China Daily Global Edition (USA)
Navy support makes learning plain sailing
For 20 years, the People’s Liberation Army Navy has supported a primary school in the rural part of Nyingchi city, Tibet autonomous region. The assistance helps provide a comprehensive education and an excellent study environment for local children.
The Navy Hope Primary School is located in Drukla township, Kongpo’gyada county. In 2001, the navy’s logistics base in Shanghai started supporting the school and donated 250,000 yuan to build the first dormitory for students and faculty members.
“After that, the teachers and kids no longer had to travel dozens of kilometers in the mountains, against the wind and rain, to attend classes,” said school principal Wangdrak, who like many Tibetans only uses one name.
The school, established in 1976, was initially called the Drukla Township Central Primary School. It sits at an altitude of 3,400 meters and is surrounded by mountains.
According to Wangdrak, the old campus consisted of one ramshackle building with two classrooms, and about 30 children were taught there. In 2001, it was one of the first batch of 45 schools nationwide to be assisted by the navy, so its name was changed to the Navy Hope Primary School.
Since then, different naval units have taken charge of rebuilding the school, which has seen many changes over the past two decades.
In 2017, it was handed over to the navy’s Eastern Theater Command, which expended the help it provided.
A year later, the Command’s support department set up a special team to renovate the school. It conducted field research and provided computers, printers, a campus broadcast system and other teaching equipment worth 500,000 yuan ($77,000). It also provided 300 uniforms and many textbooks.
The team realized that the school’s educational infrastructure was poor compared with schools in urban areas, so it launched a rebuilding program.
Experts from Shanghai were invited to conduct studies, provide cost estimates and plan a new design. After the study, the team decided to provide 9.88 million yuan to fully upgrade the school’s computers and teaching equipment.
It helped build a new comprehensive teaching building that houses classrooms, a library, a computer room, a dancing room, an exhibition hall and a large lecture hall fitted with multimedia teaching equipment.
The team also renovated the sewage system and bathrooms, refurbished the old dormitory, built a new one especially for girls and expanded the outdoor sports area by adding a basketball court.
“I am really grateful to the navy for giving us such a good study environment,” said Rigzin Wangmo, a 12-year-old fifth grade student.
“They give us everything we need — clothes, books and stationery. Boys and girls used to live together, but now we girls have our own dormitory. The boys’ room doesn’t even have a mirror.”
Lhapa, the deputy headmaster, studied at the school as a child. He still has a red school bag the navy gave him in 2001. Inspired by the help provided, Lhapa set his sights on becoming a teacher, so after graduating from a college in Lhasa he returned to his alma mater to offer his experience and knowledge.
“The navy has really helped us greatly. In the past when a teacher talked about the outside world, the students could only guess and picture it in their minds. Now, they can search on computers. We are far from the sea, but with the internet, the students can get closer to the sea,” he said.
Last year, the navy organized a weeklong summer camp in which a group of students traveled to Ningbo, Zhejiang province.
In addition to exploring famous scenic spots, they visited the city’s science museum and the naval history museum, had an exchange with local experimental schools and watched a navy unit give a military training demonstration.
Lieutenant Colonel Liu Linqing, a member of the support team, said that when the children spoke with the sailors, many expressed the wish to become “someone useful to society” when they grow up.
“But how exactly can one be considered a useful person? According to our observations, many of the children live with their grandparents and have never stepped out of the mountains or their hometown. So, we organized this trip to let them go outside, broaden their horizons and see what the outside world looks like,” she said.
Rigzin Wangmo’s dream is to become a “useful person”, contribute to the country and help people in need. She attended last year’s summer camp and said the military museum impressed her most.
“I saw a lot of advanced military equipment and learned about many naval heroes and the country’s first aircraft carrier,” she said.
“I love being at school. I will study hard to go to a bigger school in another province, so I can see more of the outside world.”