THE DIARY OF MA YAN

Ma Yan

This is the real diary of Ma Yan, a 14-year-old schoolgirl from the extremely impoverished Ningxi region in northwestern China. Originally written with a ballpoint pen purchased in lieu of two weeks' worth of food, these diaries detail the day-to-day life of a girl determined to get an education despite crippling poverty. In a place where girls get three or four years of schooling at most before a lifetime of backbreaking labor in the fields, Ma Yan was desperate to continue her studies so that she might someday be able to help her family. Her mother worked as far as 250 miles from home, and often went without food and medical attention, to pay for school fees. First published in Europe, after Ma Yan's mother pressed three notebooks containing the diary into the hands of a visiting foreign journalist, this fascinating story echoes the lives of millions of children in rural China. With photographs.