Amity Staffers Remember

Gong Sheng

For the children of Woyun, Gong Sheng is the perfect older brother – someone to love and to look up to.

Promoting popular traditions and folk culture is one part of development work which Amity wants to emphasize. Mid-Autumn Festival and Spring Festival are certainly two great opportunities to promote this idea. On September 15, we pulled off what became the the first “Mid-Autumn-Festival Gathering” in the history of Woyun Village. Later, around Spring Festival 2009, we staged a series of cultural activities, hoping that they would bring some happiness to the lives of the villagers so they could pick up their lives again and regain confidence.

The greatest thing about the cultural program was that so many villagers attended. Participating in these activities meant more than just taking part in the program. It showed that villagers were actively taking part in organizing and managing these events and that the farmers were making an effort to promote their traditional culture.

Shu Junsong

Villagers have become very fond of Shu Junsong. He is reliable and highly efficient.

Before the Spring Festival cultural programs started, we Amity staffers were very active in getting people interested in participating. Gradually, however, it was not just us who pushed the idea. Everybody around us kept supporting the program.

On the evening of one of the first days after Spring Festival, I arrived at the Amity Office in Woyun Village. I hadn’t even quite got out the car yet when I already heard the sound of singing floating towards me from a distance. Several village groups were holding their rehearsals for the upcoming competition. Several days later, you could hear the faint sound of choir singing in every street and every small alley of Woyun Village. Nobody had given people this task and nobody had prepared for them to do it. The villagers were inspiring us to work harder than before.