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Last week I spent some time with NGO Shanghai Roots & Shoots in Yangshan Village, Anhui Province. The above video is the product of this trip. Here is the story behind it, click photos to embiggin them.

A long journey

Getting to Yangshan Village reminded me once again, how difficult getting to rural areas can be in China. After about two hours into our flight from Beijing to Anhui Province, the pilot announced he couldn’t land the plane in our planned destination city due to weather. At the news of this information, it all of a sudden became acceptable for passengers to begin smoking cigarettes on the plane, which I thought was very entertaining — a glimpse into 1970’s air travel perhaps.

In stead, the plane landed in Nanjing, a city just West of Shanghai. We had the choice to wait for the plane to takeoff and fly back to Hefei or forfeit our ticket. Not wanting to waste anytime we decided to attempt to get to Hefei by land instead of air.

After almost swimming to a bus through thick rain, we arrived at a train station jammed packed from people avoiding the massive amounts of water coming from the sky. The general Chinese travel chaos was in full force, with ephemeral and evasive queues and the normal population of people who look like they have spent many days at the station. Although we bought train tickets, while waiting for the train we decided to try to rent a person (with a car). This was clearly a seller’s market and prices were way over the top. We really lucked out here when our driver in Hefei offered to come to Nanjing and pick us up (about 3 hours away). After waiting for 3 hours he arrived and we began our 10 hour car ride to Yangshan Village. It looked like this (for 10 hours):

While I’m sure I’ve been on more dangerous car rides, this one featured our driver speeding up the side of a mountain at 120 km per hour, with no guard railings, seemingly hydroplaning continually for hours on end. However, he did have his 4-way flashers on, which I was sure would keep me safe. From our 5 am departure time from Beijing, we arrived in Yangshan Village around 2 am the next day.

Officially, the average income of a villager in Yangshan Village, Anhui Province, China is 1,200 yuan per year ($177). However, villagers there said it was 700 yuan per year (less than $100). So apart from a single small store that thankfully sold coca-cola, there was no commerce in this village; ergo, no hotels.

We slept at Yangshan Elementary School on a classroom floor. Although I only had about 3 hours of sleep, I woke up the next morning to a break in the rain. It lasted about 4 hours, and would be the only break in the rain for an entire week. However, it was a great break. As the clouds opened up I had a wander around the village before people had woken up. Fog, mist and a vibrant sky made some pretty neat landscapes.

This type of light, combined with moisture creates great layers of fog for landscape photography. Here are other examples of this from the Sierra Nevada range or Malaysia.

The sub-tropical environment also creates some pretty interesting bamboo forests. The bamboo is much more “tree-like” than the species I have seen in the South Pacific or Southeast Asia.

Structures ranged greatly from “house with many walls” to “house with some walls” to “hut with ladder.”

This peaceful serene environment would soon come to an end when 50 Yangshan Village children would come rip-roaring down the street. This is why I was here …

The Anhui Poverty Alleviation Project

To combat the multigenerational cycle of poverty in Yangshan, Shanghai Roots & Shoots sends volunteers to teach children and create infrastructure. Five years ago, they built a school. Since then, they have been continually returning to help the village during the summer.

Most of the students’ parents don’t live in Yangshan Village. When the villagers get old enough to work as laborers, most will go off to big cities leaving their children with the grandparents. This makes for an interesting demographic in the city — everyone is either really young or really old. Regardless, they are all photogenic. The children especially kind of go off the cuteness chart. Since the kids don’t have their parents around, the volunteers of this program end up acting as big brothers and sisters.

The reason I believe this program is successful is its multidimensional effort to help impoverished people. The combination of efforts from hardware to education helps now — and down the road. This year, the NGO made a new bathroom for the school.

This is the old bathroom …

This is the new bathroom …

While the new school and new bathroom are surely a huge step up, watching the children in class was also pretty amazing. The students were far more engaged than at some urban schools I’ve been to. I’m not sure if this enthusiasm is quite as strong when the volunteers aren’t there, but regardless the villagers and students loved having the NGO around.

In the video at the top, towards the end you see a bunch of photographs flash quickly by. The collection of “cute kid” photos I came back with was immense. Here’s some of my favorite that appear in the video, but only for .4 seconds.

If you were wonder, the song used in the video is a classic exercise song that you hear throughout China in the morning hours.

Although there was some tough weather and tough shooting/sleeping conditions, this shoot ended up being a lot of fun and I’m glad I could see Shanghai Roots & Shoots at work again.

An earlier post on Shanghai Roots & Shoots work in Inner Mongolia here.
An earlier post on Anhui tourism here.