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Stanford Report, June 15, 2011

From Genghis Khan to superhighways, the Loess Plateau connects China's past with its future, as Stanford researchers look for ways to improve rural health

Anna Cobb Map of China highlighting Guizhou, Gansu and Ningxia provinces

(Click image to enlarge)

Our series: Stanford's Rural Education Action Project in China

China is the world's fastest-growing and second-largest economy, but it's the country's poverty that keeps Scott Rozelle coming back. As co-director of Stanford's Rural Education Action Project, Rozelle is looking for ways to give those struggling in the country's most remote areas the chance to make a living in the booming cities. REAP is one of many programs that has benefited over the last four years from The Stanford Challenge, a fundraising campaign dedicated to supporting people and programs seeking solutions to global problems.

For the past three summers, Rozelle has led what he calls a "mobile board meeting" of REAP's researchers, collaborators and donors who get a chance to review some of the group's projects and think up new ones. This year, the entourage focuses on REAP's work to eradicate childhood anemia and intestinal worms, and introduce computer-assisted learning in schools.

The field trip covers some of the country's poorest areas in the Guizhou, Gansu and Ningxia provinces. Adam Gorlick of the Stanford News Service traveled with the group and reports on their experiences.

Adam Gorlick Stanford's Rural Education Action Project in Guizhou Province, China

Part 3: To a barren plateau to address children's anemia 

GANSU PROVINCE, CHINA – The Loess Plateau can be a desolate place – a land of dry, brown mountains built over thousands of years by sand blown in from the Gobi Desert.

Part of its expanse yawns through Gansu Province, where Scott Rozelle and his fellow REAP researchers are making their way by bus. Their route follows a new highway that cuts through large swaths of the barren landscape where people still live in yaodongs – caves carved into the mountainside.

The road also gives a glimpse into China's future, running alongside the frame of a high-speed railway expected to open in a few years and skirting cities where construction cranes make up part of the skyline and to which migrants from the countryside are flocking.

But for most of the ride, the vast horizon and long stretches of nothingness dominate. Once the backdrop to a section of the Silk Road, the area's wind-whipped mountains are still studded with the remains of forts that guarded against Genghis Khan's invading warriors from the north.

"This is where China started," Rozelle says as the bus passes by canyons and eroded rock formations that wouldn't seem out of place in the American West. "And it's nothing but bright blue sky, dirt and people."

The scenery is a stark contrast to the lush mountains of Guizhou Province, where the group spent the past few days investigating intestinal worm infections. In a good year on the plateau, rain comes just once to bring barely enough water for measly crops of wheat, corn and potatoes.

Rozelle and his entourage are here to see some of the most rural parts of Gansu and neighboring Ningxia Province, where children are suffering from high rates of anemia. Their goal is to assess some government programs aimed at tackling the problem and figure out more efficient ways to improve children's health. Good health leads to a better education, and that's the ticket out of rural poverty to a good-paying job in the city, Rozelle says.

"Nobody should live here," Rozelle says as the bus barrels through the barren countryside.

It's a line he keeps repeating as he and his group travel through rural China.