For impoverished areas of Guizhou and Hunan provinces and the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region the five years of 2011 to now have meant a lot to millions of students after the State introduced a nutrition plan to improve student health condition.
The move came in response to a 2011 report in the media that showed poor quality food at a primary boarding school in Du'an Yao county in Guangxi, a remote area where plain beans and rice were their main food. But, this was a fairly common scene in rural schools in Guangxi and Guizhou, where poor nutrition would lead students to pass out with the slightest physical excises and left them short in stature.
One principal of a primary school in Du'an commented, "Starving students are reluctant to do any physical exercise."
And Meng Wenwu, the headmaster of the county's Sanzhiyang Elementary School, pointed out that even when the central and local governments decided to provide boarding students with a subsidy of 3 yuan ($0.47) per day, the money was used by their poor parents to cover family expenses rather than for improving the children's nutrition.
In view of this, Meng went on to say, the school took charge of the subsidies so it could provide the necessary nutrition for students, in September 2011. By November of the same year, the State Council came up with a student nutrition plan for rural primary and junior schools nationwide, raising the 3-yuan subsidy to 4 yuan.
Now, the subsidies and nutrition plan together secure the much needed nutrition for the rural students. Over in Guangxi, a student nutrition plan of the central government provides 1.6 million with food in 63 counties where 90 percent of the schools have a canteen, after which neighboring Guizhou followed the move in introducing the plan in March 2012, covering 3.8 million students in 87 counties.
And the improvement in students' spirit and physical fitness is obvious now that three meals a day are available, with one junior school student in Zhangjiajie, Hunan province, Chen Junsuo, commenting, "The food is pretty good since we can have meat and milk every day," adding that some milk is available after morning exercise.
The head of the Kongkeshu Middle School, remarked, "Ever since the nutrition plan took effect, the migrant workers have been worrying less."
By June 2015, the central and local governments had put 144.3 billion yuan into covering 32.1 million students in a third of the counties across the country.
