Three teachers from Linzhou county, Tibet autonomous region attend a lesson at Suzhou Jinchang Experimental Primary School on September 2, 2014. (Photo by Hang Xingwei / Suzhou Daily)
LINZHOU, Tibet -- This year marks the 20th anniversary of Suzhou’s aid to Linzhou county in Tibet autonomous re-gion.
The Suzhou government has been pro-viding financial aid, investing in education projects and training teachers from Linzhou county over the past two decades.
Students in Linzhou county said farewell to dark mud houses, and moved into bright and spacious classrooms in Hope Schools.
This August our reporter visited Jiangxia Central Primary School in Linzhou county. The school looked like every other school in Suzhou: beautiful school buildings, brand new dormitories, a flat playground, neatly trimmed lawn, a clean cafeteria, a bath-house and a boiler room.
Zha Dun, the school principal, told Suzhou Daily that the Suzhou government spent 8.3 million yuan ($1.35 million) on the school in 2013. “Ours is the only school with a bathhouse and boiler room. Teachers and pupils love to work, study and live in this school,”Zha Dun said.
Jiangxia Central Primary School is one example of the improved education in Linzhou county.
Da Zhen is a native of Linzhou county. She told our reporter that Linzhou used to be one of the poorest counties in Tibet. “When I went to school many years ago we didn’t even have buildings. We had class in a shabby house. Teachers didn’t have rulers, so when they needed a straight line or an angle on the blackboard they had to draw by hand,”Da Zhen recalled.
Some government officials from Suzhou have served in Linzhou county over the past two decades.
Mima Panduo is the principal of Suzhou School, a Hope School the Suzhou govern-ment built for Linzhou county in 1999. “Government officials deployed in Linzhou always come to our school,”the principal said. “The Suzhou officials helped our school get financial aid, so we could reno-vate buildings, science labs, dormitories and expand the campus.”
A few years ago, a student from a poor family was admitted into a good school in a city, but he couldn’t afford the fees for the health checkup. “I told a government offi-cial from Suzhou the student’s situation. He visited the student and his family with me the next day, and gave his parents sever-al hundred yuan, much more than the health checkup fees.”Now the student studies at a university in Nanjing.
In the past six years, a total of 228 stu-dents from Suzhou School have been admit-ted to schools in China’s interior. Over 60 teachers from Suzhou School have taken part in training programs in Suzhou.
As the new school term began on Septem-ber 1, 10 teachers from Linzhou county came to Suzhou for a one-month training program. They are observing classes in four local primary schools, to gain experience and advanced teaching methodology from Suzhou teachers. (Suzhou Daily)
