The RCEF Blog 博客

I’ve just returned from a visit to Guozhuang village, where a brand new RCEF-sponsored library was just opened. The village had held a “book giving ceremony” as part of the Chinese New Year festivities. Afterwards, the village committee invited booklovers in the village to come together and decide how to encourage reading in the village. They elected a committee of five villagers to be in charge of this. I got to attend a meeting of the reading committee while I was there, and it was very inspiring.

Booklist in hand, the five villagers had gone door-to-door promoting the new village library to their neighbors. They reported back about what books different types of villagers wanted to read, and how they had encouraged them to borrow books. Some of them even got the selected books from the library and delivered them to villagers! I was very touched to see how proud and happy they felt doing this work. They took the job very seriously and each of them had ideas about how to improve the library.

During the meeting, the villagers also talked about their views on education. One man said, “Books are food for the spirit. Each person has different reading needs, like vitamin deficiencies, and we have to point them towards the right nutrients.” They also observed that many villagers in the northeastern quadrant of the village used to dismiss the value of education back in the 70s. A common saying among them was “instead of spending time in school, you might as well pull some weeds or raise some ducks”. Now, a majority of the poor households are in that quadrant.

The committee is continuing to villagers and are also making plans to organize a get together for everyone who has borrowed a book so that they can share their reading experiences with each other.