Teaching fellows in Liuhe Middle School Xu Baoshuan, Greg Eiselt, Ken Saathoff and Li Chao take a group picture with CRI reporters, on August 19th, 2009. [Photo: CRIENGLISH.com]

Hello and welcome to a special edition of Life in China on China Radio International. I'm Jules Page in Beijing. On today's show, we'll take you to meet a group of young graduates from some of the world's top universities. They have made the decision to start their professional lives as teachers in southwest China's rural Yunnan province. CRI's Du Lijun was there to experience the beginning of their ambitious adventure.

REPORTER:

INTRO

As I arrive at Beijing Capital Airport, the place is awash with families and friends, rejoicing the return of their loved ones. Fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, girlfriends, boyfriends, old friends ………

Despite being away from Beijing for just one week, I have also been missing my everyday surroundings. It makes me think about the 20 new friends I recently made in Yunnan, 10 of whom have traveled half way around the globe to teach in rural China. It will be one whole year before they are able to reunite with their families and friends again.

DAY 1

"Testing, testing, this is Dan O'Brien's audio dairy, Day One.

It's a very, very interesting day. We spent the past month in training, in Beijing, in Yuxi. Now, we're finally on the way to Heqing. I'm going to teach in Xintun, with Fu Yu, Tang Wen, and Amanda.

I'm really, really impressed by the scenery here. The landscape is beautiful. The mountains kind of remind me of New Hampshire, my home. They're tall. They're foggy. They reach up to the clouds.

I don't think other people would ever understand what it's like to be here, to be an American who doesn't speak Chinese, from a small town in New Hampshire, to come to rural China, to teach English. I don't think anyone else, except for the three people that I'm with and the other 16 people who are teaching in China, can really understand the experience of coming here."

I met Dan O’Brien on the bus heading to a small town named Heqing County in Southwestern China’s Yunnan Province.

Dan is a recent graduate from Dartmouth University in the US. Together with another 19 young graduates from some of the world's top universities such as Harvard, Princeton and Tsinghua, they were preparing to teach in rural Yunnan for a full year.

I, as a reporter, was traveling with them, trying to capture some of the unique moments of this ambitious adventure.

Looking out of the window I could see mountains topped by clouds reflecting a spectrum of light from the dazzling sunshine. Traveling some 2,000 meters above sea level, it seemed we could reach out and touch the sky, as if paradise was just an arm's length away.

While the scenery outside was breathtaking, the passengers didn't talk much. They seemed to be dwelling on their own thoughts.

The next 12 months is definitely going to be a unique experience for them. And the program they are pursuing is unprecedented too.

Initiated by the Non Governmental Organization China Education Initiative, and supported by the Education Department of Yunnan Province, the 20 young graduates will be divided in 5 groups to teach in 5 different middle schools in rural Yunnan.

Yunnan, literally 'South of the Clouds', is a province located in the far southwest of the country. In term of traveling, Yunnan boasts the most beautiful snow-capped mountains, the most dazzling lakes, and the most diverse ethnic cultures in China.

But like much of the central and western parts of China, Yunnan lags behind China's wealthy eastern regions in many ways. One of them is the quality of education. Good teachers usually choose to teach in the big cities in the east. As a result, remote villages in the west suffer a lack of quality teaching, which means students from these areas have fewer opportunities to progress into higher education.

Zou Ping, from the Education Department of Yunnan Province, explains further.

"The high school enrollment rate of students in rural areas is at least 1/3 lower than that of urban students in Yunnan. The shortage of qualified teachers is largely to blame. I hope the arrival of these young talented graduates will bring fresh ideas, introduce new teaching methods, and help raise the teaching quality in these remote villages."

This is the first time a non-governmental organization is involved in such a program in Yunnan; Also the first time so many talents from foreign lands will teach in rural China for as long as one year.

Andrea Pasinetti, founder of the organization, talks about how he came up with the idea for the program.

"I first came to Yunnan about a year and half ago. We went to a very very poor community in the mountainous area. The students were actually having class that day. They were doing outdoor activities, sort of sports and physical activities. There was a group of students playing drums. And I just remember the excitement in their eyes, the excitement on their faces. Just the very strong connections to their local community, their local context, I don't know, it was just very moving for me, coming from the United States, and sort of arriving in China and seeing such a very, sort of, strong cultural embodiment in such young people."

"We visited a lot of schools and often times it's very easy to become very involved in what one is doing, in solving problems on a daily basis. But every once in a while, there are moments, at these schools, in these classrooms, in the communities, in which I ,sort of, take a deep breath, take a step back and really think about the importance of the program. Whom are we doing the program for? It's really the children."

It took us eight long hours to get to the center of Heqing County from Kunming, the capital city. But by the end of the day, no faces showed any signs of tiredness. It seemed that everybody was looking forward to seeing their schools, which would happen the next day.