Field notes

Social value is difficult to measure with numbers alone.

In 2025, China's central government allocated 177 billion yuan in subsidies for rural revitalization, while public budget spending on education nationwide reached 4.34 trillion yuan. The Special Posts Plan also intended to recruit 20,976 teachers for rural schools, prioritizing areas and subjects with greater needs.

These figures sketch a broad picture of education and rural development. They cannot tell us how a class begins, why a question goes unanswered, or how an encounter changes the people in it.

People and the stories of what actually happened often bring education into focus. We built this platform so hesitations, conflicts, disappointments, and moving moments need not simply disappear with time.

Yishu has long developed its “Mobile Youth Center” project, bringing young people into rural communities to lead creative and exploratory classes.

A week is a measure of time, yet it can hold feelings that last much longer. Memory cannot carry every passing thought: unanswered classroom questions, subtle distances between people, and things understood only after leaving.

Writing is not only for other readers. It gives us another chance to observe. A record brings us back to the setting and helps us examine our enthusiasm, judgments, and limits. Moments that seem to have passed can still shape how we grow.

In earlier Yishu projects, we offered fewer traditional sequences in language, mathematics, or English. Classes in drawing, music, making, and discussion often had more room for creativity, expression, and exchange.

A class cannot, and perhaps should not, be entirely decided by a lesson plan written in advance.

A plan offers a beginning. The direction of a class often emerges in its responses: the questions students ask, a sudden silence, a design that does not work, or an unexpected idea that opens a new path.

An education project is therefore not designed in one moment. It forms through interaction, then slowly finds its shape through observation, adjustment, and reflection.