China Daily Global Edition (USA)
Mandarin class key to finding job in east
For some ethnic groups, mastering Mandarin means improving job prospects down the road
Batur Mamut was moved to tears while watching his daughter’s “clapper talk” performance in fluent Mandarin. “I am just extremely happy to see my child speaking Mandarin so well,” said the 51-year-old taxi driver from Shufu county in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region.
Most villagers his age in Kashgar’s remote rural areas only speak Uygur, which is a barrier for those seeking jobs in eastern Chinese cities.
However, among the younger generation that situation is quickly changing, as children are becoming bilingual from as early as kindergarten age.
Batur Mamut’s daughter, Nursebi Batur, is in fourth grade at a primary school in Tokkuzak township. The story she performed in clapper talk, a traditional Chinese form of narrative singing accompanied by a pair of clappers, was about the changes that have taken place in the school since 2014.
In April 2014, President Xi Jinping visited the school and told teachers that it is important to facilitate bilingual education for children from ethnic groups.
If they can master standard Chinese, it will be easier for them to find jobs, and more importantly, contribute to national unity, Xi said.
After Xi’s visit, the school and education authorities have taken many steps to boost the children’s bilingual abilities.
More courses are being taught by bilingual teachers, and new styles of learning are being explored, including clapper talk, which requires performers to use bamboo clappers to mark the beats.
The folk art is not easy, but the students were interested in practicing spoken Mandarin with it, according to Yao Hongyu, the school’s Party chief. The rhymed Mandarin lyrics make it easy to remember, and the Uygur students are quick learners, Yao said.
The school has also built a dedicated calligraphy classroom decorated with traditional Chinese elements.
Nursebi Batur enjoys calligraphy and said becoming a calligraphy teacher would be her ideal job after finishing college.
Calligraphy courses not only teach students the correct way to sit and write, but also enable them to discover the beauty of Chinese characters, Yao said.
In addition to Mandarin, teaching of Uygur was also strengthened after the introduction of standard textbooks in the region.
To monitor the quality of bilingual education, a teaching evaluation system was expanded to cover the studies of both languages, according to a 2016 action plan.
As well as learning languages, students at the township school also have classes on ethnic arts, including Uygur dancing, singing and the unique musical instruments in Kashgar.
Changes are not only taking place in primary schools. Xinjiang is striving to offer universal bilingual education from kindergarten to the end of senior high school.
As of September, about 1.17 million rural preschoolers were receiving free bilingual education, and the coverage was nearly 100 percent in rural areas, according to the region’s education authority.
More than 61,000 Mandarin-speaking teachers have been employed by rural kindergartens, primary and middle schools in the past five years.
In 2014, there were no teachers of Han ethnicity, China’s dominant ethnic group, at Tokkuzak’s primary school. There were 10 when the autumn semester began this September. Most came from other provincial regions and are learning Uygur in their spare time.
Han teachers did it voluntarily to better communicate with parents who don’t speak Mandarin, and to understand the local community and culture, Yao said.
Seeing the children’s progress has also encouraged parents like Batur Mamut to improve his Mandarin, by sitting in primary school classes or attending night school in the village.
“Mandarin is the common language shared by all ethnic groups in this country. We should learn it,” he added.