I highly recommend everyone to watch a documentary called "The Way Out".
Beginning in 2009, the director spent six years following three children from different classes in China. He wants to explore those who have no background since birth, and whose way out of life is in **??
The child named Ma Baijuan, her family conditions are the worst. She lived in a cave where there was no light, and a small plate of pickles was to be distributed among the whole family of four. After reading her story, I deeply realized how important a slippery women's high school is for a girl from the mountains.
At the age of 12, Ma Baijuan's biggest dream was to go to university in Beijing, where she wanted to work and earn 1,000 yuan a month to buy noodles for her family, because there were not enough noodles at home. In order to go to school, she had to get up before dawn every day and walk more than ten kilometers to a school with only 7 people. After school, she has to mow the lawn, clean up, and help her mother cook. However, at the age of 15, her brother dropped out of school for her. The teacher said that she had worked hard, but her brother thought she was not suitable for studying. Dad thinks that girls don't need to study, and getting married is her way out.
A year later, when the director team saw Ma Baijuan again, she was already married to her cousin. The film comes to an abrupt end here. You'll recall an ironic scene of Ma Baijuan basking in the yard with two pregnant peers after she dropped out of school. What Ma Baijuan didn't know at that time was that she who had been singing "I want to draw wings and fly in the vast sky" in the valley since she was a child would soon enter their life trajectory.
In the six years that coincide with this film, another diametrically opposed story is playing out on another mountain. In 2018, Principal Zhang Guimei's Huaping Girls' High School became the first completely free girls' high school in the country. By the time it was completed in 2015, there were thousands of girls who had left the mountains because of her. Some of them were admitted to Zhejiang University, some became soldiers, policemen, doctors, and some chose to continue to return to the women's high school. As long as they want to, there are countless paths ahead.
But it is also this group of girls who lived the same life as Ma Baijuan before. For example, he was born as an abandoned baby, such as his father's alcoholism and domestic violence, such as forcing his daughter to marry in exchange for a bride price. There were students who were going to take the college entrance examination and were reading, but they suddenly disappeared because they were detained at home to farm. There are also people who save money in plastic bags and use countless cents or cents to scrape together tuition fees. And it was at this time that Principal Zhang said: "I don't want them to repeat such a barren and choiceless life." "The only way out is for them to read.
As a result, we saw that Principal Zhang only spent three yuan a day, and he used the method of begging all over the country to set up a free girls' school. Some crossed the barrier of Guanshan and brought out-of-school girls back to the classroom from house to house. It was she who told them to be mountains, not to cross them. So the phrase "I was born a mountain and not a stream, I leap to the top of the wind, looking down on the mediocre Gonghe" became their lifelong vow.
So, for countless girls in the mountains like Ma Baijuan, what does it mean to have a group of sliding female high schools?I think it's probably not a better way out, but to let them know that I can have a life through hard work. As an alternative, I can choose to stay in the mountain or leave the mountain. I have the right to love, the right to be free and lonely, the courage to say no to life, and the confidence to embrace a better life.
Zhang Guimei If you like it, you must like and follow, your attention is the driving force for me !! move forward