The midland journal. (Rising Sun, Md.) 1885-1947, 1928-09-28
PROGRESS in RURAL CHINA

CDR. James Yen, director OF the
Mass Education Movement in China,
recently invited Miss Emma e. Cor
stvet to see what is being done in
the rural communities in Chilli
Province. The following is based
on her account, published In the
Picking Daily Leader.)
Four hundred million people in
China cannot read and write. They
are farmers deeply concerned about
raising enough rice and millet to
keep body and soul together.
The Mass Education Movement is
literacy. They realize that educa-
ton is necessary il China is to be-
come progressive, happy nation;
but they realize also that education,
to appeal to the hundreds of millions
of Chinese farmers, must be linked
up closely with their practical per-
sonal phoblems.
Chat Chen is typical rural COM
munity, composed chiefly OF farms;
with number of small shops in the
many tiny villages. The shopkeep-
ers are also farmers. For year
and a half the Mass Education Move
ment has been carrying on an inten-
sive experiment in sixty villages in
the Chat Chen district. linking up
education and farming.
Two enthusiastic young men, DR..
Flu and DR.. Fong, are directing the
experiments in Chat Chen. Their
families remain in Peking, the CAPT
tai, because the primitive living con-
ditions and the absence of doctors
makes it impossible for their wives
and children to be with them. They
live as the villagers live, on rice and
millet, seeing no meat for weeks,
and in winter few vegetables. They
SILVER in fireless rooms. Yet they
are so completely absorbed in their
work that the idea of hardship ap-
parently never occurs to them.
When they began work in Chat
Chen, DR.. Flu and DR.. Fong first
talked things over with the village
elders. Then they called meeting,
organized local committee to take
charge, and helped train the volun-
teer teachers, who give their eve
nings explaining the mysteries OF the
carefully revised textbook OF the
simplified language now coming into
general use in China, based on the
ordinary spoken language. Litter
airy written Chinese is very compli-
Gated, too difficult for general use. J
So intense is the thirst for knowl-
edge that already, in the Chat Chen
district, 200 schools are organized,
with 10000 students enrolled.
Each community provides the money
necessary for its own school and
teacher, the Mass Education Move
ment merely helping get started.
Question Stations" are being es-
tablished in all the villages. The
best graduates of the schools may
qualify as an answerer of puzzline
questions about the lessons. 1t is
proud movement for man when he
hangs out a placard announcing that
he answers questions. Beside the
respect habitually felt by Chinese for
scholarship, such placards may be
good advertising for his shop.
To connect the new learning with
the practical lives of Chinese farm
ers, the Mass Education Movement
conducts in Chat Chen an agrlcultur-
al experiment station. Better pig
pens and chickencoops are built; the
construction of plows that make pos
sible better cultivation but cost no
more than the plows in common use,
is explained; a more efficient well
and pump were invented.
When crop failure may mean fam
inc, peasant farmers are slow to try
new methods. The experiments at
Chat Chen are conducted when the
people can see them from beginning
to end; and as result grain crops
are being increased, better chickens
are being produced, and insect en-.
emies are being destroyed.
The farmers who become interest
ed either in learning to read or in
the improved methods of agriculture
find themselves tending to work to-
gether, on various community prob
lens, such as road repairs and the
creation of village Libraries. The
Mass Education Movement has al
ready done wonders in reducing H.
literacy. Perhaps more important
is its by-product, the development of
a spirit OF cooperation in community
affairs.