When the art teacher, Jingis, puts two AA-batteries in a slot behind the cart, it moves across the table.

Beside the cart stands a small wooden bucket. It has an electrical device in its side. When Jingis lifts the handle to its rim, a bell attached to the device rings.

In front of the log cabin, a swing chair and pots of flowers offer warmth and color to the homestead.

“Our students made these things by hand,” Jingis said with pride.

Although the workmanship is simple, primitive and unpolished, each piece of work reflects the imagination of the Kazak children, from nomadic homes in Fuyun County, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, who made them.

The low-level, brick buildings that spread throughout the campus are nestled in a fully-grown wood and painted with whitewash, but the boarding school is well-furnished with a library, a music room and a sports ground.

For nine months between September and May next year, around 400 students will receive a nine-year comprehensive education in the Kazak language and learn to read and write Chinese at the boarding school.

They eat at the school canteen and take a bath every week in the school’s public bathroom, built by teachers. They sleep on 5-metre-long big brick beds in groups of 12 and tidy their rooms after they get up.

“We hold many kinds of celebrations,” said Komex Hali, 41, the school headmaster. “And of course I sing and dance with the teachers and students.”

But Komex Hali, who has given the past nine years to improving the school’s facilities and environment, never dreamed such a school could exist when he started his own education at nine in his home, Kalablegen Township.

“I never saw a regular classroom then,” he recalled.

For him and other children of his age, a classroom could be anywhere. Wherever their parents took the family herds of grazing cattle and sheep, their teachers would go too. Sometimes, the teachers’ temporary homes were turned into classrooms.

But most of the time in summer, the teachers would prop a blackboard up on the grassland, and Komex Hali and his schoolmates would sit on stones to listen to their teachers’ lectures. When it rained, the school would close.

In winter, Komex Hali and other children, big or small, would crowd into a mud cave built half underground.

“At that time, only the teachers had textbooks,” he said.

Despite all the difficulties, Komex Hali managed to finish middle school and enrolled in the two-year county teachers’ school.

He continued his studies after he became a middle school mathematics teacher, in his home town. In 1984, he won first place in a mathematics test for all ethnic minority primary and middle school maths teachers in the region.

In 1991, the local county education bureau decided to transfer him to the Kult Boarding School and appointed him as the school’s new headmaster.

The idea to build boarding schools was an effort to reform the temporary schools, or “schools on horsebacks,” and make them into residential schools to ensure that every child received nine-year formal basic education as the Law on Compulsory Education requires, said Wang Fuping, director of the Fuyun County Education Bureau.

For each of the county’s 4,500 students in the eight boarding schools, the county government provides 17.00 yuan (US$2.0) a month in boarding allowance.

Over the years, the county has invested 15 million yuan (US$1.8 million) in the construction of boarding schools throughout the county. For every 26 students, there is a nanny taking care of the children’s daily life.

According to He Feng, an official with the regional education commission, 417 boarding primary and middle schools were opened in the grassland in Xinjiang by the end of 1999, enrolling 133,400 students.

“Each student only has to bring a sheep to the school to act as their fee for room and board for one school year,” Wang said.

The Kult Boarding School was one of the first in the county, established in 1983.

However, when Komex Hali took up his new job in 1991, he discovered the local children did not like the school at all. Although the school had a registered enrolment of a little more than 100, only 12 students attended all the classes.

Komex visited the home of more than 60 drop-outs and they told him they were not used to school life. The food was poor and the teachers did not do their job well.

Komex started work on making his school more attractive to students. He introduced measures to inspire the faculty in their work. He sacked eight consecutive chefs until he found one who satisfied the palates of the students and teachers.

The school has its own clinic. He and the teachers built the school’s public bathroom and a log storage house in the style of a Kazak yurt, where mutton hangs to dry and is frozen during the winter. The local thermometer often reaches 40 C to 50 C below zero in winter.

Besides the county allowance and the sheep, Komex said the school had also opened work/study programs to earn more money to improve the school’s facilities. Komex has just bought a brand new table-tennis table for the students.

In nine years, Komex has turned the Kult Boarding School into a county and regional model accommodating some 400 students between 7 and 16 years of age.

The boarding school has opened a branch in Komex’ home town of Kaleblegen Township some 50 km away and Komex also runs three classes for children who are unable to come to boarding schools.

Altogether, around 870 students study with the Kult school under the leadership of Komex.

During the long summer vacations, teachers with the Kult school system continue their education and training to improve themselves.

Even with all his accomplishments, Komex said he is sorry he cannot provide all school-age children with a chance to study at the boarding school. They have to study in separate classes.

“There are not enough boarding facilities or money to provide for all of them,” he said.

He is also sorry that the school needs to generate more money to provide students with better food, better sports facilities and more musical instruments.

“Money is still our biggest problem,” he said.

But would he choose an easier job if he started all over again?

“I would still take this teaching job and become a school headmaster,” he said.

(China Daily 09/28/2000)