The Diary of Ma Yan Read online

  I didn’t really understand his point when I first read the story.

  That night in the open air, when I saw so many stars, I really wanted more than anything else to lean against Mother and count them. But I understood that it was impossible to count the stars. It was the first time I think I realized how vast the natural world is.

  It was also the first time in my life that I had traveled so far. I already missed home. I felt so pitifully small…and so very sad.

  I must above all work hard in order to succeed, so that Mother can at last have an easier life, can at last get rid of her pain and exhaustion. I hope that my wish comes true quickly and that Mother soon has a happier life.

  Thursday, November 15

  A fine day

  This morning during gym we do a new kind of exercise: we go off to run in the streets instead of staying in the school yard.

  Our class trails another class. We run as fast as we can to catch up with them and get ahead. By the time we do, I’m covered in sweat. The locals come out of their houses to watch us.

  It’s really great being a student. The only problem is that our parents suffer, especially my mother. If we don’t work well, when our classroom is full of sunshine and our school full of joy, how will we ever be worth all the efforts our parents make on our behalf?

  For the children of rich families, one day more or less makes no difference at all. For me, the child of a poor family, every day brings new trials with it. Not in terms of studying, because there I’m at the top of the class, but because of the kind of life we lead.

  So I have to study hard without slacking in order not to suffer from hunger in the future.

  Of course, the most important thing of all is my mother. I don’t want her going so far away to work anymore. Our family will be happy, united. We’ll have no more problems.

  Friday, November 16

  A fine day

  I haven’t seen our politics teacher for several days. I’d like to see him very much, look at his face and hear his voice. His presence and his words always make me very happy. Somehow he offers consolation, relieving my sufferings and my problems. That’s why I so want to see him come into the room. He has the ability to comfort anyone who is worried or unhappy.

  I’m always full of suffering and worries. No sooner do I lower my head than Mother’s words come into my mind, together with her ravaged hands. Why does this word mother leap into my mind so very often?

  I like the politics teacher’s way of using words as well as his manner. But I don’t like the subject he teaches us. All we ever do is discuss heroes of history, patriotism, Taiwan, and morality. In each of his classes I secretly do my homework for other subjects. The teacher often says we should listen carefully. But I can’t seem to correct my bad habits.

  Today when we had a lesson with him, he picked me out, asked me to stand up. He wondered if I could answer a question. I shook my head. He let me sit down again. I know what he wanted to ask me: Could I listen more carefully during his class? That’s why I refused to answer.

  He shows me a lot of consideration, and I always disappoint him. From now on, I’m going to change my habits. I don’t want to let him down anymore, or make him unhappy.

  Monday, November 19

  A fine day

  At noon after classes the comrades go home to eat. Since I’m a Hui, this is a fasting period for me. I’ve started Ramadan. This gives me a little free time.

  In the street where I walk, I feel terribly alone. I think of Mother again. If only she were here…how wonderful that would be! Because everything I do is in relation to her.

  If I make some kind of mistake, and haven’t checked with her for her advice first, she chides me all day. Sometimes I resent her. But when I think about it, I know that she’s doing it all for my own good. I mustn’t get angry with her. If I hadn’t followed her advice, where would I be today? I would lack maturity and I would understand nothing of the good things in life. If I hadn’t had Mother teaching me, with all her criticisms, I wouldn’t know what a fen or a yuan was, nor where they came from.

  Without Mother, there would be no Ma Yan. I must be grateful to the woman who allowed her daughter to grow, to mature, and to become herself.

  Thursday, November 22

  A fine day

  This week has flown by. It’s already Thursday, and I don’t know how we got here. I have a great wish to go home.

  There’s news in the village. We’re putting in place measures that will allow the fields to be planted with trees. Each week when I go home, the village has changed a little. The hills have acquired holes at regular intervals. In the spring we’ll plant the trees. All of us will be really excited. Our land will turn green again.

  I think that in a few years, or maybe a few decades, the landscape will have changed completely. These days, everywhere you look, there’s only yellow earth. If you walk up to the high plateau to look down at the village, all you can see is yellow barrenness, a dried-out terrain. It’s not even a landscape. To tell the truth, there’s nothing to see.

  Nor does the economy produce anything. Only fa cai allows one to live at all. The situation has to change. In the future, our village will be green. Its inhabitants will have acquired knowledge and will know how to build solid houses. If I work hard at school, when I grow up, I’ll be able to devote my energy and skills to improving the cruel life of the villagers.

  Wednesday, November 28

  A bright day

  This evening after classes a friend invited me home. She’s like the little sister I would have liked to adopt. Her family lives fairly close to the school. There’s only one valley to cross. On the way we meet several comrades who look happy. Seeing their joy, I too would like to be home. They all say how wonderful it is to sleep in one’s own home.

  At first when I get to my friend’s house, I feel ill at ease. But her parents are very nice and ask me lots of questions. When we got there, her father came out onto the porch to welcome us. At my place when we have guests, it’s my mother who welcomes them. Father stands near her, because he’s not very savvy about dealing with people.

  No sooner had we come in than my friend’s parents brought us two bowls of meat. The steam was still rising from them. Then came fruit.

  I envy my friend having a family that’s so hospitable and happy. She doesn’t have to worry about them. And they eat meat! I don’t know how long it’s been since we ate rice with meat at home. At the next market, I’d love to buy a little meat for Mother.

  Tuesday, December 4

  Light snow

  Snow is floating in the air. I miss my village. We’re in the midst of a history lesson, and the teacher goes on and on. I’m sitting near the window. When I turn my head, I can see snowflakes fluttering through the air before drifting to the ground. It takes me back to my childhood.

  It was a very cold winter morning. Snow was falling thickly. My parents weren’t home. They had gone far away to harvest fa cai.

  My mother’s illness started that winter. It was a hard and bitterly cold one. The snow rose high all around us, more snow than I had ever seen since I could remember. When the snow and wind stopped, my brothers, my grandmother (who was about seventy then), and I filled our underground tank with snow so that there would be no shortage of water during the winter.

  Every Saturday when I’m at home, Mother asks me to collect up the donkey droppings. And I never manage it. She reminds me then of that snowbound winter. She says, “You were so little, but so brave. Now you’ve become weak and useless. What shall I do with you?”

  Every time Mother talks like that, I remember the cold of that winter. I don’t know how Mother and Father survived it. I don’t know how I managed to carry all those bundles of snow. I don’t really recall much except the cold and the snow. I only hope that I’m braver now than I was then.

  Friday, December 7

  A gray day

  The fair is on today. My heart light, classes seemed to race past m
uch more quickly than usual. I floated to the market, carried by one great hope. Last Saturday Mother promised she’d be there today. Since Ramadan is almost over, she has to come to the market to buy presents for people and invite an aged person home to break the fast.

  The wind whistles, and it’s so cold that you can’t take your hands out of your pockets. As I walk through the streets I see all kinds of people shivering with cold. I look for Mother but I can’t find her. The tears start to run down my face. They freeze into ice. I meet a lot of women wearing a white kerchief just like Mother’s. I’m tempted to stop one of them, take her hand, call her “Mother”…but as soon as I step forward, I see that she isn’t my mother and I stop myself.

  I have the feeling someone is calling me. I turn around and see Father. My heart is suddenly less empty. But he isn’t Mother. My father comes up to me, mutters a few words, and heads off. When it’s Mother, she launches a barrage of questions at me. I love that. It’s so engaging. And then it’s so difficult to leave her.

  Why do I spend so much time thinking about Mother?

  Thursday, December 13

  A fine day

  It’s market day again today. I’m very happy. I’m sure Mother will go and break the Ramadan fast with her maternal grandmother. But at the market, when I look for her, I can’t find her. She hasn’t come. The tears pour down my face. What a disappointment. Every market day I come in the hope of seeing her, and she isn’t here….

  I’m walking with my head down when I see my maternal grandfather and my father. They’re talking enthusiastically. But they’re dressed in rags. Their clothes are dirty, their shoes full of holes. They look so ugly to me! On top of it all, they’ve got napkins around their waists, which makes them look even worse.

  I don’t know what my grandfather has eaten on this holy day, but as his granddaughter, I should be performing a pious act on his behalf. So I buy him fifty fen worth of apples, so that he can celebrate the end of the fast with them. But he disappears before I can give him his present.

  At the vegetable market I meet my maternal grandmother. My grandfather asked her to buy some apples, she tells me. So I give her the apples I bought, and on top of it, go and buy pears for her. I’ve spent a great deal of money in very little time. It’s not that I wanted to, but I couldn’t do otherwise.

  I turn back toward school. In front of the market entrance I see an old woman who reminds me of my paternal grandmother. I buy fifty fen of pears. She too looks over seventy; she’s arrived at the age where one must have feelings of respect toward her.

  I’ve used up all the money I intended to spend on a notebook. Apart from the thirty-five yuan I spent in the district capital when I went to take the entrance exams, this is the first time since elementary school that I’ve spent so much money all at once. Two yuan! But I had to. To honor a great feast day you have to buy good things to eat, beautiful clothes for the whole family. I have little enough apart from my sense of responsibility and the piety that lives in my heart.

  Ma Yan with the first six schoolchildren funded by the readers of the newspaper Libération

  WHAT HAPPENED NEXT

  When the French newspaper Libération printed an extract from Ma Yan’s diary in January 2002, readers responded in great numbers. They were touched by the fate of this Chinese girl, moved by her rebellion and her desperate desire to continue her schooling. Readers proposed financial help; some offered to finance her education, however long it took.

  In response to this outpouring, we created a fund called the Association for the Children of Ningxia in the summer of 2002. This fund would help the children of families in need to continue their schooling. There was no question of creating a vast organization; we just wanted a simple system for sponsoring children. The only condition of the sponsorship was that the children wrote to us once a term to give us news of their studies and tell us how things were progressing.

  After the publication of the article about Ma Yan, first twenty and then thirty children benefited from European sponsorship. This is a drop of water in an ocean of need, but it makes all the difference to these children. All of them wrote to us to say that school was going well.

  The spontaneous gesture of Ma Yan’s mother when she put the notebooks into our hands, a little like the way one tosses a message in a bottle to the high seas in desperate times, has had consequences far greater than she could have imagined. Her life, the life of her family, and the lives of many other children in this forgotten village at the end of the world have been transformed.

  MA YAN’S LETTER

  Dear Uncles and Aunts,*

  How are you?** I received your letter on February 17, 2002. That day my father had gone to town for the market and he found the letter at the post office. He opened it right away, but there were a few characters he couldn’t recognize. Back at home, he asked me to read it. When I had finished reading, I don’t know why, but I broke out in a sweat, as if all my strength had gone…. Maybe it was because I was just too moved—too, too happy.

  Father said, when he had finished reading the letter, that he no longer knew if he was walking on earth or in the sky, because he felt as if his body was floating. Mother added, “Finally, the heavens have opened their eyes. I didn’t cry for no reason while I was up in the mountains. My tears then were the result of pain and sadness. Now they come from joy. I wish you a very good year and convey all my gratitude.”

  After reading your letter, I really understood what joy in this world means: friendship and the meaning of life. I thank all the people who have set out to help me. I am thrilled that young French people want to be my friends. I would like to write to them, phone them immediately, but I have neither their addresses nor phone numbers. Then too, they don’t speak Chinese. I hope that you’ll give them my address; I would like to be their friend, their best friend. I say “Thank you”* to all of them.

  You said that you could help other children from families in need. I’m so very, very pleased about that. For me, my problems are now behind me. Let them, too, complete their schooling and fulfill their dreams. All my thanks.

  Soon I’m going back to school. I will work very hard not to disappoint all your expectations.

  I wish you great success in this Year of the Horse.

  Ma Yan

  February 19, 2002

  HOW THINGS HAVE CHANGED

  In Ma Yan’s little house in the village of Zhangjiashu, a photograph of a class of French schoolchildren was hung with pride on the wall next to the family photographs. On the back of the photo the students had written, “Carry on with your schooling. French children are with you.”

  Pierre Haski and Ma Yan

  As soon as the diary was published as a book, the responses started pouring in. A teacher in the east of France, whose pupils came from a particularly poor background and had real schooling difficulties, wrote to us to say that he regularly read the story of Ma Yan to his students, adding, “Some of them were genuinely touched by Ma Yan’s story and expressed a desire to send her something or at least to try and correspond with her.” What resulted were some twenty letters, drawings, and poems addressed to Ma Yan. Each of them had a ballpoint pen taped to it—a response to the diary entry in which she says she hadn’t eaten so that she could buy a pen.

  Dozens of letters from young French people, moved and indeed disturbed by Ma Yan’s story, came to us, and through us went on to Ma Yan. The teenage magazine L’Actu voted Ma Yan “best-loved of the year 2002.”

  Indeed, the publication of Ma Yan’s diary led to a great deal of support for the Association for the Children of Ningxia. The initial handful of members increased to three hundred by the end of the year. Donations allowed it to expand its work. At the beginning of the second school term in February 2003, the association gave out more grants, mostly to students at the middle school in Yuwang and the elementary school in Zhangjiashu. Children who would have had to leave school could now continue their education.

  The associat
ion has also donated computers and purchased books to create a library at the Yuwang middle school. Additionally, the association has undertaken work to benefit the whole community and is exploring the possibility of digging a well in Zhangjiashu so that the villagers have clean water.

  It is difficult to summarize the utter change in Ma Yan’s life. A girl who never had enough to eat and seemed doomed to give up school and take up the miserable life of a village peasant is now a celebrity in Europe and to a certain extent in China as well. Thanks to the royalties from her book, she can eat her fill.

  A Chinese magazine in December 2002 summed up the impact the book has had on its young heroine: “Ma Yan is happy, but stressed out!” Happy, most definitely, because she and her family have moved out of dire need, have proper winter clothes, and have bought some sheep and also a new television, which sits at the very center of the single room that is still their home. Happy, too, because she knows that the education she values so much is now secure for her. In 2004 she started high school in the city of Wuzhong, three hundred kilometers away from her home village. Ma Yan may attend a university too, if she works well—something that was almost unthinkable for a native of this impoverished village.

  But she’s also anxious, as the magazine said. First of all because in this village, like anywhere else in the world, success provokes jealousy and hostility. And also because Ma Yan has become a “model,” an example to her comrades, which means she isn’t allowed to make mistakes. On top of it all, she’s had to assume a status that is challenging for a young peasant girl: it has involved being flown to Beijing to talk on national television. In March 2004 she was flown to Paris for a book fair, and there she was interviewed by media from around the world. The New York Times said of her diary, “Thanks to its publication, her family is no longer poor, and 250 Ningxia youngsters, mostly girls, now have scholarships to continue studying.” The number of scholarships had grown to three hundred and fifty by the end of the year.