A class apart

摘要

FRIDAY is a good day for eight-year-old Yang Zongtao. He will see his mother and baby sister after spending the week boarding at Jiaoba Central Primary School in Guizhou, a southern province and one of China's poorest. He misses his mother "a bit", he says stoically. But the walk from his home takes an hour, too long to undertake alone each day. So, like millions of pupils in China's countryside, he remains at school all week (some stay longer). There are rural children who start boarding as early as the age of three.