i wrote about why I visited the school here on my academic blog, cultural bytes - Setting Up Fieldwork Site

I visited a school for children of migrant families in Wuhan, China. This school is government certified and currently has 800 students from 1st to 9th grade. Fees are 300RMB ($50) every semester (two semesters each quarter). The students are children of migrants. These students pay to go to school because their parents have taken them with them out of their village where school would’ve been free to the city where they are working without an official identity registration (hukou card). Without the hukou card, their children cannot gain access to any of the social services provided to residents of a city. Therefore several hundreds of these schools have been started independently by migrants throughout these migrant-receiving cities in China. These schools must charge a fee so that they can hire trained teachers, buy books, rent a classroom and perform administrative duties.

Here are some pictures below from my visit yesterday. I went during nap time so many of the students are sleeping in the photos. but once they woke up they couldn’t stop jumping! well maybe I couldn’t stop jumping :)

(writing from internet cafe, must write quick - lots of cig smoke)

I’m in Wuhan, China. Wuhan is the capital of Hubei Province. It is not an internationally known city like Shanghai or Beijing or even Shengzhen - but it is a city on the rise - a mega-city in the making.

If you were to go to a port city in China - you would hear lots of stories about how exports have totally fallen - shipment containers are empty - the whole world economy has slowed down. But if you come to the middle of China - you would hear a slightly different story. Industries are now moving inland, away from port cities. Inland cities in Wuhan are part of China’s transition away from being a primarily export country. There is a strong sense here the Chinese people are producing for the Chinese.

Wuhan is crass - Wuhan is noisy - Wuhan is changing - VERY quickly.

right now the entire city is under construction. A new subway system will be running by the end of 2009. China’s subway construction teams are world famous for their expertise in building entire subway systems in 2 weeks :) In Wuhan - the sidewalks are ripped up with food vendors selling boiled eggs and stinky tofu with twirling pink ribbons to keep the flies away (stinky tofu is the official name of the tofu because the smell is unbearable). Workers old and young, from government firms to rural village are working away 24 hours a day remaking the city.

Wuhan i’m in love with you!