The 2018 Report on Children’s Reading in Rural Areas points out an overall lack of extracurricular reading resources for children in China’s less-developed central and western regions. Many children enjoy reading books but have limited resources.

According to the survey, this phenomenon exists in many remote villages in Chongqing. Due to financial constraints, few families buy books. The time spent reading extracurricular reading materials is nearly zero, especially for preschool children. The only three ways minors can read are through textbooks, school libraries, and by going out and buying books.

Reading is the core of education. Good reading habits promote the development of children’s observation, imagination, knowledge transferability, and language expression and develop good non-intellectual qualities.

Currently, rural children face problems such as a lack of suitable books, guidance for reading activities, and public reading space, especially after school.

Thus, a rural cultural revitalization project was initiated by Chongqing Land-Sea International Communication Charity Foundation with the support of the Publicity Department of the Communist Party of China Chongqing Municipal Committee.

They hope that through a “backpack library,” books will be circulated among children. In combination with corresponding reading experiences and children’s participatory activities, the knowledge of daily life around rural children, their villages' history, current situation, and ecological geography will be incorporated into the books.

Rural children can read different books now through a “backpack library.” (Photo provided to iChongqing)

By combining book learning and daily rural life, the program will increase rural children’s literacy and understanding of the conditions and customs of their hometown and cultivate their sense of rural identity.

In addition, the project goes from the “backpack library” to Baba cinema, smart classrooms for the elderly, farming and reading classrooms for farmers, and other services, building a township-wide cultural reading service system through paper book reading, and video reading, digital reading, and participatory reading.

Through the system, the majority of villagers will be influenced by the young people to read good books, watch good films, and read every grass and tree in their hometown, so that reading is not limited to books.

The project serves as an important part of the “Rural Revitalization·Chongqing Session” hosted by Chongqing Charity Federation under the guidance of Chongqing Civil Affairs Bureau and Chongqing Rural Revitalization Bureau, with special support from Tencent Charity and Tencent Southwest Headquarters.

The activity will be held from April 27 to April 29, 2022, focusing on assistance in industrial development, elderly care, care for children, education, talents cultivation, and aid for the needy and the poor.