The doors of education opened up to females. The wealth left behind by the foreigners generated a generation of educated middle class citizens within China s cities. This phenomenon left China s rural citizens still searching for a viable means of education. It was this fertile ground where Mao Zedong would find the support that led to the development of the Iron Rice Bowl . The Iron Rice Bowl is so named for two reasons.
Rice is a main staple to the Asian continent and thus is used as an association.
Iron is associated with communism because the Russian word for it is Lenin, which Vladimir took as his own name during the Soviet communist movement. With the Chinese conversion to communism came a sense of autonomy and power. In 1949, China responded to its growing technological needs by trying to catch up with the rest of the world. However, this was a very difficult task as only one in ten people could read. By 1956, only half of the children aged five to thirteen was even in school.