A child told the writer in class about his ideal: to go out of the mountain and see the outside world. The child's desire was so strong that he forgot to sit down when he finished speaking.
Some children's academic performance declines, the class is distracted, and the teacher will knock on the blackboard and say: "In this big mountain, your only capital to go out is to read, you have to go out on your own legs, you must be able to." ”
Author: Feng Chao
Source: Business People (ID: biz-leaders)
Children who look at the stars
In 2021, there are several writers in China who have done a few "small" things.
In May, Lu Xun Literature Prize winner Lei Pingyang came to a primary school in Eryuan County, Dali Prefecture, Yunnan Province, to give the children a reading lesson. School conditions are very difficult. The principal said that students have lived in the school since the first grade and carried rice and firewood from home; most of the parents of the students are illiterate, and the family education and cultural environment is missing.
Writer Lei Pingyang was born in a poor village, and when he was a child, he not only did not have books to read, but he could not even eat at home. There is a doctor in the village, and there are many books in the family. He borrowed a copy of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and it was raining on the road, and the book was wet by the rain, and it was not in shape. Although the owner of the book did not say anything, Lei Pingyang was very grateful.
Lei Pingyang told the children about his experience: "Since then, reading has become an indispensable part of my life, and reading has also taken me out of the small mountain village to see the bigger world. He encouraged the children, "Go to the sky, go to the infinite distance."
In November, children's writer Liu Fangfang came to Xi'an No. 2 School for the Deaf and Dumb to give a lecture.
This is a special education school. Some of the school's students participated in the opening ceremony of the 11th Paralympic Games and the 8th Special Olympics Games held in Xi'an, and they "sang" the national anthem with their hands under the guidance of their sign language teachers.
Liu Fangfang was born in the countryside, when she was a child, she lacked book resources, and exchanged a book with her friends with half a steamed bun. The first book she had ever read was The Legend of the Condor Hero. She helped her brother with housework, sweeping the floor, and washing clothes because he could get books. Because she loves to read, her dream is to become a writer.
She encourages children in schools for the deaf to read more, reading makes people's minds thick and makes people have the courage to face the ups and downs of life.
In the early winter, the writer walked to Shuanghe Primary School in Xintang Township, Enshi, Hubei Province, and was infected by the students' learning spirit, and on the winding road down the mountain, thinking of the words written by the children, the tears of emotion flowed down.
The writer walked to bring the "Strong Heart to Illuminate a Lifetime" class to the children of Shuanghe Primary School in Xintang Township, Enshi, Hubei Province. (Photo by Li Yunfeng)
Last year, many writers participated in similar lectures.
For example, Li Xiuwen, chairman of the Hubei Writers Association, went to Wuhan to give a lecture at Xiangdong Primary School. This is the largest school for the children of migrant workers in Wuhan. Many of the school's children are left-behind students, and their parents go to the city to work, and they can only be reunited on weekends. Li Xiuwen told the children that only by reciting some classic literary works backwards can they understand the subtlety of the master's works.
Dai Bing, vice chairman of the Guizhou Writers Association, went to the Central Primary School of Gaozhai Township, Kaiyang County, Guizhou Province. Gaozhai Township used to be very poor, and the dream of the locals was to provide children with school and change their destiny. Dai Bing told the children about Verne's science fiction novel "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea", which stimulated the children's imagination and interest in reading.
What promotes writers to meet children is the "Reading for You" public welfare donation action launched by the new e-commerce company Pinduoduo.
Starting from April 2021, Pinduoduo kicked off the prelude to this public welfare reading action. It has joined hands with local governments, mainstream media, writers, etc., to go to primary and secondary schools and special schools in mountainous areas in Daliangshan, Hubei, Xinjiang, Qinghai, Guizhou, Shaanxi, Anhui, Yunnan, Gansu and other places in Sichuan to donate books for children and read with them.
Reading expert Ma Ling led the students to read the picture book "I Am a Tyrannosaurus Rex" with great emotion. Photo: Chen Yihang
The activities are not complicated, the writers will read a book in the classroom, take a class, inspire the students' thinking, and Pinduoduo will donate a batch of genuine high-quality books. At present, more than 120,000 books have been donated by this initiative. In 2022, donor activities will continue.
"To really stick to it." This is the concept of the Pinduoduo project team. Every list of books given to specific primary and secondary schools has undergone additions and deletions, and each step of the long-distance journey has experienced the long distance of high-speed rail for buses and even non-motorized vehicles.
"Every book list of the donation action will consult the professional opinions of educators, writers and cultural figures, and the donated books obtained by each primary and secondary school in remote areas are high-quality genuine books carefully selected by the project team according to the specific conditions of the donated schools." The relevant person in charge of Pinduoduo said.
Following the trajectory of Pinduoduo's donations across the country, we can glimpse the current situation in remote areas and grass-roots villages.
At the Second Middle School of Jianhe County in Qiandongnan Miao and Dong Autonomous Prefecture, a child said that when she was in elementary school, she turned over a fairy tale book without a cover countless times without reading any other books. The students of Shuanghe Primary School in Xintang Township, Enshi, Hubei Province, there are more left-behind children, parents go out to work, and the daily reading materials are mainly course counseling materials, examination papers, and essays.
A child told the writer in class about his ideal: to go out of the mountain and see the outside world. The child's desire was so strong that he forgot to sit down when he finished speaking. Some children's academic performance declines, the class is distracted, and the teacher will knock on the blackboard and say: "In this big mountain, your only capital to go out is to read, you have to go out on your own legs, you must be able to." ”
This is the story of many rural children, and their way to change their destiny is to read.
According to a report released four years ago by the China Philanthropy Research Institute of Beijing Normal University, up to 74% of rural children surveyed read less than 10 extracurricular books a year; more than 36% of children read less than 3 books a year; more than 71% of rural families have less than 10 books, and nearly 20% of rural children do not have a single extracurricular book.
The 18th National Reading Survey report shows that in 2020, the book reading rate of urban residents in China will be 68.3%, but the book reading rate of rural residents will be 49.9%.
For a long time, the reading level of rural children has been affected by many factors such as imperfect construction of basic reading facilities, lack of family education, and family income. The role of these factors in remote areas is more prominent, which invisibly widens the "knowledge gap" between urban and rural areas.
Pinduoduo's "Reading for You" public welfare campaign in the most remote areas of China, as its director said, is only to leave small marks on the map of China with a small effort. More social forces join in, trickle into the sea, in the era proposition of rural revitalization, these marks are like a faint light that can illuminate the way forward for those children who are eager to change their fate, go out of the mountains, and jump out of the farm.
Win-win
Pinduoduo's boost to China's rural areas is multifaceted.
Small-town youth in remote areas have achieved fruit freedom through spelling and tens of billions of subsidies, and have used Apple mobile phones.
At the end of last year, the "business person" interviewed a post-95 farmer who opened a store in Pinduoduo, and his store sold 100 million yuan a year. Many entrepreneurs who have come out of rural areas and townships, with their sensitivity to the Internet and hard work, have become bigger and stronger, feeding their hometowns, driving the employment of local people and prospering local agriculture.
In addition to helping agricultural products to go up, Pinduoduo is also providing a steady stream of spiritual products for rural areas.
The 2020 More Reading Report released by Pinduoduo shows that in rural areas, tool books are the most popular, and the top three hot selling lists are: "Electrician's Manual", "Vegetable Planting Treasure Book" and "New Technology for Raising Sheep". In 2020, the book order volume and book transaction volume in rural areas increased by more than 180% year-on-year, and the book order volume and book transaction volume from rural primary and secondary schools increased by more than 152% year-on-year.
Even though rural book sales are growing, there are many factors hindering demand.
In April 2021, Pinduoduo established knowledge inclusion as a long-term strategy and launched the "Duoduo Reading Month" series of activities, on the basis of which the "All Voice Creators Program" and the "Reading for You" public welfare donation action were derived to support high-quality authors.
At the year-end salon of the "Voice Creators Project", well-known writers such as Walk, Wang Xiaoying, Sun Ganlu, Lu Nei, and Zhao Song (from left to right) shared their creative experiences and recommended the best books of the year. Photo by Feng Yong
Naturally, the donation action is only part of Pinduoduo's strategy of implementing knowledge inclusion.
As a large-scale business organization, another path of Pinduoduo is to use the business ecology and leverage to quickly promote the dissemination of knowledge. On the one hand, Pinduoduo went to the most remote mountain school in China to donate books on the ground to bring high-quality genuine books to children; on the other hand, it set up a reading fund to promote the breadth and density of books sinking into the countryside with the help of market forces.
Throughout last year, Pinduoduo held three reading month activities in April, August and December. These three activities have invested hundreds of millions of yuan in reading funds, which have attracted more than 60 domestic publishing houses to join. Many high-quality books at home and abroad, such as the Nobel Prize in Literature, the Mao Dun Literature Prize, the Hugo Prize, the International Hans Christian Andersen Prize, the Pulitzer Prize in the United States, etc., are within the scope of Pinduoduo's choice.
10 books, including "Here is China 2", are listed in the list of the most popular books in the "Duoduo Reading Month" reading week at the end of 2021.
Platform subsidies, genuine books are cheap, and rural consumers have seen the benefits of tangible work. Those genuine good books, Mao Dun Literature Prize winner Mai Jia's masterpiece "Life Sea and Sea", only 9.9 yuan after subsidies, Huang Renyu's "Fifteen Years of Wanli", only 6.9 yuan after subsidies.
Pinduoduo has also established a win-win mechanism.
In the "Voice Creators Program", Pinduoduo invited a number of well-known writers and new generation writers such as Mai Jia, Yu Xiuhua, Zhou Guoping, Liu Zichao and so on. Pinduoduo invests in the traffic resources of "Duoduo Reading Month" and assists more outstanding writers and high-quality books to the public through the traffic package of the 10 billion subsidy channel and the support of the professional operation group.
During the second season of the "Duoduo Reading Month" campaign, liu Zichao's new book "Arrival Before Midnight", the first batch of young writers in the "Voice Creators Project", achieved a stunning result of selling more than 4,000 copies and topped the industry's best-selling list of new books; Mao Dun Literature Award winner Mai Jia's "Life Sea Sea" was listed in the list of the most popular books in the "Duoduo Reading Month".
The latest news is that this year, Pinduoduo's "Voice Creators Program" will be iterated, focusing on social welfare responsibilities, and inviting writers who join the program to participate in the "Reading for You" public welfare donation action on a larger scale.
With the help of the "public welfare + market" model, Pinduoduo's knowledge inclusion is striving to gradually bridge the reading gap between urban and rural areas. The process of universal benefit is not earth-shattering, it is not destroyed. Knowledge is like a trickle, and the moisturizer flows and waters silently.
Good changes will eventually happen, and we just have to wait.
*The picture is a reading class scene of children's literature writer Yu Hong, photographed by Chen Yihang