers' Specialized Cooperative Economic Organization (locally call it Xiehui―association), made big strides and developed into a “trend of the times”.These farmers’ organizations have different modes, notably, “Party branch+association+farmer household, distributor+association+farmer household, company+association+farmer household, etc.. The county government issued a document to speed up its development and a model constitution to help regulate the organization and the operation. By the time I was there, many farmers’ Xiehuis based on specific produce such as oilseed, beer barley, potato, flax, fodder, seed plant, etc. have been set up, totaling 55 with 16,843 members.

To get some ideas of how they work, I asked for a visit to the Weichi Flax Xiehui in Lubao Village, Weichi Township. It is one of the “Party branch+ association+farmer household” type with a 6-member managing council and a 4-member supervisory council, comprising respectively Party secretaries, village head and farmers specialized in flax growing and marketing. This Xiehui was originally the Weichi Flax Cooperative under the Gung Ho Experimental Cooperative Centre, created with an ICCIC loan of 200,000 yuan RMB. It went through a serious crisis in early 1990s for failure in market competition resulted from duplicated flax factories in Gansu. It succeeded in overcoming the difficulty by introducing fine seeds and starting to manufacture floorboard with flax wastes. The village economy began to grow and reached 4 million yuan RMB last year with 1 million yuan profit. The farmers seemed happy about the transformation to Xiehui. They believe it has played a role of growing importance in meeting their immediate needs, protecting their interests in marketing and giving a push to agriculture restructure in the county. With the rapid growth of the farmers’ specialized economic cooperative organization, the Shandan Gung Ho Federation and the existing Gung Ho coop enterprises are facing a severe challenge of “where to”― to keep a distance from the surging tide of Xiehuis and go its own way as they did in the past, or find a way to introduce the ICIS coop principles to the new farmers’ organization to create a new form of cooperative economy with “Chinese characteristics”?This is a question worthy of careful study for all Gung Ho workers and cooperative economists.

The day before I left, some friends took me to stroll through the South Lake Park. The rippling water and flickering leaves of the weeping willows present a beautiful picture. The mini copies of the ancient Shandan City Wall and the Fa Ta Si Temple add some classical flavour to the modern scene. Yet the children are mostly attracted by the colourful mandarin duck boats on the water. Of course they do not know the man-made South Lake was a natural pond where Rewi Alley used to teach old SBS students swimming. They also don’t know how much money and man power it has cost for pumping up the scare water from underground and covering the lake bottom with plastic films to keep water from leaking. The sense of anxiety again rose in my mind: Will this lake vanish into the desert too like the pond and the Ruoshui River after 50 years when these children reach my age?

At the northern gate of the Park, I saw a flat square with an empty stand at the centre. Friends told me it is going to be named Rewi Alley Square and a marble statue of his will be put up there. I hope people will not only keep in mind his smiling face as a great friend of China from New Zealand, but will carry on conscientiously the rich legacy he contributed to Shandan and build up a prosperous life for all her people.Let the SBS continue to flourish based on Alley's educational ideas and goal! Let the Shandan Gung Ho revitalize itself by making a breakthrough of the new test! Let the treasures Alley donated in the Museum be better preserved and studied to add new attraction to a rejuvenated Shandan oasis on the ancient Silk Road!