Bilingual education in Guangxi bridges tradition, development

World
Europe

Each week, 68-year-old Huang Tianheng travels 12 kilometers uptown to teach a group of children wearing colorful traditional clothes to sing songs in Zhuang, a language used by China's ethnic minority, the Zhuang people.

The choir at Qingle Elementary School, located in Nanning, capital of south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, has toured across China, and some members have even performed in Paris.

The Zhuang people have one of the largest ethnic minority populations in China, and most of them live in Guangxi, which has 11 native ethnic minority groups, with a total population of 20 million.

China has made efforts to preserve the languages and traditions of ethnic minorities while achieving development by pushing for bilingual education in the region.

Wuming District, where the elementary school is located, is the birthplace of Zhuang culture. Huang used to be the head of the local culture center before his retirement.

Teachers and students play traditional Duoye Dance of Zhuang people in Liushilu Primary School in Liuzhou, Guangxi, south China, December 4, 2018. /VCG Photo

Now, teaching local children Zhuang culture has become his new job. At the Qingle Elementary School, bilingual education started as early as the 1980s. A total of 330 students in the school are being taught in both languages.

Efforts to preserve the Zhuang language started decades ago. In 1952, the State Council, China's cabinet, approved a plan to preserve the language. In 1982, Guangxi released a scheme for the Zhuang writing system based on 26 Latin letters, bringing standardization to the Zhuang's written language.

More recently, in August, the region implemented regulations to increase the usage of the Zhuang language in public areas and step up bilingual education and the training of bilingual teachers.

Apart from Zhuang, Guangxi has also opened bilingual courses in elementary and middle school for the Jing people, which has a population of around 20,000.

"With these efforts, Jing's ethnic language has been better preserved and more young people can speak and write in the language," said Su Weifang, head of the Jing language and cultural inheritance center in the Guangxi city of Dongxing.

Local statistics show that there are 269 bilingual schools in Guangxi covering almost all Zhuang populated counties and prefectures, with more than 140,000 students.

Traditional costumes are on display at the museum of Menggong Ethnic Middle School in Guigang, Guangxi, south China, December 4, 2018. /VCG Photo‍

As China's economy took off in the last four decades, many ethnic minorities are learning Mandarin to get better education and job opportunities.

"Learning Mandarin is like mastering a skill to fight poverty," said Pan Jifeng, a Yao woman who lives in a Yao village in the tourist city of Guilin.

Her village receives around 400,000 to 500,000 tourists each year, and each household is granted more than 10,000 yuan (1,400 U.S. dollars) in dividend from the ticket revenue alone.

"Speaking Mandarin has helped boost local development. It works like a bridge to enable communication between ethnic minorities and the outside world," said Huang.

Local statistics show that 84 percent of the Guangxi population can now speak Mandarin.

"Bilingual education can help students get in touch with modern knowledge and inherit their native culture," said Wei Songhao, a Zhuang language teacher at Qingle.

(Cover: Students play the Kam Grand Choirs at the playground in a local school in Liujiang, Guangxi, south China, November 9, 2018. /VCG Photo)

Source(s): Xinhua News Agency