Nurturing a younger generation
Program for children in rural areas aims to get them to use daily items in creative ways, Fang Aiqing reports.
Fun-filled activities
It was the children who took the lead in designing the canopies made from canvas and thermoplastic sheets.
They collected local plants, covered them on the sheets and sprayed pigments on them to form patterns. They also pasted white tape in the shape of Yi characters on the canopies.
The Yi characters are a set of single fonts, mainly symbolizing their meanings, with some also indicating the pronunciation. The earliest document with Yi characters dates to the Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279).
Yi families usually speak the language in daily conversation, but not many children know how to write it these days.
Li says that during the program, the volunteers took the characters from books. They also learned how to pronounce the characters from the school cook.
It was not easy for the children to learn to ride, but the installation could move while being stable enough so they did not fall. Meanwhile, it could not turn around smoothly if any of the children slacked off in pedaling.
The architects and volunteers hoped the children could safely maintain their physical balance and coordination while learning to cooperate at the same time.
Not to waste other parts of the bicycles, they also painted the fenders showing what their hometown looked like.
