Jo's Journal 10th April 2012

Hello from Xichang,

Spring has come to the Liangshan with trees and flowers blossoming everywhere. The days are becoming warmer but last week there was a cold spell and I awoke to see the beauty of snowcapped mountains surrounding the town.

As always, after I have been absent for several months, I am amazed at the rapid changes that are taking place. There are new apartment blocks springing up everywhere and the local gossip is that there are to be another 900,000 people moving into the area over the next few years. Sadly, this has meant that a lot of valuable farmland has been purchased very cheaply from the farmers, or seized by the local government, which is leading to rumblings of discontent.

Apparently there are to be more factories built in the beautiful valleys and near the waterways and it is not hard to imagine that in a few years time Xichang will become another stinky, dirty provincial town. I felt really sad to hear about these future plans as the area surrounding Xichang is quite beautiful and unspoilt. Such a terrible pity!

I hadn't intended to visit Xichang at this time, preferring instead to leave everything to our very capable Kristin, but she had phoned me while I was in Australia with some distressing news and needed my help. So I have returned to investigate the situation and how it will impact on the Foundation and our girls.

During the recent spring festival holiday a new and disturbing development has become apparent and is targeting teenagers from remote areas of China. It appears that some of the factories on the eastern seaboard are having difficulty getting enough workers, and in order to recruit fresh factory fodder, a generous bonus had been promised to country people already working in these factories if they bought back some relatives with them when they returned to work. 

Kristin told me she had seen groups of up to 50 young people leaving on trains for the eastern seaboard, and we were all very distressed to learn that during this time we lost 5 of our girls. Three went to the factories, one was "Persuaded" to marry a cousin then sent out to work and the smallest, a tiny 11 year old, was taken away by her father. This self same father had abandoned the child when her mother died and has since remarried and has two small children. He returned to the village for the holiday and took our little one to look after the new children of the 2nd marriage, while he and his new wife work.

As you can imagine, this has had a huge impact on us all and Kristin and I have been investigating very carefully the risk factor of all of our children as Headmaster Wang at Luo Gu Po said that this trend and will continue until it is stopped by the powers that be (which, being China, could be long time!) I have spent many hours talking to each of the girls and have looked into the family history and age of each one to assess exactly how long that particular child will remain at school.

After I had completed this task I found that there are over 10 who are at high risk of being targeted and Kristin and I have had a little chat to them about the true reality of the situation in which they could find themselves. Sadly, because they vanish during the holidays, by the time we find out about it it is too late for us to do anything about it.

After delving deeply into each individual circumstance I have observed a pattern. All of the children whom we lost came from the same area which also happens to be one of the poorest in the Liangshan. All those who went to work or are now at risk are in the low to middle teens and all come from single parent families or are orphans being cared for by relatives.

In traditional Yi culture, once a girl reaches this age she is often kept at home to work as a labourer of some kind, or is married off for a good bride price.

The hard truth is that these families are so poor that they need any income the girl will bring. What the girl would like to do is rarely considered. The relatives of these children have been told about how much money the girls can send home from the factories and are not prepared to wait several more years for that child to complete her education. They can't see the sense of wasting more years as the girls get older.

Kristin and I spoke to the headmaster at Number 5 middle school about the situation and he told us that although this sort of event had happened in the past, it hadn't happened in recent years. While he and other teachers are concerned with this development, he also asked us to look at it from different perspective.

In his opinion, for many of the poorest girls, going out to work in factories offered them a chance of freedom and a much better life than if they had remained at home in the villages and were married off at young age. There is very little work available for them in Xichang and in a big city they will have some bright lights, excitement and form new friendships. This could be very attractive and it is only natural that when life at home is so poor and offers only a bleak future, that these girls see working in a factory as a means of escape.

During my conversations with the children, I also found that some of the older ones were genuinely concerned with the welfare of their widowed mother or grannie and had decided that now they were old enough, it was their responsibility to become the breadwinner in the family. They believed that they shouldn't spend any more time at school because mother or grannie was old, blind or not well and needed someone to look after them.

Perhaps we shouldn't keep looking at things through "Western eyes" but put ourselves in the girl's situation!

Even though it saddens us that these things are happening, at least we at the Foundation, and you, our wonderful kind and generous friends, have been able to give them a basic education which is far more that they would have had if we had not helped them.

Although it is sometimes hard for us to accept the reality of the situation, I believe that it is now time for us to step back and leave it up to the Yi communities to take much more responsibility for the education and welfare of their daughters. For the children of the Lu Go Po area we will still be in the background continuing to gently help those who still need us through the scholarship fund.

WE DO HOWEVER HAVE SOME AMAZING SUCCESS STORIES and all of our girls at the Liangshan Minorities Middle school and at University are doing extremely well and are bringing us much hope for their bright and successful future. MEETING AND CHATTING WITH SOME OF THEM I AM AMAZED AT THEIR INTELLIGENCE, COURAGES AND DETERMINATION TO SUCCEED. We all had much fun and laughter as Kristin and I introduced them to "junk" food at the local Dico's (this is the right spelling), they are all developing into outgoing and confident young women. These are the girls on whom we will focus our full attention from now on and ensure that they have our total support to eventually graduate from University and help their communities in the future.

As you can see, many changes and much happening in the Great Cool Mountains.

Love and big hugs to each and everyone


Jo