Zhang Zhiyong, 39, took his 6-year-old son Zhang Yujie on a journey from their urban home in Shanghai on January 10, to take a look at a 2,500-year-old rural private school in Pingjiang County of Central China's Hunan Province.

Zhang was born in Jianyang County of East China's Fujian Province, close to Kaoting Shuyuan, an ancient private academy founded by Zhu Xi (1130-1200), a great scholar of the Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279).

Zhang graduated from Fujian Normal University in 1988, and later set up a private school in the Yangpu District of Shanghai.

In early January this year, Zhang heard the news that Zhu Zhizhong, the 80-year-old owner and sole instructor of the Wufeng Sishu in Pingjiang County, had decided to quit teaching.

"This traditional private education system, which has existed for 2,500 years, should not be allowed to disappear," said Zhang.

Zhang decided to visit the school, and when he walked up the muddy path to the school located in the village of Wujiao, in Pingjiang County, Zhu Zhizhong was at the gate to welcome him.

Zhu's school

The metal sign on the wooden gate read: "No 274 Wujiao Village." It didn't even bear the name of the school.

The school consisted of three crude one-room structures with low roofs. Made of sun-dried mud bricks, they were rather dark and damp inside.

Zhu's 10 students were divided into three groups, according to their different levels of mastery of the classics. Usually one group listened to his lecture while the other two practised calligraphy or recited texts.

A typical school day includes six classes, 50 minutes each, running from 8:30 am to 11:30 am and 2:30 pm to 5:30 pm.

Studies at Zhu's school focus on three areas: Confucian classics, calligraphy, and customs and etiquette for local events such as weddings and funerals.

The textbooks are Confucian classics bought in bookstores in Changsha, the provincial capital. "The old books were all burned during the 'cultural revolution' (1966-76)," said Zhu.

The tutor himself used no textbook.

"A xiucai needs no textbook as he teaches," he said proudly.

Strictly speaking, Zhu was not a xiucai. The word refers to an intellectual who had passed the county level of the keju, the imperial examination system for selection of bureaucrats, which came into being about 1,500 years ago and was abolished at the end of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911).

Long tradition

The sishu, or private academies, were the base of the traditional tutorial system, that culminated in the imperial exams.

"Through the Confucian classics used as textbooks, orthodox worldly views were diffused and penetrated every single cell of the society," said Qing Cao, senior lecturer in the Chinese International School of Liverpool John Moore University.

"The keju examinations tested the students knowledge of these classics which enjoyed the status of indisputable 'truth."'

Therefore the abolishment of the imperial state exams in 1905 by the last emperor of China, who was removed from power only six years later when the Qing Dynasty was overflown, struck a deadly blow to the traditional schools.

Xiucai, who were groomed to become bureaucrats, turned mainly to tutoring to earn a living.

Zhu studied in his childhood at a traditional school opened by two xiucais and one juren, who had passed the state examinations at the provincial level and then fled from Central China's Henan Province to Zhu's village because of the war.

At 19 he founded his own traditional school in his village, in spite of the official abolition of the imperial education system, and left teaching when the traditional schools were absorbed into the newly built public schools in the 1950s.

He became the first to reopen a traditional school in the county in 1982.

Such schools mushroomed in the 1980s and there were at one time as many as five such schools in many of the more than 80 villages in Pingjiang County, said local educational administrator Wang Dexing.

The schools were not officially licensed, Wang said.

The students and their parents call it du laoshu (attending the old schools), as opposed to receiving a modern education.

Practical purpose

But parents are still sending their children, especially those who have graduated from junior high schools to these traditional institutions.

The choice, though controversial and puzzling to urban dwellers, is practical for those living in rather enclosed communities that cling to long-standing traditions, observers said.

"Residents welcome young people who can execute beautiful handwritten scrolls, write couplets at weddings and host ceremonies at funerals," said Li Qiugui, a staff member with the county's educational administration. "Such skills can only be learned at traditional schools."

Tutors like Zhu often act as local opinion leaders in Central China, where members of one village often belong to the same clan, said Hunan Normal University professor Hu Xiao.

Clan members would select the young to go to traditional schools in the early 1980s, when education costs were too much for a single household to bear, said Tong Zhenwu, the head of Chongyi Village.

Usually the clans would select clever, honest children who failed to enter colleges after graduation from high school, and would pool their money to support the students at a traditional school.

Today almost every household can afford to send their children to study at a traditional school, which charges a tuition fee of 50 yuan (US$6) per month.

The number of graduates from traditional schools, much larger than that from senior high schools, makes up almost one-tenth of the population in some villages.

Education for farmers

Fan Gejun won the top prize at the county's mathematics contest when he was a first-grade junior high school student about 20 years ago.

But his father made him quit school then and study Confucian classics for the next seven years under Ai Liyun, a traditional tutor.

Ai was invited to live with the family and was paid 150 kilograms of grain a year, which was a great sum then.

"The high school was too far away, and those who attended the 'old schools' were more respected in the village," explained Fan Yueqiao, the father, who has been a village head for more than 30 years.

His son is widely respected as a decent young man "who can get on the stage" (who can handle all kinds of occasions).

Young Fan, now 33, a farmer and a part-time construction team leader, makes a good living. He is more than satisfied with his father's choice.

"I can never forget how my father and I felt when I wrote a memorial poem at a local funeral for the first time," said Fan Gejun. "The more than 100 villagers in attendance were all impressed, and asked my father to show them the writer."

"One must be recognized where he lives. He needs to feel respected, even if he is a common farmer," said the father.

Besides respect, the son earned more than 1,500 yuan (US$178) from the more than 10 events he presided over last year.

He admitted to earning "a little less" than the increasing number of young villagers who migrate to cities and picked up domestic, construction or waitressing jobs.

"They send home money but seldom come back, thus having less influence on regular village life than people like me," young Fan said.

But unlike Fan, senior high school graduates who fail to attend colleges "are wretched when they come back home," according to village official Tong Zhenwu.

"They can match neither the ancient xiang-gong (intellectuals) in their writing (ability), nor Guan-gong (heroic historical figure) in their fighting (prowess)."

Current senior high school education, geared primarily towards college entrance, is divorced from village life, said Li Dongming, principal of the Central High School of Pingjiang County.

"My students from rural areas can only have a future if they jump to the cities using the ladder of the college entrance examination system. Otherwise, they have to go back to the beginning to learn how to behave as a farmer," Li said.

"But only a small percentage of them can climb up the ladder, and even fewer can afford a college education."

Studying the Confucian classics, which fosters a mild personality and improves skills such as traditional writing, can give educated teenagers a soft landing when they return to village life, said Zhang Chuansui, vice-president of the Educational Research Academy at Hunan Normal University.

The revival of sishu, with their 2,500-year-old tradition, reflects the need for modern education to better adapt students for the change of social role from student to farmer, Li said.

"After all, more than 70 per cent of students in the area will end up returning to their villages," he said.

However, the number of such old schools is dwindling.

"There are not many now, and the number has been rapidly shrinking - the tutors are usually more than 60 years old when they start up their schools, and more and more of them are passing away,"Wang said.

"I was going to close the school before this Chinese New Year, but did not do so at the villagers' request," Zhu said. "But I can't possibly keep it going for another year. I am becoming too deaf."

(China Daily February 23, 2004)