Boat School, Lake Hongze

The inspiring tale of Hu Yake’s labor of love, a boat school for poor fishermen’s children, began one day in fall 1999 with a simple question during a lunch time stroll:

"Why aren’t you in school?" the 46-year-old Mr. Hu asked a group of about 10 children playing along the shores of Lake Hongze, a large water body about 180 kilometers northeast of Nanjing in a remote area of east-central China.

"Because we live on the boats. We have no school," came the reply.

Mr. Hu, a former math teacher who owned a fish farm on the lake, was shocked. But the children weren’t truant; they were telling the truth. As the children of illiterate fishermen from other parts of the country who lived on their families’ boats on the lake, they weren’t eligible to attend the already crowded and financially strained local grade school.

Right then Mr. Hu, a stocky, short man with a brilliant smile, scrapped his plans to invest his savings in a second fish farm. He resolved instead to build a school for the fishermen’s children. First he taught a group of 11 in a hut on his own property. Then, using his own money, borrowed funds and some help from local government officials, he acquired an old, 85-foot, open-topped cargo barge. He designed and built a flat-roof, three-room structure that covered nearly the length of the boat. Using cement for walls and floors, combination windows and wooden beams to support the roof, he built a strong, watertight schoolhouse for children ages 6 through 12.

Last year, the boat school’s first in operation, he and the one other teacher on the boat, Mr. Pan, had 42 students, whom they taught reading, writing and mathematics. This year there are 15 fewer, mostly because their parents cannot pay anything and are ashamed to burden Mr. Hu with the cost of teaching their children. Drought in recent years has dried up vast portions of the lake and depleted the fishery. Very few families can pay even the minimal fee Mr. Hu requests, but he turns no child away.

In 2002, after learning of the school’s plight through a broadcast news report, the Nanjing office of Amway China Co., Ltd., launched a support program for the boat school that will include $6,000 USD to help cover the cost of upgrading the boat structure, acquiring textbooks and paying the teacher. Mr. Pan received no pay his first year on the job. Amway has just initiated the second stage of the sponsorship program by donating an additional $12,500 USD to pay off Mr. Hu's debt and establish a bonus fund for the teachers and a scholarship fund for the students.

"Mr. Hu’s personality is one of the elements that drew us to this project. He’s extraordinary and we were very moved by him," said Newman Chen, a supervisor in the Product Distribution Center for Amway in Nanjing. "Without him this school would not exist and could not carry on. We’re very pleased to have the opportunity to help these children by keeping their school operating."
In spring 2002 the boat was anchored on a finger inlet of Lake Hongze, which in normal times is one of China’s largest freshwater lakes. Lifejacket-clad children either walked or rode in their parents’ boats to school, which they entered by trooping across an old 2 X 12 plank. There was no room or money for frills at the school, but it still was set apart on all sides from the beautiful but austere landscape by a ring of bright pink, yellow and green welcoming pennants that reflect the hope and spirit that are very much aboard the boat.

Mr. Hu, a modest, quiet man who lives in the third room on the boat with his wife and a teenage son who helps run the school, was speechless when asked about the impact of Amway’s unexpected gift to his school. He gestured with his hands, groping for the right words. But his eyes glistened with tears.