Ma Yan's diary
The Ma Yan (马燕 日记) diary describes the struggles and hopes of a Chinese schoolgirl in the countryside in the Ningxia Autonomous Region (宁夏), where parents have to pay for their children's school fees .
Ma Yan (马燕) tells about her school lessons (Chinese, English, music, sport ...) and reports about the corporal punishment that is still common in schools. It describes the hard life of hardship in the country in northwest China. When she was twelve, her dreams came to an end: her parents, very poor farmers, lacked the means to keep her going to school. In desperation, she writes down her grief in several notebooks.
The French journalist, Pierre Haski, at the time correspondent for the French daily newspaper " Liberation " in Beijing, who had to do a report in the area, received these booklets in 2001 from Ma Yan's mother. His assistant, He Yanping, did the translation. The notes were then published in France under the title “Le journal de Ma Yan” and later translated into 17 languages.
Enfants du Ningxia
The aid organization “Enfants du Ningxia” (EdN), which was set up as a result, now supports not only Ma Yan, but also more than 140 scholarship holders and continues to endeavor to collect donations for the scholarship holders in Ningxia through events . EdN offers three-month internships in Beijing. Ma Yan is now a student in Paris.
literature
- Ma, Yan, Pierre Haski The Diary of Ma Yan: The Struggles and Hopes of a Chinese Schoolgirl . HarperCollins 2005. ISBN 0060764961 . ISBN 9780060764968 .
- Alan Riding: A Chinese Girl's Diary Builds A Bridge Out of Rural Poverty . In: The New York Times , March 24, 2004.