11 August 2020
There are many beautiful legends in Xishuangbanna in the southwest of China. This summer, volunteers from College of Film and Television of Shanghai Theatre Academy (STA) and volunteers from charitable partners came to Mengsong Township Middle School in Menghai County, Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture, bringing with them the charitable project named "Mountain Village School Radio Station".
"Mountain Village School Radio Station” is a long-term charitable program for schools in remote areas, including a range of activities such as donation and installation of radio broadcasting equipment, training of student radio hosts, learning and work experience in radio stations etc. Now, another campus radio station has been set up and put in operation in the mountains.
In the early morning of 30 July 2020, the opening ceremony of the school radio station of Mengsong Township Middle School in Menghai County, Xishuangbanna was held on the playground of Mengsong Middle school. The children sat under the stage and welcomed the volunteers from Shanghai with the most serious attitude and the warmest applause.
Most students of in Mengsong Township Middle School are children of ethnic minorities, including Hani, Dai, Bulang and Lahu, who are traditionally good at singing and dancing. Although there is a basic classroom broadcasting system on campus, which can meet the simple daily, the existing broadcasting equipment cannot provide a platform for more than 750 children at the school to show themselves. Therefore, the mountain village school radio station to be set up this time will not only enrich the students’ cultural life on campus, but also provide the professional stage audio equipment for the annual minority art festival held by the school.
As a representative of the volunteers fromthe STA College of Film and Television, teacher Wang Qi brought the notebooks and audio programs specially customized for the children by teacher Zhang Dapeng of the STA College ofFilm and Television, as well as the short audio programs recorded by the students of the STA College of Film and Television majoring in broadcasting and hosting for children in mountainous areas. In addition, there were also painting materials prepared by Hu Peiqun, the inheritor of Xijiao peasant painting which is an intangible cultural heritage of Shanghai, 1000 books presented by Shen Pang Rail Transport Repair and Maintenance Co Ltd, and table tennis rackets autographed by Ding Ning, the world champion of table tennis, were warmly welcomed by teachers and students of Mengsong Township Middle School.
Under the guidance of teacher Wang Qi of the STA College of Film and Television, two little radio hosts started their first trial broadcasting in the newly set up radio station. The little radio hosts read out their own compositions, shared their dreams of becoming a fashion designer, talked about the blue sky, white clouds, lush mountains and lucid rivers, and described their beloved hometown, Xishuangbanna, which is like spring all the year round.
In addition, there was a special gift - a 15-meter-long picture scroll, which was spread from one end of the playground to the other. On the long scroll, children painted mountains, hometown and dreams with painting pens of different colors.
After a while, the picture presented in front of everyone was so rich and vivid. We will keep the picture scrollproperly, as each image on it has a different memory. In the future, we will make a picture album for the children, for which the author will be “Children of the mountains”, and the cover will be "Dreams".
At the foot of the mountain, on the grass of the campus, the first program of the mountain village school radio station began to broadcast. This time, different from previous programs conducted in the classroom, teacher Wang Qi of the STA College of Film and Television and Xin Li, a host of the Shanghai Radio Station, sat around on the grassland with children of Dai, Bulang, Lahu and Hani nationalities. Along with the blue sky and floating white clouds, in the breeze and under the bright sun, they told stories about mountains and shared the colorful lives of different nationalities.
Time flies, and at the end of the program, all the children gathered together. Looking up, the sky seems to have become higher, and the singing began once again between the floating white clouds.
