Letter 24 - may 2004

Dear all,
HONG KONG in NINGXIA. It was a truly astonishing sight : on 22 May 2004 fifteen students of the Hong Kong Lycée Français and four of their teachers could be seen retracing Ma Yan’s old way to elementary school as she had described it in her diary. They got off their bus at a few kilometres’ distance from the village Zhang Jia Shu and decided to walk the rest of the way, despite the heat and the dust.

This was one of many moments during this unusual trip, an encounter between students of Hong Kong’s Lycée Français and Ningxia, Zhang Jia Shu village, the villagers, and Ma Yan’s school, that will stay with us. The students from Hong Kong were welcomed by the families of Zhang Jia Shu, villagers who shared a simple meal with them, allowing them a glimpse of the simple lives they lead and of the daily difficulties they are having to struggle with : most notably, the lack of water. This year has been particularly bad. No snow in winter means that the cisterns are empty and that water now has to be bought at the exorbitant rate of 60 Yuan (6 Euro or about £ 4 ) per cubic metre, an extortionate price for these poor peasants who are among the poorest in China.
Later at Yuwang, the students met up with Ma Yan who is a student there now. A big ceremony was held, with officials making emotional speeches and the French students distributing the presents they had brought with them : books, sports equipment, an electric organ, and a notebook and pen for each of the 1150 students Then the French students split up into small groups to meet and chat with Chinese students in their individual classrooms. Then everybody came back again for big meal together. After that, they made use of the universal language of sport, improvising a Sino-French basketball competition. Despite their height the French boys lost against the Chinese, but then the French girls won : it would have been difficult to arrange for a more ‘diplomatic’ result !
As the French students’ bus was leaving the school director had tears in his eyes : never before had his small, rural school received this kind of oxygen boost. It had been an extraordinary experience for him, just as for his students. But on the part of the French, too, according to Anne-Marie Bordas, the teacher who had taken on the laborious task of carefully organising this visit, it had been ‘a great and enriching experience.’ It has been an opportunity for the French students who for the most part study Chinese and had been working with Ma Yan’s diary in class, to come in close contact with the real difficulties faced by students going to school in the deprived Ningxia countryside : difficulties like the water problem, for instance, which means that boarding students, hundreds of them together, cannot wash at school ; the poverty of the dormitories - Ma Yan and the majority of other students have to share their beds with another because there is simply not enough space - ; and the sparse, deficient equipment. - But at the same time the visitors from Hong Kong had met students determined to learn and lift themselves out of their difficult condition. Among them Ma Xiaomei, one of the young recipients of a bursary from the Association and also one of the heroines of ‘Ma Yan and her sisters :’ that day in class and in conversation with the French students she was smiling, gentle, spontaneous, and impressed her visitors very much.
For us this visit was a moment of human solidarity shown in a different form from the material support we can provide. The children of Ningxia certainly need bursaries ; but beyond this they also need to be taken out of their mental seclusion. This encounter with some young French students has managed to capture, better than anything else, the spirit in which we have entered this region - have, indeed, intervened there to help. We are greatly encouraged by the reception they got, and it shows how far we have come already since our project was first accepted there [by the authorities]. This shows that it has now really become entrenched in Ningxia. So we hope we may repeat this experience and - why not - perhaps also repeat it in reverse direction. Incidentally, this was the first time we saw Ma Yan back from her trip to France. She was radiant, though very busy preparing her entry examinations for Senior High School, in June...
PROJECTS. This trip accompanying the French students has allowed us not only to re-establish contact with our local partners but also to check on the progress of our projects :
At Zhang Jia Shu, the primary school at which we provide free tuition to 200 village children at school age, a small palace revolution had occurred, which led to the appointment of a new director as a result of some internal conflicts. Despite these shake-ups, which now appear to have calmed down, the contract which we concluded last December to ensure free tuition for all children of the village appears to have been honoured throughout : we ascertained this much from various families in the village who assured us that they had not been required to pay any money for the second term, to the villagers’ great satisfaction. We decided to extend this free tuition arrangement to 35 students who will move on to High School at Yuwang (a boarding school) for their fifth year at school. The one remaining problem now is that some families do not want to send their daughters to school even when it is free. We will have to of incentives that can make them change their minds.
We have also been able to bring up, in discussion with a district official, the well construction project for Zhang Jia Shu village, for which we have obtained a ‘sustainable development grant.’ This is a laborious and lengthy process, though, since the village leaders have been dismissed on account of having diverted public funds (the surge of corruption does not stop short even before the poorest of the poor, though, truly, the sums diverted in this way are meagre.). A new school management team will be appointed, which for us means a new set of local partners with whom to negotiate.
Some good news from Yuwang : work on the new school building has recommenced after an interruption of several months. Completion of the building work is expected this September. This will enable us to equip two of the new classrooms as computer rooms, a project for which we have already received special funding thanks to a special campaign last year. We are now discussing with the director of Yuwang High School how to help with building new dormitories. This is a project for which we might yet again try to enlist the help of some large companies, such as French companies with Chinese subsidiaries or branches.
Ma Gao Zhuang village : the old deputy director of Yuwang High School, after being appointed director of a school in the community of Ma Gao Zhuang which is situated at a few dozen kilometres’ distance from there, wrote to us last April informing us of his transfer but also about the desolate conditions at his new school in Ma Gao Zhuang. We had had an excellent working relationship with him and so we took the opportunity of visiting him during our last trip out. The school there, which is a combined Primary and High School, has 350 students altogether and they are visibly poorer even than those of Yuwang. We decided to provide some on the spot financial support in the form of twenty bursaries for children from the most destitute families, to be distributed when the students return to school for the new term. We also made a donation ‘in kind’ of some urgently needed material : the school is in need of practically everything. And beyond this, a significant quantity of clothes collected by the Lycée Français at Beijing will be sent to the school at Ma Gao Zhuang, to be distributed at the end of their school year. We will also fund a big end-of-year banquet, as we have done already at Yuwang, to everyone’s great pleasure and approval.
The widening of our commitment which all these new activities represent has been made possible by strengthened support for our Association. Our commitments remain economically sound, and the new ones will not threaten previously made commitments in any way. By September, a total of about 350 students will be receiving support from the Association. In addition, three educational institutions, all belonging to the region which Ma Yan has brought close to us, will be receiving our support in the form of teaching and other materials. So your support is needed more than ever...
All the best

 

Pierre Haski

 

 

Letter 22 - March 2004

Hello,
March has been an important month for us : Ma Yan went to Paris ! She was invited by the publishing house Ramsay to attend the 2004 Paris Book fair celebrating Chinese literature. She went with He Yanping, the translator of the diary who is very involved in the association. This was 16 year old Ma Yan’s first trip outside of China : she not only discovered France, but also understood the impact of her story abroad and the size of the support for the Ningxia children who were not as lucky as she was. It was also a wonderful moment for us as we watched the young girl who three years ago had no future, blossomed into a young girl full of optimism.
The most wonderful moment in the whole trip was, without a doubt, when we went to visit the ORT high school in the Paris suburbs. Two years ago a teacher, Emmanuelle Polack and her students read the story of Ma Yan in the newspaper and collected 100 euros which they sent to Ma Yan. This time, the students gathered again and gave a warm welcome to the young Chinese girl ; they had written poems, slogans, all translated in Chinese, they had drawn maps of China, posters to encourage people to participate in the association. They welcomed Ma Yan with a loud “Mayan we will never forget you !” which deeply moved her.
Ma Yan thanked the French children for their help, and talked with them with emotion and happiness. She had lunch in the very plain school cafeteria, which still seemed luxurious compared to the one in her high school. She actually enjoyed that meal more than any of the other meals at fancy restaurants. She left the school with gifts and with a small book telling the story of the children’s involvement and the special link that was created between their town - Villiers le Bel - and Ma Yan’s Yuwan.
The meetings with French schoolchildren were by far the most emotional moments of her stay in France. During the Book Fair, at the Ramsay booth, Ma Yan met some readers of the youth magazine Okapi. These readers asked her extremely detailed questions, which showed how much they had learnt from Ma Yan’s diary. On Wednesday, which was a special young readers day at the Book Fair, the booth was filled with children, who have been the most devoted readers of the book.
During her stay in France she also had the opportunity to go and visit the Liberation offices. Liberation is the newspaper which first published her story. There, she met 30 of the founders of the association. Ma Yan thanked them and talked with emotion about the impact that the association had had on her life and on the life of all the children that we are now helping. The founders appreciated meeting this young smiling girl, who has - incredibly - remained herself through this life changing experience. She never forgets where she’s from and never forgets all those who are now living in the nightmare that she was so lucky to escape. This informal meeting was also the opportunity to talk about the current actions of the association.
In the midst of all the interviews and meetings, we managed to set aside some time for tourism. Ma Yan had seen the Eiffel Tower on tv once, and kept her eyes wide open throughout the visits, including the visit of Chinatown ! He Yanping and Ma Yan were also welcomed in the house of our friend Linda and her family. Ma Yan was thus exposed to the life of a typical Parisian family. During her stay she continued writing in her diary because her high school classmates had requested a detailed report on her trip. She left with thousands of pens - pens are such an powerful symbols in her story - sent by one of our association’s members who had some leftover merchandise from a publicity campaign. She will distribute them to her schoolmates.
The second book “Ma Yan and her sisters” published by Ramsay was launched during the Book Fair. Half of the author’s profits will go the Association. The book is in part the sequel to the first as it tells what happened to Ma Yan after the beginning of this adventure and recounts the creation of the association, its goals and its achievements. It also traces the portraits of other young girls from Ningxia, with the letters they sent us. Some of those letters have been included in the monthly newsletters. The book also focused on Ma Shiping, Ma Yan’s cousin who was forcibly married at 15. We met her in December last year and she’s now the mother of a little girl.
Ma Yan and He Yanping’s visit and the publication of the second book will certainly have an impact on the association which still attracts interest from a wide group of people. The forgotten children of Ningxia have become a “cause celebre” and we are hoping that all the latest media flurry will result in concrete actions in China. This is our goal for the next few months.
We will benefit from a great new tool : The association website - www.enfantsduningxia.org - which was created and built by a group of Chinese students (and their teacher) currently enrolled in the ENST - the national school of telecommunications in Paris. Their work is already impressive and will be even more so in the next few weeks. The site will be available in French English and Chinese and will contain the archives of the association, with all the monthly newsletters, photos, and the presentation of the current actions.
The adventures of Ma Yan’s Diary have just begun... I am writing this newsletter from Barcelona, Spain, where I am launching the Spanish edition of the book. Then, on to Lisbon, Portugal, for the Portuguese launch. The book will be published in English on July 1st. All told it will be available in 14 languages, which will help spread its message around the world.
I hope that even more children from this terribly poor farmland region will benefit from our actions.

Pierre Haski

 

 

 

Letter 20 - January 2004

Dear all,
Since our last trip to Ningxia, we’ve have had many letters from there, especially letters to wish us a good Year of the Serpent ! The school holidays are almost over and the students are preparing to go back to school. The beginning of the second semester will allow us to see if the agreement we have reached with the primary school of Zhang Jia Shu village, for free tuition to all children of school age, really works. We will easily be able to check if the terms of the agreement have been honoured when we visit there next time : The children’s parents should not have to pay a penny now for their children’s tuition. Our regular correspondence with people in the village means we would surely be alerted to any mistake or breach. Let me just remind you that we will be helping more than 250 students at primary school, lower and Senior High School level in this district in the future.
We will also find out if, as we were told, the construction of the new school building at Yuwang will really be resumed at the end of the coming Chinese New Year holidays. As I already mentioned, completion of the new building is a precondition for setting up the new computer rooms in it, for which we have already received a generous donation from the company Hermès (they have given us the proceeds of their special sales last September in their Beijing shop). We hope to be able to realise this project this year. It will mean that the children at Yuwang will gain some minimal access to modern technology and thus will get a chance of success in a future which, for many of them, will be in the cities not the villages.
The completion of the building should also allow us to work out a clear proposal for the renovation of the dormitories. The majority of students are Boarding at Yuwang because they come from surrounding villages, not Yuwang itself. The local government has promised to renovate the dormitories, which are in a pitiful state, but our Association could make a contribution to speeding up this process, which is really urgent.
CORRESPONDENCE. A year ago in January 2003 we got a desperate letter from Ma Shiping, a cousin of Ma Yan’s, who had been taken out of school and married by force at the age of fifteen. Her letter began like this : ‘When you receive this letter, I will already be in the palace of marriage, which is the grave of life.’ When we went to visit her in December, she had just given birth to a small daughter. At fifteen and a half. It was a very sad meeting, because we could only give her a few presents for herself and her baby, but there was nothing now that we could do to change her fate : there she was, married and a mother at age fifteen, when she had been dreaming of receiving an education and discovering life. At the beginning of January we received another letter from Ma Shiping. It shows both the strength of character this girl has, and how sad her situation is.
"Today, I am ending the first month [the month of confinement to one’s room after giving birth]. Am I the same person I used to be, after giving birth ? Whether it is because of how I feel, or because of my situation - I’m certainly not the same today as before. I think I have really understood that if one wants to have a good life, it is better not to feel anything at all.
At the moment when my life went dark, you sent me a letter that was like a burning candle. When I was worried because I had no milk for my baby, you brought me happiness. Your arrival brought nourishment into my life and it made me have enough milk to give her. You have not only helped me in material terms but also spiritually. The love you have shown me, and Aunt He’s [He Yanping’s, the translator’s] attitude, have softened their [her parent’s in law’s] mentality, which is to privilege the boys and to hold girls cheap. You know, after I had taken leave from the god of death and come back to life, you were the first to visit me. When I heard [the day before] that you were coming to see me, I was so happy. I was so moved that I couldn’t sleep all night. But then the next day I couldn’t speak a single sentence. I only wanted to cry ; but I couldn’t cry either. I’m not a common girl. I can’t share my pain with you. I can only eat the bitter fruit myself.
Man has only one life, plants have only one summer. For my life, having met you is enough. I often hear people say that one is happy when one is content with what one has. Today, I am already seeing another Me coming to life. I don’t want her to follow my old path. She is my hope now. I want her to understand why people live in this world and why she has come into it.
At this season of giving thanks, I want to thank you because you gave a second life to my daughter, and also to myself : now I can live among them. But when the gift is too great, one doesn’t give thanks anymore. I can only wish happiness for your entire family from the sincerity of my heart ; pray for a good life for good people. If you have the time I hope very much that you can often come and visit me. Thank you."
A letter that allows us, perhaps, to see through the splendid Chinese decorations put up at this moment as France is celebrating the new lunar year in a spectacular manner, and welcoming the Chinese President here with a lot of pomp and circumstance ...I would not want to conclude on such a sad note, though. Let me remind you that Ma Shiping’s younger sister is the recipient of a bursary from the Association, and that we will do as much as we can to help her avoid the same fate as her older sister’s. Our small gestures weigh very heavy here.
Best wishes

Pierre Haski

 

 

 

 

Letter 18 - September 2003


Hello
The beginning of the new school year has indeed been full of events. To begin with the coming out of Ma Yan’s Diary in Chinese, and a trip to Beijing by Ma Yan and her mother for the launch of the book : it is published by a private Chinese publishing company (which had to go through a state publishing house to get the book out on the market, though). The book contains the entire diary, the foreword and part of the accompanying documentary text of the French edition. Actually, some of the French texts would make no sense in a book intended for Chinese readers.
On the other hand, a Postscript has been added, to narrate subsequent events over the past year, in France and Europe as well as in China. No censorship at all has taken place, and the editor only asked that one word and one phrase in the foreword and postscript be toned down. This was done without changing the essential meanings of the sentences.
The launch of the book was a powerful moment. I brought some friends in Beijing together, friends who are sympathetically observing or even actively supporting our initiative. This launch party was also attended by many visitors to China, such as the French delegation at the Beijing book fair, including french publisher Antoine Gallimard, intrigued by the return to China of an originally Chinese text that first appeared in France. Li Zhensheng, the ‘photographer of the Cultural Revolution’, whose photographs are currently being exhibited at the Hôtel de Sully in Paris, was stopping over at Beijing and also came to meet Ma Yan...
The following day, on 20 September, there was an encounter with the Chinese press and a group of children from Beijing, at the Chinese publisher’s initiative. It was a very emotional moment when Ma Yan began to tell the story of one of her cousin who had to break off her school education at the age of 16 and was married by force by her family, and who is now already pregnant. Ma Yan read out to the journalists the correspondence which I had already passed on to you in translation in a recent letter, and which can be found in the postscript of the chinese edition of the book.
Herself in tears, Ma Yan explained to what degree she feared the mere word ‘marriage’ today, and publicly thanked us for allowing her to escape this fate. Half of the journalists were in tears, too, and they gave her a resounding applause. Ma Yan, her mother and I also arranged for an appearance on Chinese Central Television (CCTV), which will be broadcast at the beginning of October, during the general vacation the national holiday on 1 October. On this occasion, too, quite strong things were said, even though the interviewing host steered the conversation more off into the direction of ‘fairytale’ and away from the reality in poor rural areas...
This strong media coverage and the coming out of the book itself, with a first print run of 50,000 copies and at a fairly low price of 16 Yuan RMB (less than two Euro), give our initiative a welcome boost and will assuredly help us with our projects. But most importantly, this will allow us to feed into the debate on education of the poorest in society which is currently ongoing in China ; for even though many journalists are mainly interested in the anecdotal aspects of this adventure, the social background against which it happened remains always present.
And the story happened just at a moment when a public debate on this subject has taken off in China, even though one cannot yet discern any signs of a change in direction on the part of the Chinese government. I well recall the statements made by a special rapporteur to the UN on the right to education only a few days earlier. The rapporteur severely criticised the meagreness of public expenditure on educational matters in Chinese (just over 2% of the GDP, when Unesco is recommending 6%, ad the former Chinese prime minister had promised to go up to 4% by the year 2000 !)
Ma Yan and her mother have returned to their village with their minds full of memories of Beijing, and happy to have been able to share their emotions, as well as to share the story of the fate of the children of Ningxia, with some inhabitants of the great Chinese cities.
HERMES. On quite a different level, the french luxury goods firm Hermès conducted sales in Beijing on 20 September, the profit of which had been dedicated to our Association. These sales have been a big success, and should yield a considerable though as yet uncertain sum supporting our initiative. The date of the sales event accidentally fell on the day of the coming out of the book, and therefore Ma Yan and her mother came to see showroom. It was a strange way of being plunged into the world of luxury - a cultural shock, albeit one turned to a good purpose of solidarity. Thanks, at any rate, go to Bertrand Michaud, the director of Hermès in Hongkong, for his initiative.
BURSARIES. The beginning of the new school year in September has passed off well in Ningxia and has allowed us again to increase the number of bursary recipients, thanks to the increase of funds of the Association, which is happening slowly but surely. 56 bursaries were distributed, compared to around forty last semester, it being understood that when we grant a bursary, we undertake to grant it for the entire duration of the recipient’s studies, however long that is.
The money was sent by postal order directly to the families, and Ma Yan’s mother has just called us to tell us that people were dancing in the streets of the village, the money having just arrived. Several other mothers have also rung us to tell us that we ‘saved’ their family by this transfer. On the other hand, too, we received an avalanche of letters from children asking also to be supported through bursaries over the following few days : the needs are, as one knows, still immense. We will try to get to the village during the next few weeks, in order to see if some of these cases can be sorted out, but it is difficult to take any action based on just a letter.
Some delays, however, are occurring as regards the equipment for the computer room. The construction of the new building, which had begun the previous year, was interrupted during the SARS outbreak, and has still not been resumed, as the government suspended its transfers of funding. It is difficult for us to send the computers into an environment where they would be exposed to dust and adverse climatic conditions, and would not last long. This is yet another reason why we have to head for the village in order to see for ourselves how to get round this obstacle.
A similar difficulty has arisen with regard to the solar panels donated by a Chinese company : there are currently no shower rooms for which the panels could be used, and indeed the roofs of the current buildings would collapse if they were installed upon them. In this respect too, choices will have to be made.
So here you have some updates on a new school year which has brought some by no means unimportant events and developments. There will not fail to be big fallout from the coming out of the book in Chinese. The story will be followed up...
Best wishes
Pierre Haski

 

 

Letter 15 - May 2003

Hello,
The SARS nightmare is in the process of abating, allowing us to envisage a return to normality in the next few weeks. Hongkong and Canton have already received the green light from the World Health Organisation (WHO), while Beijing, after more than a month of the epidemic, is registering a decrease in the number of new cases and can foresee its ‘liberation’ by the WHO in a few weeks. The rest of the country remains uncertain : the much debated contamination of the countryside does not seem to have occurred on a great scale, but the state of the rural health system being what it is, caution is still required.
What is certain is that the whole country has been touched by psychosis and the fear of the virus, that the preventive measures have involved the closure of public institutions everywhere, including schools, as well as the isolation of villages and small towns. Ningxia was no exception, and the School of Yuwang was closed for more than two weeks and the children sent back home as a preventive measure. Our friends in Ningxia were as worried about us in Beijing as we were about them... To be sure, if the epidemic reached this region where our activity takes place, it only appeared briefly, at a time when security was already in place, as opposed to what happened here in Beijing.
We received a lot of mail from the bursary holders of the Association expressing concern regarding our health in Beijing. We also received a very kind letter from Ma Yan which we quote below in full :
“Dear Uncle and Aunt (my assistant He Yanping and myself),
Hello, how is your health, does your work proceed well, we think about you very often, we worry about you, and hope that you take care of your health.
I have seen that the war in Iraq has just ended, the torments of the Iraqi people are over. Just when one stops hearing about that war, a phantom called ‘atypical pneumonia’ [SARS]arrives on the scene. A few days ago, I was not afraid of it, and I did not know much about it, but since the holiday on the 1st of May, I have been following the daily news closely, and I saw that everybody was wearing masks. It was only then that I grasped the seriousness of the SARS outbreak. I hope, Uncle and Aunt, that you are very careful when travelling, especially when you travel for reporting purposes.
On TV they explained the ways in which you can combat SARS, and they explained that on no account must one be afraid of it, that we can beat it. But I have heard that in a village close to here one man caught the pneumonia, and that he was taken by his family to the hospital to be treated. I am scared. SARS really does spread too quickly ! Before I thought that it was only in the big cities, the places where there is a high population density, that SARS could spread ; I did not think that it could appear in remote little villages, I am really very frightened. But I think that mankind will beat SARS, that one day we will be rid of it.
Uncle and Aunt, I hope that you take good care of your health, that you do not worry, especially about us, we are all well for the time being. I got good results at the mid-term exams, please be reassured.
I hope there will be many flowers for the start of the season, that you are both cheerful. Among the four seasons it’s spring that counts the most ! I hope you are rejuvenated day by day. I wish you good health, and that your work goes well.
Ma Yan
4th May 2003.”
After this letter we spoke to Ma Yan’s mother on the phone and we set their minds at rest. The fact that the High School was able to open its doors again a few days ago is the sign of a gradual return to normality.
Xiao Mei, a bursary holder of the Association, also wrote to us a few days earlier in the same spirit. “The last time I phoned you, you asked me if I had any news of the pneumonia. At the time I replied : I know that it definitely hasn’t reached here. You immediately laughed. That laughter was very pleasant to hear.
“Since then, the population here panicked because of the pneumonia. People do not dare go to the hospital, students do not dare to cough during lessons, one goes red in the face with the effort of holding it back, because the teacher said that if anyone has a dry cough he must go back home to get well, and wait till he stops coughing before attending lessons again. And now we are ‘on vacation’ but no-one knows what this vacation is any more !
“I tried to taste the medicine. The first time I was in tears, and I was very unwilling to swallow it. Until then, I had never taken plant-based medicine, I really wanted to throw up, but mum ordered me not to disobey. My mother, who loves us, is worried that we will catch SARS. She spent so much money to buy medicines, that if we don’t take them it would be like ignoring all that she does for love of us.”
Besides the epidemic, the social difficulties of the poorest people have obviously not disappeared, because though the government has declared that treatment for SARS will be free, the same does not apply to other illnesses. Xiao Mei explains in her letter that, having lost her father last year, she now worries about her mother’s health. She writes :
“Yesterday, because she was not feeling well, my mother went for a check-up at the Doctor Li’s, she might have caught hepatitis. I am very frightened of losing my mother as well : for my dad’s treatment we have already borrowed 10,000 Yuan (1,200 euros), and because of her illness, mum is always taking medicine. I am scared that we will lose her forever. What should I do ? How should I act ? I really do not know. Who can explain ? Why do I have to live through the loss of my parents year in year out ? Why ?
“And I am sorry, but I haven’t done well in my mid-term exams. I got 88 in Chinese, 79 in Maths, 77 in Physics, 63 in English. I am really very sorry, I know that it is not enough to apologise, that you will be disappointed. But I hope that you will give me another chance. Now I am making an effort to improve, I am studying a lot in order to do well in the final exams. It is not only to deserve your help. It is also for love of Mum and for the teacher’s dedication.”
This letter, like many others which we receive almost daily, illustrates the extremely difficult situation of the region. The SARS reveals all the problems, as we explained in the last letter. Even though one hopes that it will motivate a change of governmental politics vis-à-vis the least favoured regions and populations, one must not put one’s hopes up too much... Our activity, modest though it is, must go on. And we hope to resume it as soon as possible.
Regards,
Pierre Haski.

P.S. The Diary of Ma Yan is now in the bookstores in the Netherlands and Italy. And at the end of the year it will be published also in China itself. Many Chinese publishers have shown an interest, and we have entered into an agreement with one of them who seemed to offer the most serious guarantees.