Official opening of Shilong preschool

On 10 October the official opening of the preschool was celebrated, with guests from government in Kunming and Jianchuan, from the other three SIL bilingual education projects in China (in Guizhou, Gansu, and southern Yunnan), and other agencies in Xiaguan interested in promoting Bai culture.
A convoy of around 35 guests and media representatives travelled to Shilong village on Tuesday morning for the official ceremony. They were greeted by a welcoming party in the traditional way as they entered the village. For the ceremony there were of course speeches from many government officials and SIL leaders, together with performances by each of the two preschool classes.
In the afternoon there was a concert at the government offices while small groups could go and watch the classes in action, and in the evening an official dinner back in the Jianchuan town centre.
Many of the official visitors praised the project, both in their speeches and their comments afterwards. For example, the Deputy Head of the Foreign Affairs Branch within the Yunnan Minority Affairs Commission said he was very surprised at how well the village teachers were teaching, considering that their education was at most junior secondary level. (One has only primary education, but she one of our better teachers.) One indication of the impact is that the Deputy Director of the County Government announced in the evening that the government would now invest a lot of money in the village to pick up on the lead given by the project. In part this recognizes that the project will draw many visitors - and so the rest of the school will be refurbished to the same standard. However it also picks up on the potential of the village to develop a tourist focus as a "Bai folk culture village", linking in to the increasing numbers of tourists coming to the adjacent Shibaoshan national park (Stone Treasure Mountains). It was very pleasing to hear that the Yi primary school students living in the school would be given additional government assistance (for their food costs) as a part of this package.
The event was well covered on Jianchuan TV.

[previous page]