Logos Review · Issue 1 (Spring 2026) · Special Topic: Education — Interview
Zheng Yajun Jun Liang
https://doi.org/10.64053/CFEP3019
Interviewer: Zheng Yajun
Hailing fFrom Zhangye, Gansu, Zheng Yajun. She graduated from the Department of Sociology and the Institute of Higher Education at Fudan University with a Bachelor of Laws and a Master of Education, respectively. She is a doctoral candidate at the Faculty of Education, The University of Hong Kong. Her main research interests are educational equity and student development from the perspective of cultural sociology. She is the author of After the Gold List: The Puzzle of Diverging Paths for University Students.
I. Starting from the Classroom, Entering an Ethnic Community
Yajun: You taught in Shimenkan. What are your personal impressions of that In your heart, what kind of place is that land?
Liang Jun: I taught at a village primary school in Shimen Township, Weining County, Guizhou, from 2012 to 2015, for a period of two years. Shimen Township, formerly known as Shimenkan, is located deep in the Wumeng Mountains on the border of Yunnan and Guizhou. At an altitude of 2,200 meters, it is a typical high-altitude, cold mountain region.
Whether in official documents or folk ballads, the perils and poverty of the Wumeng Mountains are well recorded: “The winding paths are ten times harder than the roads of Shu,” “It only warms in the third month, and snow flies in the ninth,” “Plant a whole slope, harvest just one pot.” These words are not only a portrayal of life in Shimenkan but also my own visceral experience of that land.
Yajun: When you first went to Shimenkan to volunteer, what goals and expectations did you have?
Liang Jun: Before going to Shimenkan, I read several books: Zhang Tan’s Shimenkan Before the Narrow Gate, the missionary Samuel Pollard’s diary In Unknown China, and A Century of Rise and Fall of Shimenkan Culture by Shen Hong, Shen Congwen’s granddaughter. These books gave me an initial picture of Shimenkan’s century-long history and also made me start paying attention to the long and arduous history of migration and exile of the Big Flowery Miao ethnic group. Gradually, my curiosity about Shimenkan and the Big Flowery Miao grew stronger. I didn’t just want to be a teacher there; I wanted to see what Shimenkan is like now. What kind of life do the Big Flowery Miao live today?
Although my role was that of a teacher, my real interest was the community of Shimenkan and the Big Flowery Miao people. I hoped that my teaching would not be confined to the classroom but would be built on an understanding of and respect for the community and its people. At that time, I thought: If possible, I would be willing to stay in this village for ten years, to walk alongside accompany these children for ten years. Because I believe that human growth requires a deep investment of time the immersion of time, for both students and teachers.
II. Rural Education is an Encounter Between People
Yajun: Who were the children you taught? What were their circumstances?
Liang Jun: The “Xinzhong Primary School” where I taught was established through a collaboration between a non-governmental organization and the government, specifically for the Miao children living on the mountaintops deep in the Wumeng Mountains. The students came from two Miao villages, “Xinying” and “Zhongzhai,” belonging to the Big Flowery Miao branch of the Miao ethnic group. Most of the students were Big Flowery Miao, with some from the Yi and Han ethnic groups as well.
The ancient songs of the Big Flowery Miao say that their ancestors were the remnants of Chiyou’s forces, defeated in the Central Plains. After a thousand years of exile and migration, they eventually hid in the Wumeng Mountains, becoming tenant farmers for the Yi people and settling on their land. During the year I volunteered, many villagers still lived in thatched huts and subsisted on farming. Apart from essential needs, they had almost no contact with the outside world. The young people who could speak simple Mandarin began to leave for work, mostly doing the hardest and most dangerous jobs on urban construction sites or becoming workers on assembly lines. The children basically did not speak Mandarin before entering school. Most villagers had never attended school; an elementary school education was considered a high level of education.
Their predicament does not simply stem from inaccessibility due to is not as simple as “high mountains and distant roads,” nor from is it merely economic poverty. On a deeper level, it is the cultural alienation caused by their ethnic history of exile and social marginalization. This predicament weighs heavily on the path of the children’s growth and stands as a barrier before educators.
Yajun: How do you view the difficulties faced by the children? Can education respond to these challenges?
Liang Jun: On the one hand, the Big Flowery Miao of the Wumeng Mountains are indeed different from those living in cities. We live in cities with convenient transportation and ubiquitous internet, with higher incomes, better medical care, and educational resources. This is a tangible gap. But on the other hand, our own predicaments are also real. They are trapped in the mountains; we are trapped in cities of steel and concrete. They can’t get out, and we are suffocated by mortgages, car loans, academic pressure, and workplace anxiety. They find it hard to change their destiny; we often feel that our lives are not our own.
On the surface, we live in a “modern society,” but much of the time, we are just living in another form of “siege.” Their difficulties come more from the weight of geography and history; our difficulties are hidden in the anxieties of real life and the confinement of our inner worlds. I have always remained reserved about whether education can truly respond to these predicaments. Because I know that leavingwalking out of the mountains does not mean truly leaving a lifewalking out of difficulty. I myself am someone who moved walked from the mountains into the city, and I know full well that the city does not necessarily hold the answers.
So what I could do was not to “solve” anything, but to return to the mountains and, together with the Big Flowery Miao community, slowly explore a path out of their predicament. On this path, I am not anyone’s “instructor,” but a fellow traveler. Although I knew I couldn’t respond to all their difficulties, in terms of education and companionship, I was still willing to respond a little, to do a little. Change always starts with small individuals, and I was willing to be that start. This is also why I left the city to volunteer as a teacher in the countryside.
Yajun: From the villagers’ perspective, what expectations do they have for their children’s education? And what do they expect from teachers?
Liang Jun: The expectations of most villagers are very simple. They hope their children can learn Mandarin well. Having language skills means they can leave the mountains in the future, go out to work, earn money, and improve their lives. Some parents with an elementary school education hope their children will study more. In their eyes, studying more means no longer having to farm and being able to find a decent job in the city.
As for their expectations of teachers, one experience left a particularly deep impression on me. That time, a few other teachers and I walked for four or five hours, crossing a valley in the rainy night, climbing over cliffs, and wading through water to visit the children’s old homes in Yiliang, Yunnan. Along the way, I couldn’t help but think, why are we enduring this hardship? But when we arrived at that Big Flowery Miao village, which no teacher had ever visited before, it all became worthwhile.
The entire village invited us into their homes. One student’s mother said to me, “Our home is dirty and messy, but my child says you are very good to him, and we really wanted you to come and sit for a while.” She was illiterate, yet she expressed the most simple expectation of many Big Flowery Miao parents: that the teachers would genuinely care for and love their children. And the way they felt this “love” was also very simple—as long as the teacher was willing to cross mountains and rivers to visit their home, that was sincerity, that was love.
During those two years, we went to the villages every few days, often visiting the homes of the local people—attending weddings and funerals, celebrating new birthswelcoming new life, sending off departed souls with songs, listening to ancient legends and ballads from the elders, and running freely and singing loudly with the children in the mountains. In our interactions with the villagers and children, we got to know each other, understand each other, and influence each other. This made me realize that education doesn’t begin at the teacher’s podium; it grows from the warm interactions between people.
III. The Wumeng Mountains: An Experimental Field for Free Teaching
Yajun: What kind of insights did your teaching experience in the Wumeng Mountains leave you with?
Liang Jun: Being a teacher in the Wumeng Mountains allowed me to let go of my sense of superiority and control over knowledge, and it also prompted me to learn how to walk alongside the Big Flowery Miao people, who have a vastly different cultural background. In this process, I had to deeply confront two questions: “How do I to become a teacher?” and “What kind of teacher should Ito become?” The former relates to professional ability—how to use appropriate methods to effectively transmit knowledge. The latter is actually about one’s personality a person’s warmth—as a teacher, what kind of person am I? My worldview, thoughts, character, and behavior all quietly influence every child and every villager I come into contact with. I realized that whether it’s the improvement of my professional skills or my self-growth as “what kind of person,” every bit of my growth would quietly drive the growth of the children.
Yajun: Many teachers now say they feel like “workers on a teaching assembly line” and find no joy in teaching. Do you also have this feeling?
Liang Jun: Teaching deep in the Wumeng Mountains was the happiest time of my life. That place was probably the freest experimental field for teaching in the entire country—“the mountains are high and the emperor is far away;” the central education bureau’s reach is limited. I was able to conduct educational experiments freely, explore with peace of mind, and fully enjoy the pleasure of teaching itself. The joy of being a teacher lies in enjoying freedom.
Yajun: In your view, the Wumeng Mountains were a land of educational freedom. What freedoms did you enjoy in your teaching? What specific explorations and practices did you undertake? Why is teaching autonomy in teaching so important?
Liang Jun: The Wumeng Mountains were a Peach Blossom Spring for teachers because the teachers at Xinzhong Primary School truly had educational autonomy.
First, I had the right to choose what not to teach. In Taking the Chinese language class, for as an example, I removed the preachy, unrealistic, meaningless, and unaesthetic texts from the textbook, thereby simplifying it. I could also skip the moral education class, bypassing those empty and boring “five-star education” lessons.
Second, I had the right to decide what to teach. Inspired by Teacher Ding Cikuang’s Primary School Couplets from Jiaotong University Affiliated Primary School, I compiled my own poetry teaching materials based on the children’s actual situation, nurturing their young hearts and stimulating their sense for the Chinese language with nursery rhymes, ancient poems, rhymed verses, and modern poetry. Drawing on the experience of the famous teacher Gu Zhouqun from Jiangsu and Zhejiang, I started a “read-write-draw” course—one classic picture book each week, covering reading, writing, and drawing to enhance the children’s interest in learning and their aesthetic ability. We also had a drama class, rehearsing one classic play each semester and touring it throughout the school. The Miao children have a natural love for singing, so I composed music for ancient poems, using song to open up their poetic sensibility.
Furthermore, due to the shortage of teachers in the Wumeng Mountains, I was forced to become an all-subject teacher. Therefore, I was able to freely reconstruct the classroom.
I could quickly go through the textbook in a month, integrating my self-compiled poetry teaching and “singing ancient poems” into daily practice, reading aloud and singing as we pleased. I could also suspend classes for two weeks to focus on rehearsing and performing a play. I could walk into the mountains at any time, reading poetry in the shade of the trees and singing under the white clouds. I could also lead the children in free and authentic reading and writing every day. When the unified exams approached, I would help the children focus on drilling questions, helping them understand the logic of the exams and improve their scores.
In the city, the education system is like a precision machine, and teachers are often just one of many cogsa cog within it. Too many constraints make it difficult for teachers to be autonomous. They are limited by the system, trapped by the evaluation system, and gradually lose their initiative as “educators,” becoming mere tools. But in the mountains, in this land far from the system and community intervention, I could both design the curriculum and truly encourage accompany the children’s growth. And it is precisely because of this teaching freedom that the children, even in a resource-poor environment, still retained their imagination, emotions, and creativity.
Yajun: You mentioned that the children in the mountains still maintained their imagination, emotions, and creativity. In what specific ways was this apparentwas this manifested? In the teaching process, what achievements impressed you the most? Did maintaining imagination, emotions, and creativity somehow run counter to achieving good conflict with exam scores?
Liang Jun: After two years of teaching, there were three visible results:
First, we compiled and published a collection of the children’s writings, titled A Peach Blossom Spring in the Wumeng Mountains. These words bear witness to the children’s imagination, emotions, and creativity.
Second, the ancient poem “Moss,” which we repeatedly sang in athe unlit classroom that lacked electricity, was later performed on the CCTV program Everlasting Classics, moving countless people.
Third, during my two years of teaching, the children’s Chinese language scores consistently ranked at the top in the township’s unified exams, even though our teaching methods were not exam-oriented.
These achievements were not my initial goals, but they bear witness to the children’s real growth and also prove a possibility: when rural education is rooted in understanding and respect for the community and its people, and on this basis, teachers have the freedom and right to explore suitable methods of teaching and partnershipcompanionship methods, if the soil is free and the nourishment is appropriate, even in a high, cold place like the Wumeng Mountains, children can sprout, grow, blossom, and bear fruit.
IV. Leaving and Lingering After Losing Freedom
Yajun: You originally planned to commit to ten years of education in the Wumeng Mountains. Why did you only stay for two? What were the reasons behind it?
Liang Jun: The state was promoting the “school consolidation” policy, and many rural teaching stations points were being merged into the central schools in the townships. Our Xinzhong Primary School was on the list to be consolidated. On the other hand, this school was initially a “private school” founded with private funds. Although it operated under the supervision of the education bureau, it had always maintained a certain degree of autonomy, such as being able to recruit its own teachers and explore its own teaching methods. But with the strengthening of government finances and the improvement of transportation infrastructureconditions, the policy required such private schools to gradually become public. Once it became public, we would lose our original educational autonomy, and many educational experiments could no longer continue. In that kind of institutional environment, staying meant we could no longer pursue do the kind of teaching education we wanted to do. So, we could only choose to leave.
Yajun: Your rural education work in the Wumeng Mountains was just beginning to show results, but it was forced to stop due to external factorsobjective reasons. Do you feel regretful about this? Looking back on this experience, what are your thoughts?
Liang Jun: From a teaching perspective, I don’t feel any regret. Because once you lose the freedom to teach, a teacher is like a chef without his knife, a clever housewife without rice, a soldier without his gun—even with all your effort, you can’t truly teach well. In Shimenkan, we once had that freedom, and when that freedom was no longer there, leaving became the inevitable choice.
What I truly couldn’t let go of was the deep emotional connection established with the Big Flowery Miao community over those two years. Talking and laughing with the children in the classroom, running together on the playground, visiting the homes of the local people in the evening to chat… This kind of real connection between people is the part I miss the most.
Furthermore, teaching in the Wumeng Mountains gave me a sense of value I had never experienced before. Our society often talks about how “he who excels in study can become an official,” encouraging people to achieve so-called “personal value” through studying, working, earning money, and establishing themselves in the city. But for me personally, during those years of striving in the city after coming from the mountains, I rarely felt inner satisfaction. The struggle brought not meaning, but continuous anxiety.
It wasn’t until I let go of the frantic pursuit of personal value and entered the Wumeng Mountains, working and living in that largely neglectedalmost-ignored ethnic community, that I had this strong realization:felt for the first time, so strongly: it turns out my knowledge and abilities can directly serve a real community, and in this process, generate true impactrelease true energy. This sense of value is not about boasting of achievements, but about nourishing life. This experience changed me and became the foundation for the rest of my life.
V. Echoes of Volunteer Teaching: New Actions and Missions
Yajun: After leaving Shimenkan and returning to the city, what new explorations and practices have you undertaken in the field of education?
Liang Jun: This year marks the tenth year since I left Shimenkan. In the past decade, I have become a book creator. I compiled the classroom writings and drawings of the children that I had kept from those years into a book, publishing A Peach Blossom Spring in the Wumeng Mountains. These words and pictures from deep in the mountains are a true testament—moss flowers may be as small as grains of rice, but they too bloom like peonies. For me, this is the hope that education has given me: the smallest individual has his unique value and deserves to be seen.
In the unlit classrooms of the Wumeng Mountains, I sang ancient poems with the children of the Big Flowery Miao. Those melodies that awakened their poetic nature were not buried by time. Over these ten years, I have slowly re-selected, composed, and arranged the poems we sang back then into a set of poetic education materials for “setting poems to music”—Sing! Nursery Rhymes, Sing! Ancient Poems, Sing! Song Dynasty PoemsCi, Sing! The Book of Songs, and Sing! Music Bureau Poems. I hope that by singing in a relaxed way, the beauty of the Chinese language can enter the hearts of more children.
A portion of the funds from selling the books I have invested in the “Moss Fund,” using this platform to support rural education. I also participate myself, going into schools in both cities and the countryside, leading teachers and students to “set poems to music” together, using song to alleviate the children’s academic pressure and also to let them find ease and joy in poetry.
Yajun: In these ten years, have you revisited Shimenkan? How are the Big Flowery Miao children you once taught doing now? Looking back at your time in the Wumeng Mountains, what impact did your educational practice have on the children? And what is worth reflecting on?
Liang Jun: In these ten years, except during the pandemic, I have returned to Shimenkan every year, back to Xinying and Zhongzhai, staying in the homes of the local people. Sometimes I go alone, sometimes with my family. After going so many times, my daughter and son have become friends with my students, playing with their children. Our The friendship continues is continuing; our the journey together has not endedstopped.
Overall, the children have learned the language well and have the ability to interact with the wider society. Most of them went on to junior high school. One just got into university this year, studying to be a teacher. He says he wants to be a teacher in the future. He is the only university student from this community to attend university in many years. Several others went to vocational high schools, but many reported that they “couldn’t learn anything,” feeling it was a waste of time and tuition, and that it would have been better to go to work in a factory earlier. More people chose to go to the city to work. I did a survey, and the men usually have only two choices: one is to erect scaffolding on construction sites, and the other is to work on an assembly line in a coastal factory, working twelve hours a day. Those who can’t stand it work for a few months, earn some money, and go back to the village to have fun, then go out again when they’re out of money. Those who can endure it repeat the same monotonous actions day after day on the assembly line. Many girls get married early and stay in the village to raise children.
Over the past decade, my interaction with the Big Flowery Miao community has spanned both teaching and life. Ten years later, the current situation of the children makes me reflect: what is the education that ethnic minorities in the mountains truly need? The children’s lives have improved, and they have left the mountains, but many are still trapped: trapped in vocational high schools, trapped in universities, trapped in small Western-style houses in scenic Miao villages, trapped on construction sites and in factories, trapped in marriages. From this perspective, our education back then had a minimal impact on them. Having left the mountains, they may have fallen into a deeper predicament.
After years of thought and reflection, this year I have started exploring a new ideaa new exploration in rural education—starting a business with small farmers in the mountains to promote rural education through commerce.
Yajun: You’re starting a business with small farmers in the mountains. What does this have to do with rural education?
Liang Jun: Because of my volunteer teaching, I formed a deep bond with the ethnic groups in the high mountains. Over the years, besides the Wumeng Mountains, I have also visited many mountain villages in western Yunnan, making meeting more friends and learning about their lives and communities. The local people often say to me, “Teacher Liang, if you could help us sell our agricultural products, I wouldn’t have to go to the city to work, and I could stay in the village with my children.” This sentence constantly reminds me: if there were a way out, who would want to go to construction sites or factories? If they can earn money in the village, their children can have the companionship of their parents—this is precisely the starting point of rural education.
After several years of studying these communities community investigation, this year I started a business with the villagers in a Lisu ethnic village. This place has high-quality wild tea resources and can produce excellent black tea, but the villagers lack the skills to grow and commercialize teathe tea-making skills. I collaborated with community youth leaders and experienced tea masters to establish a small workshop in the village, both producing tea and training young people to master the skills, promoting the intergenerational transmission of these skills within the community.
At the same time, I launched the brand “Discovery of Moss,” aiming to create an enterprise that has both social value and sustainable profitability. Our mission is to enhance the production capacity of small farmers and bring the ecological, healthy, and authentic agricultural products from the deep mountains to the market. This is my new mission in rural education: in the next ten years, to make money together with the local people, so that the number of families with migrant workers decreases and the number of reunited families increases. I also hope that the good products and craftsmanship of the village will be passed down in these mountainous regions from generation to generation mountains. This is a rural youth vocational education practice that aims for sustainability by utilizing with commercial practices as well as at its core, adopting a master-apprentice an apprenticeship system.
This is a new journey of walking together with the high-mountain ethnic groups. Walking together is a form of mutually fulfilling education, and it is hope itself.
This is the English version of an article published in Chinese in Logos Review (汉语学志). Read the Chinese original (中文原文) · All English articles
