King Long Mobile Library Van: A Book and Hope Carrier

As the economic development of the East and West China features imbalanced, the pairing cooperation between Fujian and Ningxia has been implemented for 20 consecutive years. On the basis of long-term cooperation between the two regions, the King Long and the Xiamen Municipal Red Cross Society cooperated to launch the King Long Mobile Library (hereinafter referred to as “Mobile Library”) project by the end of 2015 and determined Guyuan, Ningxia as one of the destinations.

By the end of 2016, a new book-lending mode emerged as the Mobile Library arrived at Yuanzhou District, Guyuan City along with the 30,000 books. Early in April 2017, the Xiamen Municipal Red Cross Society paid an investigation visit to the Mobile Library stationed in Yuanzhou District with King Long to investigate operation situation of the Mobile Library.

There are two operation modes over the Mobile Library: the local library is responsible for the daily management and operation of the Mobile Library and regularly sends books to the countryside schools by library vans, bringing existing books in the Mobile Library into active use on the one hand and ensuring the stable books supply for these schools on the other hand; alternatively, the local education bureau or the people’s government of local town or township is responsible for the daily management and operation, and assists local schools in setting up small-size library with collected books and facilitates the books exchange among schools by advantage of mobile library vans. The later operation mode is adopted in the Yuanzhou District.

As a national key district for poverty alleviation and development, Yuanzhou District features financial straits and mainly relies on subsidization of national finance as its financial revenue does not reach the quota of township set by the Central Government yet. Yuanzhou has a total of 253 schools with 76,000 students or so. Although hardware facilities of major schools have been greatly improved in recent years, quality extracurricular reading materials have been still insufficient and far from meet the reading demands of students.

According to such features as wide distribution, large span and high quality difference among schools in the district, the Yuanzhou District Education Bureau comprehensively numbers these collected 30,000 books and divides them into two parts: part of books are irregularly sent to different schools in the form of mobile library; the remained books are distributed to various schools in the form of cherish library or special bookcase in the existing library. Those books placed on the bookcase will be regularly changed. By now, the small-sized libraries have been set up in 30 schools. Meanwhile, Yuanzhou District Education Bureau suggests all schools to regularly host diversified reading activities and thereby let students to understand that the knowledge can broaden our vision and the view can therefore shape our future.

As the largest Hui Autonomous Region of China, Guyuan has many students of Hui nationality. Due to backward economy, a large number of residents are away from home for industrial work and thus leave a large number of left-behind children among plenty of students of Hui nationality in the Third Primary School in Sanying Town. The Third Primary School establishes the home for left-behind children and thereby erases their loneliness and improves their studies and lives, letting them feel at home.

Those reading materials brought by the Mobile Library are neatly placed on the most obvious bookcase in the school library. Books register, hand-writing newspapers, reviews and reading reports created by students after joining in the reading activities are bound in a volume and neatly placed together by teachers.