Multicultural Education in Multi-ethnic Regions of China’s Borderlands

With the rigorous development of China’s education sector in recent years, especially the significant improvement of basic education in ethnic and border areas, the education right of students is fully guaranteed. In the meantime, the quality of education continues to improve and traditional ethnic culture is effectively learned and inherited, which has provided momentum for cultural construction in ethnic and border areas and laid the foundation for ethnic unity and exchange.

Ruili City, located in Dehong Dai and Jingpo Autonomous Prefecture of southwest China’s Yunnan Province, is adjacent to the Myanmar border and is a multi-ethnic settlement area. There are several border primary schools in the city, among which Huyu Primary School in Huyu Township was founded in 1954 and is currently implemented as a boarding school. There are a total of 240 students, including 105 Jingpo students, 35 Dai students, 16 De’ang students, 73 Han students, and 1 student from other ethnic group. The students mainly come from nearby villages, some are children of migrant workers inside and outside the jurisdiction, and some are children of Burmese nationals.

Huyu Primary School is equipped with complete infrastructure, with teaching buildings, dormitories, canteens and playgrounds, effectively ensuring the basic learning, fitness and living needs of students. Based on this, the school focuses on cultivating the learning and inheritance of traditional Chinese culture of students, as well as the expansion of their comprehensive qualities; in addition, the school aims to ensure that each student has access to fair and high-quality educational resources.

In addition to the national standard curriculum, Huyu Primary School encourages students to engage in self-directed exploratory learning. The school carries out topic research and project activities, cultivates students’ creative thinking by combining with ethnic cultural characteristics, and incorporates ethnic language, history, traditional art and customs into the curriculum or extracurricular activities. With regard to language teaching, as the population of Huyu Township is mainly composed of Jingpo Ethnic Group, the school offers bilingual teaching courses focusing on teaching Zaiwa language. Furthermore, the school conducts learning activities with ethnic features according to the characteristics of ethnic culture, such as cucurbit flute, Jingpo weaving, Jingpo bamboo flute and Jingpo bamboo bow, etc.

Especially in recent years, the activity of “Intangible Cultural Heritage Entering Campus” has effectively “activated” the inheritance of ethnic culture, cultivated students’ national confidence and pride, and promoted the creative transformation and innovative development of excellent traditional Chinese culture. Furthermore, Huyu Primary School incorporates the national intangible cultural heritage—Jingpo ethnic activity “Mu Nao Zong Ge” (literary meaning: let’s dance together) into students’ daily activities. Students wear traditional ethnic costumes on the playground during the morning break every Friday, form various formations, and dance to the songs of “Mu Nao Zong Ge”. In the cultural practice of intangible cultural heritage, the traditional culture is inherited, students’ comprehensive quality continues to improve, and they grow through the unity of knowledge and action.

In addition to cultural activities with ethnic characteristics, Huyu Primary School also offers courses such as dance, harmonica, electronic organ, calligraphy, children’s painting, traditional Chinese painting, cross stitch, clay sculpture, computer, football, basketball, table tennis, chess, military chess, Chinese checkers and classic recitation in extracurricular activities; the school teaches students in accordance with their aptitude and constantly tap into various potentials of students, so as to fully ensure their personalized development.

The multicultural education in multi-ethnic regions of China’s borderlands has effectively promoted the learning and inheritance of traditional ethnic culture, while also ensuring that students have full access to and learn various knowledge and skills. It has effectively expanded students’ comprehensive quality, competitiveness and social integration ability, as well as promoted the stability and social development in multi-ethnic border areas and helped all ethnic groups remain as closely united and stimulated common progress among all ethnic groups.

(Zhang is a scholar at Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences)