The life and death in Rongshui of Francoise Grenot-Wang http://www.blackandwhitecat.org/2008/12/18/the-life-and-death-in-rongshui-of-francoise-grenot-wang/#comment-50823
The Xinhua headline was like a dagger in the heart. A fire had killed one person in Rongshui county, Guangxi. A Frenchwoman was missing. As I clicked on the link to open the article, I desperately hoped it was someone else. Someone else’s tragedy. But it could only have been one person - Francoise, who meant so much to so many people and without whom thousands of Miao, Dong and Yao girls would have grown up illiterate, never having gone to school. The fire broke out in the wooden house she had built late in the evening on December 9. When firefighters had extinguished the flames they discovered a body too charred to be absolutely certain of its identity without DNA tests. Francoise had not been seen since. She was about to go to Macau to raise more money for the children, their schools and communities. Alliance Francaise announced the event was canceled “for unexpected reasons.” It’s nearly ten years since I first knew Francoise. We worked for different departments of the same publishing group in Beijing and lived in the same complex. But it was more than a month before we actually met because she was simply not there for so much of the time. She took every opportunity she could to go back down to Guangxi to do what she really wanted - walk through the mountain villages, compiling lists of all the girls who could not go to school (virtually all the girls in every village) and find sponsors to pay for them. Friends often covered her shifts and pocketed her salary. She arrived there by accident after a chance meeting in a queue in Guilin. The person she met was a doctor working in Danian township for Medicins Sans Frontieres. They needed an interpreter. Francoise had been working as a tour guide for some time, but gladly took the chance to do something more meaningful. As soon as she arrived in Danian, she knew this was where her soul belonged. Going from village to village with MSF, she was shocked to find no girls at all in any of the schools. The average annual income was 300 yuan and it cost about the same to send a child to school. If a family could scrape together enough money for the fees, it was spent on a son. Daughters worked in the fields and tended ducks and cows. If they ended up in factories, they could hardly speak Mandarin, let alone read it, making them one of the most vulnerable and exploited groups of people in the country. Some years earlier, Francoise had started a small organization called Couleurs de Chine that researched the culture of minorities in China. It now radically changed its focus, finding sponsors, mostly in France and Belgium, for the Miao, Dong and Yao girls in Rongshui. Things didn’t all go smoothly. The local government was divided about Francoise. Some cadres believed she could help the township and its villages develop. Others were suspicious of her motives and thought she was a troublemaker. At one point, early on, they banned her from ever setting foot in Danian again. But she couldn’t stay away and one day she sneaked back. To her amazement, she was not only allowed to stay, they gave her a plot of land to build a house. In 2000, she left Beijing, which had only ever been a temporary necessity, and went back to live in Danian for good. With funds raised by Couleurs de Chine, local craftsman built a beautiful three-storey house which became her home, her office and a hotel. It’s guests were Europeans, mostly French, who she took up through the mountain paths into the villages where they learned about the lives of the local people, met the girls they would sponsor and took back with them a far greater understanding of a culture than they could ever hope to have in any other way. All the money they paid for their visit was channeled into the local schools and communities. Couleurs de Chine and its sponsors paid for thousands of girls to go to school, some of them going on to university. It built new schools in the villages and a dormitory in the township. Francoise was passionate about the work she did and the people she whose lives she shared. She was fiercely proud of their culture, their strength, their history. And she was proud that they were her friends. She was determined that they should develop and escape grinding poverty, but equally determined that they should not lose the culture that had evolved over thousands of years, only to become sellers of trinkets for tourists. I took the picture directly above in a village near Danian in May 2001. The picture above it, of Francoise’ house before it was destroyed by fire, is from her blog which she began in November, 2007. The one at the top is from here. Below is a translation from a blog post written by a Chinese friend of Francoise, just after the news of her death. Elegy to Fang Fang (in mourning for the French mother of the Miao mountain children) On December 9, 2008, a blazing fire carried my French friend Fang Fang away into the sky along with her beloved wooden house, that museum of ethnic culture. She became a distant rainbow, always, forever, remaining in the great Miao mountains that she devoted herself to for ten years, remaining in the hearts of more than 5,000 children she loved and helped. When the tragic news of your death arrived, I simply couldn’t believe it! Just one week earlier, we climbed together up to the Miao villages and visited Dong homes. Together, we braved the dangers of the river and together we listened to the songs of the Miao. You pulled me along with you up the precipitous mountain paths. During the Dong toasting songs you urged me, who never touches a drop of alcohol, to drink that symbol of friendship. Together, we talked about life and ideals. Together, we edited your essay, crafted with meticulous care for ten years. The bamboo basket you sent me hangs in my living room, the Yao mountain tea still wafts its faint scent and the precious Miao embroideries you sent are gathered in the wardrobe, still waiting to send your affection out to other places. Those DVDs, recording your life and the children unable to go to school, lie gently in the drawer, still waiting to be appreciated by more friends…. Just two days before you went away, the sound of our laughter still reverberated in the computer. I asked you when you would come to eat jiaozi. You said the Euro had dropped and funds were tight. You had to go to Macau to give a fundraising lecture. On March 10, you would come to my home. You joked that I shouldn’t worry about cleaning my place up. All this remains vivid, like yesterday. How can I believe it? How can I imagine that you have gone like this?! Perhaps you really were an angel sent by God, your mission completed and returned to heaven. Ten years ago, no shadow of a girl could be seen in the schools. Today, more than 90 percent, even one hundred percent of girls go to class. Your painstaking work wasn’t wasted! The first female Miao and Dong university students have returned and, influenced by you, have devoted themselves to their villages. The State has also changed for the better. Miao mountain children no longer have to pay so many fees to go to school and every day they are given free lunch. More and more people in the mountains send their daughters to school. At Danian Middle School, heavily financed by your Couleurs de Chine, all miscellaneous fees have been abolished. The dormitory is free and, if the children bring some rice, so are all the meals. Every day, you were busy in the mountain villages. Every day you hurried along the mountain paths. One after another, you repaired and rebuilt old school buildings. One after another new schools sprang up. Stilt-houses still resound with your hurried footsteps. The warmth of your words is still felt in the homes of the girls you helped. For the sake of young girls who had had to leave school, you made the hard journey to Guangzhou, traveling so far to bring child laborers back home. You worried so much about children sent out to work and you rushed from one place to another, making appeals for the future of the Miao villages! You really wore yourself out. Your work never stopped: by day in the mountain villages, by night under the light of a lamp. One contribution after another, you personally made sure was used properly. One letter of thanks after another, you personally wrote. Perhaps God had pity and wanted to let you rest. He knew how deeply you loved these mountains. He knew how deeply you loved everyone here. You said in your last life you must have been Miao. You said this was your home that you had searched long and hard to find. God knew how much you hated the cold and used this strange way to let you live forever in the flames, nirvana in the flames, forever remaining in your beloved Miao home! Perhaps there were things that God overlooked. Perhaps there were things he did not take into account. He knew you raised money to help children study, but he didn’t know you were also a scholar of ethnic culture. You immersed yourself in historical texts of the Miao and devoted yourself to research of Miao culture. “There are two ethnic groups in this world that have been through many hardships but have survived to be strong: they are Miao in China and the Jews scattered throughout the world.”*[see note below] These words by the ethnographer Geddes ring out in your book. You gave your deep love to the people here. You walked from one mountain village to another in search of Miao customs and culture. You interviewed white-haired elders to understand the condition of the local people. You hated the erosion of traditional ethnic culture. You exhaustively researched Miao songs, Miao clothing, batiks, embroidery and ancient crafts. It didn’t matter if you were in the land of the Miao or in Paris, you always wore Miao clothes and you almost forgot your own language. You said: there are ten million Miao, as many people as Belgium. I wear their clothes and speak their language to show my respect for them! Inspired by you, more and more French people, Belgians, Europeans and Americans began to understand Miao history and culture and began to come to these great mountains. In one village after another, ramshackle drum towers, symbols of Dong culture, were restored. Drum towers that had burned down were built anew. Miao baby bags, Dong embroidery and Yao medicine went to homes all over the world. Bamboo baskets, carrying poles and homespun cloth flew to all corners of the Earth. Traditional ethnic culture has amazed the world! You are an envoy of ethnic culture. You are rainbow over the Miao mountains. There are no tears or sorrow in heaven. You should rest. In heaven, watch over your Miao mountains. In heaven, listen to your Dong songs. In heaven, care for your Miao mountain girls. Maybe the reason God let me know was to help you complete your goal. Our book is now finished - it’s just a shame that I never received your last additions. I will tell your story to all Chinese people. Even more people will go into the Miao mountains. Even more will help the people there. Rest! My friend, rest! Forever my dearest companion!!! On Dec 18, 10:01 pm, "[email protected]" <[email protected]> wrote: > It is written in French, but so beautiful pictures took by this French > traveller, Françoise Grenot-Wang, since one year ago. > > http://fangfang.over-blog.com/ > > I hope you like them. > > Peace and best wishes. > > Xi --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "World-thread" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/world-thread?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
