Heqing County is situated in deep mountains of northwestern part of Yunnan Province. For a long time, its remote location and inconvenient transportation have hampered the development of local education. However, 20 young people from China, The US and Canada are about to teach in some village schools of Heqing for a year,in hopes of boosting its educational development.

     

Early in the morning, dozens of people talk, hug and bid farewell to each other in the lobby of Heqing Hotel. They are the teaching fellows of an education program and will set off to their designated schools as full-time teachers for a year. Among them are 10 Chinese, 9 Americans and 1 Canadian.

Nicola Haffenden is the only Canadian in the group. She feels very lucky to be admitted into the program given that the selection process is highly competitive.

"It's a pretty demanding process. Over 500 people applied to be a part of this organization exclusively on the American or western side. All of the people participating in this program came from top universities in the US and Canada. And everybody has a lot of experience of working with kids, teaching or other things related to China."

Organized by China Education Initiative, a non-profit organization based in Beijing, the teaching fellow program recruited college students right after graduation from China and North America. Prior to their one-year stint, all the teaching fellows have taken intense training and various courses. Among them are teaching methodology and dealing with local situations in Yunnan.

However, in face of the adverse living conditions and a strange environment, challenges remain big. Dan O'Brien, a recent graduate from Dartmouth:

"There is absolutely nothing anybody could do to prepare me for what is about to happen. I think I had the best training and that I have been prepared as much as I ever will be. But because I don't speak Chinese, there is nothing I could really do at this point that would prepare me even more. So even thought the training has been very good, there is just something I have to jump in to and start doing and catch up."

Dan says it is quite common that American students work as volunteers or low-paid workers in the world's underdeveloped regions for a certain period of time during college years. However, his roommate Fu Yu, a Shanghai boy and a Fudan University graduate, says things are different here in China.

"Most of my friends and my parents don't understand my choice. They just say why you choose this program instead of looking for a decent job in Shanghai. I am a city-born and city-raised person. I haven't got any experience of living in rural areas of China. I have strong interests in public relations and public affairs. I think if I don't gain any experience in the rural area in a real sense, I would not probably be able to do anything that could really change the local situation."

Fu Yu believes there is no chance he would quit during the one-year service but says it is for sure that tough challenges will crop up from time to time, including adaptation to a different culture and loneliness. That's why one of the fellows Jeff Volinski brought his guitar along as a tool to facilitate his English teaching as well as a kind of company.