NANNING, Oct. 27 (Xinhua) -- As dusk fell, Liang Zuying and her mother Liang Yingmi joined other ethnic Miao women along the winding mountain trails. With their mobile-phone flashlight illuminating the path before them, they headed for their Mandarin class of the day.
Liang Zuying, 44, is the class monitor at lessons held in Wuying Village, a Miao ethnic-minority hamlet that nestles snugly in the towering mountains stretching across the border between south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region and Guizhou Province.
"It's great to attend school with my mom, something I have dreamt of for more than 30 years," she said.
The two women are among more than 20 attendees aged 40 or above who previously received little education and could neither read nor speak Mandarin, a major impediment that isolated them from the outside world.
The Law on Standard Spoken and Written Chinese Language sets Putonghua, or Mandarin, and standardized Chinese characters as the standard spoken and written forms of Chinese and China's official language.
Back in the 1970s and 1980s, the impassable mountains and rugged landscape rendered locals extremely poor. Due to their traditional views and poor family conditions, many parents did not send their daughters to school.
"When I was little, I had to graze cattle, tend fields and take care of my siblings, so did my mom and my classmates. There was no time or opportunity for us to attend school," Liang Zuying recalled.
Liang often sneaked out of home and listened to lessons outside the classroom, all the while carrying her baby sister, who she was supposed to be looking after, on her back.
"When my sister started to cry, I had to leave quickly, so as not to disturb the class," she recalled.
In October 2019, the city of Liuzhou, which administers Wuying Village, launched a campaign to popularize Mandarin among local ethnic people and offer ethnic-minority language training to poverty-relief officials, as part of the local poverty-alleviation efforts.
As of mid-September this year, about 80.72 percent of the country's population speak Putonghua, while only 61.56 percent of people in some severely impoverished areas speak Putonghua, according to official statistics.
Mandarin plays an important role in lifting the language barriers impeding poverty eradication, according to the Ministry of Education, which held an annual event in September to promote Putonghua.
From March this year, local authorities initiated a training program in Wuying Village to teach ethnic women the national lingua franca, in a bid to remove language barriers between them and people beyond the village, while improving their communication and vocational skills.
So far, about 129 Mandarin training sessions have been held in Wuying Village, with around 40 ethnic Miao women attending the training.
During the 90-minute classes, Liang and her mother share the same desk to learn Chinese characters, daily expressions and ancient poems.
"The instructors taught us pronunciation until we remembered it perfectly and helped us write characters, stroke by stroke," she said.
Despite her poor eyesight and hearing, Liang's mother never misses a class and often recites ancient poems she has learned in the class during farm work with her daughter.
To support her studies, Liang Zuying's husband Bu Shengchang takes over all the housework in the evenings and cooks dinner for her before class. He has also bought Liang new costumes as encouragement.
In the course of half a year, more than 30 people from different walks of life, including primary-school teachers, college students and traffic police, have volunteered to give Mandarin lessons in the village.
One of them is Pan Muzhi, an 18-year-old sophomore who taught the class from April to late August. She was impressed by the middle-aged students' strong love for learning and thinks that education has made them more confident.
Growing up in Wuying Village herself, Pan said it was impossible to reach beyond the mountains for higher education without her family's support. Therefore, she chose to go home to teach mothers, including her own, in return for their kindness.
Being almost illiterate, Pan's parents eked out a living solely by farming. However, her mother cared so much about Pan's education that, even during the family's hardest times, she would not accept her dropping out of school to work.
As she stepped into the classroom and surveyed dozens of familiar, weather-beaten faces, Pan smiled with gratitude.
"Their dream of schooling is like a seed that has been buried in their hearts for decades. Through our efforts, the seed is now sprouting and growing strong," she said. "I'm grateful that I can use what I have learned to help these mothers achieve their dreams." Enditem
