Chapter 6 Enterprise History and Figures Ding County Experiment

May 24, 1943, marks the 400th anniversary of the death of the great thinker Nicolaus Copernicus.On the evening of the same day, 180 outstanding statesmen, scientists and educators from all over the world gathered in the Kalizi Church in New York City, USA, to solemnly commemorate Copernicus, and at the same time promulgated the "Top Ten Celebrities with the Most Contributions and Most Influences in the World Today", The list includes scientist Einstein, philosopher Dewey, entrepreneur Henry Ford and others. Among them is a Chinese named Yan Yangchu (1890-1990). The commendation certificate for Yan reads: "Outstanding inventor: Simplified thousands of Chinese characters and made them easy to read, opening the knowledge in books to the minds of thousands of illiterate people. He is also the leader of his great people. The author: apply scientific methods to fertilize their fields and increase the fruits of their hard work.” In November of that year, Reader’s Digest, the magazine with the largest circulation in the world at that time, published a special article introducing Yan Yangchu. The article quoted Yan as saying, “No one A nation can grow strong beyond its people. There will be no peace unless this many people, the richest untapped resource in the world, are educated to develop, and educated to participate in their own building."

Yan Yangchu is a native of Bazhong City, Sichuan Province. He studied in the American Church Middle School in Chengdu in his early years. At the age of 23, he was admitted to Hong Kong St. Paul’s University (the predecessor of Hong Kong University) with the first place. According to the regulations at that time, if he became a British citizen, he could Yan Yan declined the 1,600 yuan scholarship on the grounds that "the price is too high for Chinese people."Three years later, in 1916, Yan Yangchu went to Yale University in the United States to study political science and economics, and then entered Princeton University to obtain a master's degree.

It was this Chinese youth who drank a lot of foreign ink, but in the next 70 years, he dedicated his entire life to the poor and suffering compatriots of the motherland.As early as June 1918, he flew to the French battlefield to serve the Chinese laborers there, writing home letters for them and providing the minimum medical services.He also founded a "Chinese Workers in France Weekly". In an editorial, he believed, "What is most urgently needed today is neither military training, school opening, mining, nor re-revolution. What the people of our country urgently need is Change your heart. Get rid of that selfish and bad heart, and replace it with a public heart. Get rid of that old heart, and replace it with a new heart. With a new heart, there will be new people. After new people, there will be a new society. After a new society, there will be a new heart. There are new countries."

In 1920, when Yan Yang first returned to China, he began to experiment with his ideal of "revolutionary heart", and the place where he started was the most difficult, lengthy and ineffective civilian education.Taking Changsha, Yantai, and Jiaxing as pilot sites, he launched a literacy campaign of "eliminating illiteracy and becoming a new citizen". In the autumn of 1923, he initiated the establishment of the "General Association for the Promotion of Civilian Education of China" (referred to as "Pingjiao General Association") in the ancient capital of Beiping and served as the general director.

In 1929, Yan Yangchu led dozens of university professors and doctors and his family to move to Zhaicheng Village in Ding County, Hebei Province, a poor area, and started the very famous "Ding County Experiment" in the future.A newspaper at the time said: This is by far the largest movement of intellectuals to move to the countryside in Chinese history.In the Qing Dynasty, the imperial examination graduates, university deans, and many Ph.D. and master’s students studying abroad were not afraid of hardships. They left their positions and comfortable homes in the city one after another, and came to remote rural areas, looking for ways to revive the ancient and backward life style of the Chinese people.

In Ding County, Yan Yangchu and others explored a set of four-step plans with the themes of education, livelihood, health, and self-government, and proposed a rural reform theory to deal with "foolish, poor, weak, and private".Yan lived in a farmhouse, dressed in rough cloth, and taught the peasants to literacy word by word on the blackboard. He also acted as a village health worker, treating trachoma and skin diseases for the peasants, and giving vaccinations against vaccinia and scarlet fever.He wrote affectionately, "Chinese peasants have always had the heaviest burden, but their lives are the most miserable: peasants who sweat to produce, peasants who shed blood to resist the war, and peasants who pay rent and grain. Everything is imposed on the peasants, and everything is borne by the peasants! But one day their sweat will be exhausted, and their blood will be shed one day. When one day they cannot afford it and collapse, ask: what else? The country? What kind of nation? Therefore, today there is an even more urgent need for rural construction work that cultivates and enriches the power of the people."

Yan Yangchu took root in Ding County for ten years, and set up a vigorous experiment that can be called a feat of civilian education and social transformation.Here, the Pingjiao Federation organized literacy, improved crops and livestock varieties, built theaters and radio stations, set up production and marketing cooperatives and experimental banks, also founded the "Farmer Newspaper", organized alumni associations and "citizen service groups". The health care project implemented by the Pingjiao Federation in Ding County has made a very pioneering attempt to establish a public health system in rural China.According to Yan Yangchu’s records, when he first arrived in Ding County, he found that there was no qualified hospital in the county, 220 villages had no medicine, and 250 villages only had local medicinal materials made and sold by local Chinese medicine practitioners. The basic health organization expenses that can be afforded are no more than 50 yuan a year.Proceeding from such basic conditions, the Pingjiao Association has determined three basic principles for implementing the rural health plan. The most economical organization is used to implement the simplest cause, but thorough implementation must be paid attention to.First, students were organized to go to various villages for exhibitions, lectures, and movies to demonstrate prevention, diagnosis and treatment, and to arouse the attention and interest of farmers through health promotion.Implement the policy of "prevention is more important than cure", such as targeting the main causes of local gastrointestinal diseases and infectious diseases, instructing residents to improve drinking water quality, increase manhole covers and fences, and timely disinfect and sterilize to reduce the source of disease.One man and one woman are selected from the graduates of civilian schools to serve as nurses and public health nurses in village clinics after training.Train public normal students and civilian school students, and vaccinate classmates and villagers.Train midwives to replace old-style midwives, train old-style midwives to wash hands, cut nails short, and improve maternal and child hygiene.Establish district health centers and train qualified doctors.What is particularly rare is that the Pingjiao Association is still promoting birth control campaigns in rural areas, visiting families to advise on birth control.Later researchers concluded that Yan Yangchu had actually figured out a set of methods for building a public health system that suited China's national conditions and covered urban and rural areas across the country. These experiences are even applicable to many post-developing countries.

Yan Yangchu's experiment encouraged a generation of intellectuals, inspired by it, Liang Shuming, a professor at Peking University, also carried out a flat education experiment in Zouping County, Shandong.Since the late Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China, Chinese intellectuals and business circles have had several sets of ideas for rural modernization, among which the two sages Yan Yangchu and Fei Xiaotong are most memorable.Yan’s Pingjiao Movement focused on “revolutionary heart”, trying to achieve the goal of eradicating poverty by improving the overall quality of the people. Fei Xiaotong got inspiration from his observation of his hometown in southern Jiangsu, and believed that the development of rural industries is the only way to get rid of poverty. shortcut. The philosophies of the "popular education school" and the "village industrial school" may be different, but the reform ideas of being moderate and gradual and opposing violent revolution are exactly the same.

After the outbreak of the Anti-Japanese War and the fall of North China, Yan Yangchu moved to Chongqing and founded the Rural Development Institute.At this time, the Pingjiao Federation has developed into the largest and most influential NGO organization (non-governmental organization) in China, with its branches in nearly 100 cities and counties across the country. In November 1945, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) held its first meeting in Paris, and Qu Shiying, the backbone of the Pingjiao Federation, was one of the Chinese representatives.The organization's plan to promote basic education in developing countries was clearly inspired by Yan Yangchu, who himself was invited to serve as a special advisor. In 1948, when the U.S. Congress passed the "China Aid Act", it specifically enshrined the "Yan Yangchu Clause", specifying that one-tenth of the financial aid funds should be used for the rural revival activities of the Pingjiao Association.

In 1950, Yan Yangchu immigrated to the United States and continued to promote civilian education in Asia and South America. He successively assisted the Philippines, Thailand, Guatemala, Colombia, Ghana and other countries to establish rural reconstruction promotion associations. In the 1960s, he founded the International Rural Reconstruction Institute in the Philippines, focusing on promoting Dingxian experience to students from more than 50 countries in the third world and promoting large-scale mass education campaigns.The trainees combined Yan's thoughts with local cultural characteristics and returned to China to engage in rural construction movements, which achieved good results. In 1985, the 95-year-old Yan Yangchu was invited to return to China to revisit Ding County, Hebei Province and Chongqing. He enthusiastically worked with the Chongqing Academy of Social Sciences to draw up a preliminary plan for the establishment of a "China Rural Construction Research Center". In 1989, U.S. President Bush said in his birthday message to Yan Yangchu: "By seeking to give help to those in need, rather than handouts, you have reaffirmed the dignity and value of human beings."

Yan Yangchu often said: "Three C's" influenced his whole life. The "three C's" are Confucius, Christ and Coolies.He said: "I am a product of the combination of Chinese culture and Western democratic and scientific ideas. I do have a sense of mission and a view of salvation; I am a missionary, teaching common people education, and the starting point is benevolence and love. I am a revolutionary. , I want to get rid of bad habits and customs through education, get rid of the old and innovate, but I don't advocate changing violence for violence, murder and arson. I believe that 'everyone can be Yao and Shun'. St. Augustine said: 'In the depths of every soul, there is something sacred' The universal existence of human conscience is also something I firmly believe in."Yan Yangchu also said: "We all hope for a better world, but what exactly does it mean? What is the most basic element of the world? Is it gold or steel? Neither, the most basic element is the people! When talking about a When we create a better world, what we mean exactly is that we need better quality people." Over the past century, no one has surpassed Yan Yangchu in the enthusiasm and foresight of the Chinese elite in rural transformation.In Asia, the "Dingxian Experiment" and the "Village Bank" of Bangladesh's "poor banker" Yunus (2006 Nobel Peace Prize winner) are the two most creative and effective practices. When Yan Yangchu was alive, he was never called an "entrepreneur".However, after entering the 21st century, some scholars define social activists like him as "social entrepreneurs".David Bernstein proposed this new concept in his book "How to Change the World". He believes that, compared with "business entrepreneurs", "social entrepreneurs" are those individuals who are driven by ideals and who are creative. Question the status quo, open up new opportunities, refuse to give up, and ultimately rebuild a better world.In this sense, Yan Yangchu, who has lofty ideals and management skills, is undoubtedly a model of "social entrepreneur". Yan Yangchu died in a hundred years, fulfilling the motto of "the benevolent live long".In his later years, his biographer Wu Xiangxiang asked him, "The elder has achieved his aspirations, but have there been failures in the past sixty years?" Yan pondered for a long time, and replied, "If you fail, you will make it, and if you fail, you will not." Yan Yangchu is a devout Christian, and his answer actually corresponds to this sentence in the "Bible Song of Solomon": "Love is as strong as death, and in silence there is perseverance that surpasses everything."