Quest for hermitage spawns educational scheme in Yunnan

Growing up in Beijing, Li Yang was first drawn to the romantic idea of living like a hermit in the picturesque mountains of southwestern Yunnan , on the border with Myanmar. But chasing the dream opened another door for Li, now 30, and her husband, Dutch artist and linguist Dr Anton Lustig. They have started the Prop Roots education programme for children in a troubled area heavily affected by drugs and Aids.

We are about to finish building a two-storey house in a Jingpo mountain village in Dehong prefecture. It's a very interesting building, designed by an architect friend, mixing in features of local buildings such as bamboo. But its design was so delicate that we met countless problems in the process of building it. Sometimes construction workers couldn't read the design, sometimes they went on strike, and we were cheated several times when buying building materials. And after everything is settled, the rainy season has come. The final cost is about three times the budget. That reminds me of how difficult it is if you want to do something on your own, especially when you are in a completely strange environment.

It will serve as our education and activity centre for local Jingpo children. And we will also bring children from big cities in during summer or winter vacations and organise some camps together. Actually our programme has already started: we're currently co-operating with Yingpan Primary School in Xishan village in Dehong, teaching English and reading and writing. The extracurricular activities also include making handicrafts that are part of local tradition, which is vanishing very fast. We don't want to give the kids too much pressure, which is already quite heavy under the examination-oriented education system. Rather, the goal is to boost their self-confidence and deepen the kids' understanding and appreciation of their own ethnicity and native land, so that they won't feel bewildered when they grow into teenagers and will be able to resist the temptation of drugs.

The area is on the border of Yunnan and Myanmar. It looks like a picturesque place, but in reality, drug use is really rampant there. You can see slogans about fighting drugs and Aids prevention everywhere. There are no official statistics on how many people are using drugs, because it is deemed too sensitive. But about 8 per cent of kids there have become orphans, with their parents either being jailed for drug dealing or dying of Aids. And there are many "ghost villages" up there in the mountains - it's like they were frozen at a certain moment, with all the people having left or died. The teenagers in the Jingpo mountains are easily lured into drug use because they usually feel a sense of loss and have no idea what they can become in the future.