* Thanks to the efforts to ensure everyone is able to travel to school, none of the 1,339 current students from Xihxu Township have dropped out of education. Since 2013, 217 students from the township have graduated from or are studying at university.
* The township offers a glimpse into the development that has taken place in Xinjiang's education system in recent years.
* According to a white paper released by China's State Council in 2021, a complete education system has been put in place in Xinjiang, with institutions providing education from preschool through to higher education.
URUMQI, March 16 (Xinhua) -- Amid a convoy of vehicles winding down snowy mountain roads at altitudes of some 4,000 meters, Ankar Anwar could be found aboard a warm bus with his schoolmates, rifling through a bag for his favorite snacks.
The convoy was carrying students free-of-charge to their boarding school in Yecheng County, which is located in the Kashgar Prefecture of northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, ahead of the spring semester in February. It was led by two police vehicles and escorted by an ambulance to ensure the safety of the students.
Hailing from a village in Xihxu, a mountainous township about 1,700 km from the regional capital of Urumqi, 13-year-old Ankar Anwar is a seventh-grader at Yecheng County No. 15 High School. He and more than 120 other students arrived safely at the school following a six-hour drive.
Although his parents had been unable to take him to school themselves due to it being the lambing season, Ankar Anwar was not lonely on his journey. Teachers, village officials, traffic police and doctors were also part of the convoy, working together to ensure the students could travel without concern.
Wang Xiaolin, a traffic police officer from Yecheng, has been helping escort students to school for 11 years. "The roads are narrow and curved, and there is thick ice and snow. When the convoy passes by, we temporarily control the traffic to ensure nothing goes wrong," Wang said.
In the summer of 2023, the convoy encountered a mudslide just after the students had returned home, and it was almost struck, Wang recalled. After an hour of emergency maintenance work, traffic returned to normal.
Lyu Yonggang, who works at Yecheng County's education bureau, said that the vehicles had been selected from the most competent transport company in Yecheng. And before the trip, traffic police inspected the condition of the vehicles and reminded drivers repeatedly of the importance of road safety. "We helped the students and their parents feel at ease with our care," Lyu said.
Thanks to these efforts to ensure everyone is able to travel to school, none of the 1,339 current students from Xihxu have dropped out of education. Since 2013, 217 students from the township have graduated from or are studying at university. And many are studying in universities in Chinese municipalities such as Beijing and Shanghai, according to Yecheng's education bureau.
The township offers a glimpse into the development that has taken place in Xinjiang's education system in recent years. According to a white paper released by China's State Council in 2021, a complete education system has been put in place in Xinjiang, with institutions providing education from preschool through to higher education.
By 2020, the gross enrollment rate of preschool institutions in Xinjiang was over 98 percent, the net enrollment rate of primary schools was almost 100 percent, and the completion rate of nine-year compulsory education was over 95 percent.
CHANGING FUTURES
Amer Ghaz, a herder from Xihxu in his 50s, said that he had loved going to school and yearned for knowledge, but he had been unable to progress beyond junior high school.
"When I was a child, my father told me that he wanted to send me to university," he said.
Amer Ghaz received his primary school education in his home village, where teachers traveled by horse to give their lessons. Later, when he was a student at a junior high school next to the township's government building, his mother and eldest brother had to travel with him before the start of each semester. At the time, the only way to get from their village to the school was on horseback, traveling for roughly three days along pastoral trails.
Facing the challenges of his father's early death, his family's poverty and the inaccessibility of schools, Amer Ghaz never left Xihxu for senior high school.
But Parhat Amer, Amer Ghaz's 23-year-old son, was later able to fulfill his father's wishes. Having graduated from Yili Normal University in Xinjiang's Ili Kazak Autonomous Prefecture, he is now an intern in Yecheng County and hopes to become a firefighter.
The winding paths once traveled by Amer Ghaz have since been abandoned. From 2018 to 2023, the government has invested tens of millions of yuan to improve the local road network. About 110 km of hardened roads have been laid in the mountains, and it now takes just three hours to drive from Amer Ghaz's village to the township's government building.
The new roads are thanks to China's poverty alleviation campaign, which has also led to the significant improvement of other infrastructure and public services, including housing, electricity, education and medical care.
This improved living environment, together with closer communication with the rest of the world, have changed local aspirations for life.
When the spring semester began in February, 15-year-old Ayesha Mamateli, a ninth-grader at Yecheng County No. 15 High School, also took a free bus provided by the government to travel from Xihxu to her school.
Although she has never traveled outside Yecheng, she hopes to go to university in southwest China's Yunnan Province, she said, having researched the area online. "The mountains in Yunnan are clear and beautiful, and the province is always as beautiful as the spring."
RETURNING HOME, BUILDING NEW HOME
When he graduated from Xinjiang Normal University in Urumqi in 2016, Azez Turgun returned to his hometown of Xihxu to become a kindergarten teacher. He has since taught hundreds of children across the township's three villages.
"When I was little, there was no kindergarten in my village, so we went directly to primary school. It's a regret of mine," the 28-year-old said.
Due to his disappointing experience in his own early education, Azez Turgun majored in teaching to help the children in his hometown, he said. In his classes, he not only teaches the official syllabus but also speaks about the world, hoping to inspire the children.
"Because I left my hometown and then came back, I know what I can do to make it a better place," he said.
Many people from other parts in China have also made the journey to Yecheng to aid in this work, with more than 2,800 such teachers working in the county at present.
Among them is Ao Yuping. In 2018, he graduated from Inner Mongolia Minzu University in north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and left to teach at the Xihxu Township Central Primary School. And just last year, he married Yecheng native Akez Tuhti.
"This is my second hometown, and I have no reason to 'lie flat,'" Ao said. The school he teaches at currently has 21 teachers from other parts of China, he noted.
According to Yecheng's education bureau, the government has invested heavily in education in the county since 2012, including investment in talent introduction, infrastructure construction and nutrition enhancement programs for students, improving the quality and conditions of local education.
(Reporting by Lu Yifan, Hu Huhu, Aman; Video reporters: Aman, Hu Huhu, Yin Xingyu; Video editors: Wu Yao, Li Qin) ■
