These sisters in
rural China made a library from trash
The tiny,
dimly-lit library had no bookshelves and hardly enough books to fill a
cabinet. But for the children in the central Chinese province of
Henan, it was a godsend.
A pair of
sisters built the mini-library in 2016 using books they salvaged from the trash
they picked up in a township in Henan called Yangmiaoxiang, one
of the poorest
parts of China where families live on less than $1 a day.
The story of
hardship behind the library underscores the staggering
inequality between China’s coastal cities and inland regions and the
challenges Beijing faces as it seeks to eradicate
poverty by 2020.
“China’s
education resources’ distribution is extremely uneven,” said a user of Weibo,
China’s Twitter-like social media site, where reports of the story are widely
circulated.
The minds
behind the once-obscure library are 12-year-old Wu Nannan and 10-year-old Wu
Shike, the Dahe Daily reported on Apr 9.
“I don’t have any books at home so I come
here almost every day after finishing schoolwork.”
- Chen Chen, a 10-year-old boy in Chenzhuang
Village
Like many
children who live in the poorer parts of the country, the girls work to support
their families.
When they’re
not going to school, the sisters join their grandma, Wang Sulan, to collect
junk and sell them to help pay for the ailing woman’s medications.
The
discarded books and newspapers they found inspired them to build a library
in their grandma’s house, where anyone can access for free.
Chen Chen, a
10-year-old boy, told Dahe Daily that he often reads books in the library after
school.
“I don’t
have any books at home so I come here almost every day after finishing
schoolwork,” he said.
Poverty is
one of the most pressing issues Chinese president Xi Jinping has vowed to
address, along with pollution and financial risks.
Beijing has
set the poverty line at the equivalent daily earning of about 94 cents.
Some 40 million people, like many residents in the Henan village,
currently live below this line.
As the
sisters brought back more books, more children came to read after school, a
rarity in richer Chinese cities where kids increasingly grow up glued to computer screens.
The Dahe
Daily report prompted an outpouring of support and, with it, a flood of
donations of new books, bookshelves and chairs.
“In the past
we mostly had novels and magazines, but now we have more books catered to
children, such as popular science cartoons,” said Wu’s uncle Chen Chunxin,
according to the newspaper report.
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