The Diary of Ma Yan – the life of a Chinese schoolgirl - a book that had a profound impact on me

The Diary of Ma Yan – the life of a Chinese schoolgirl – transformed (edited and introduced by Pierre Haski, Virago 2002) had a profound impact on me. I came upon it by chance. I hadn’t even intended to go to the bookshop that day but I was passing during my lunch hour and decided to drop in. As usual I decided to browse the Biography section. I am always drawn to author or subject names that appear Chinese. I found a single copy of this book tucked away.

As the back cover says, this is a moving tale of a young girl who wants to overcome her impoverished existence and who prefers to go hungry so she can save for a pen.

By chance her story reached the world. In 2001 a French journalist Pierre Haski was visiting a remote region of north-western China. A peasant woman thrust into his hands pencil writings on seed packets and small notebooks. When he reached Beijing he had the writings translated and found they had been written by a 13 year old girl, Ma Yan, the peasant woman’s daughter. It contained a plea titled ‘I want to study’. Amazingly, although Ma Yan’s mother could not read the diary herself, she realised the importance of it and by handing it to a foreigner set in chain events that would transform her daughter’s and other people’s daughter’s lives.

A peasant family with 3 children they could not afford for all of them to go to school, so Ma Yan had been withdrawn so that her brothers could continue. The book clearly illustrates the life of poorly educated peasants – of the back breaking toil and struggle to provide the barest of necessities to sustain life.

Ma Yan’s burning desire to learn is clearly reflected in her writings. And the chance meeting of her mother and the journalist led to Ma Yan’s and many other being changed for the better.
The journalist published her story on his return to France and together with his readership raised enough money for Ma Yan and many other girls to go to school.

This book had a profound effect on me because it brought into focus just how hard life is for many people in China. The poverty line in China is less than USD$1 a week. It also brought into focus how difficult it for girls to receive an education. Still in this day and age educating a girl is a luxury and when resources are tight it is something that can be sacrificed. But as we know even in the West lack of education perpetuates the poverty cycle.

Education in China is not free – or sometimes it purports to be free but there are lots of extras that families have to pay for in order for the child to be educated.

So after reading this book my husband and I felt driven to sponsor girls in rural China to go to school. We were fortunate that on our return trip last year our daughter’s Chinese godmother helped us make contact with a group in our daughter’s hometown which runs a program for locals to sponsor children. With her help they agreed to allow two ‘waiguoren’ (foreigners) to participate – they had never been asked before.

Initially, we sponsored two girls who had been adopted locally and then when we returned home we found out about 3 girls, from the village that our daughter was found in, who needed sponsoring. So at the moment we sponsor the five girls. We get short letters from them (all in Chinese with the occasional English word) telling us about their lives and their studies. And in addition to the sponsorship money we send them small gifts and clothes.

It is created an amazing sense of connection between us and the area our daughter was from. We continue to support the orphanage through fundraising but this adds an extra dimension to our connection.

So a chance visit to a bookstore led me to a book about a girl desperately wanting to learn, that in turn opened my eyes it helping 5 young girls with the same burning desire.