The first time I met Zhao Yi was at Beijing in May 2006. In his email, he said to me that it was his friend studying at Cambridge University who introduced him to GLI. He is now engaged in promoting organic farming. I was thinking about introducing him to the wonderful story of Protect the Earth, a Non-profit organisation in Japan, but I found out that this senior student at China Agriculture University has already achieved a big success in his field.
 
In 2004, Zhao Yi became Chairman of the student association at China Agriculture University. Apart from his own study and on-campus activities, Zhao Yi planned to do something practical for rural people and migrant labourers from the rural areas through this platform.  Each year the university organises student tours to rural areas in order to give them an opportunity to experience a real rural life. However, the challenge is how to combine their knowledge acquired from classes with the real needs of the rural areas?

Bearing this in mind, they got together to talk about this and then realized that although there were lots of books about rural science and technology in the book-market, there were rarely useful and readable books for farmers. From then on, they decided to edit a practical and understandable book for rural people. Zhao Yi had come up with the idea of getting the students of the Agriculture University involved in editing the book.

In mid-April 2005, Zhao Yi and his friends began to edit a series of science books in the university and started recruiting writers thereafter. On hearing this news, nearly 100 students applied to be writers within two days. Finally, 34 students became the carefully selected volunteer team. In this way, 34 students who did not know each other before gathered, stayed up in the library, visited experts and sat in the internet cafe together.

Then they went about separately to search for relevant materials, check related data, arrange interviews and finally urgently started the editing work. Besides, the 34 students visited a school of transient labourers' children in Beijing to invite the teachers and students there to draw pictures (illustrations for the book) based on the texts of the books. 'Because both teachers and students came from the rural areas, their pictures would be more acceptable to farmers'. All the pictures in this series of books are created by teachers and students of the school of transient labourers' children.

Over two months hard work later, the first draft filled with efforts of these students was eventually completed. However, who would like to publish such a book? They tried and failed several times in searching for a publisher. Finally, Zhao Yi decided to write to Premier Wen Jia Bao, who has been paying serious attention to the rural areas in China. To everybody's big surprise, a week later, Zhao Yi received a letter of reply written by the Premier himself, which said, 'It is impressive that you could think of helping rural people with what you have learnt and put your thoughts into real practice while you are still a student. This indeed reflects the sincere hearts of the students in the Agriculture University in helping and supporting rural people'. This letter encouraged and quickly helped Zhao Yi and his friends to open the gates of resources.

This book series named 'Rural Land and Rural People' was published with a circulation of 60,000, including 6 categories, such as Guidance for Migrant Labourers, Education for Rural Children, Disease Control and Prevention in the Rural Region, Food Safety and Nutrition in the Rural Region, Case Studies of Rural Income-increasing and Successful Stories of Farmers. All these came from the students' fieldwork and practical experiences. The news about students at the Agriculture University helping to publish books for farmers spread all over through the reports of Xinhua News Agency, CCTV, the People's Daily, the Economics Daily, Guangming Daily, China Youth Daily and media in the internet. And wider attention came to them from society.

Looking back at this, Zhao Yi said he learned from this project about how to mobilize all kinds of social resources to realize one object. However, since there are so many farmers in China, how many of them can read this series of books? To benefit more people, it is necessary to work out a way of using minimum resources to achieve maximum results.
 
Later, Zhao Yi discovered a new way - an on-the-train broadcast - during one of his trips to a village in Shan Xi. He and his friends went directly to the Ministry of Transportation, hoping they could be allowed to produce a radio programme for migrants on their way back to their hometown during the period of Spring Festival. In February 2006, in the rush of passenger transportation during the Spring Festival, all trains departing from Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou to rural area broadcasted a special 90 minute programme - among which, as well as the works collected by Zhao Yi from transient labourers themselves, there are messages full of concern and best wishes to them from all walks of life.

Written by Fan Li, GLI Executive Director, and translated by Fangfang Liao