A girl attends a class at a rural school in Bijie, Guizhou province. [Photo by Peng Nian/For China Daily]

Born and raised in a hamlet hidden deep in the rolling mountains of Guizhou province, where strained rural family finances are usually reserved for male heirs, Wang Yongyan is a watershed for how locals educate girls.

In September, the 20-year-old, who has two younger brothers, became the first woman in her isolated ethnic Miao and Dong community to attend college.

She is also among very few rural students studying vocal music, her dream major.

Art majors are costly, with less certain job prospects. Therefore, they are often shunned by financially-strapped families like Wang's.

All was made possible by Mountain Phoenix, a program that offers scholarships and subsidies to rural families in Liping county that struggle financially, or are simply reluctant, to keep daughters in classrooms beyond China's nine-year compulsory education, which is tuition-free.

The problem is common in rural regions and far-flung ethnic communities.

Poor, conservative farmers in those areas are unwilling to invest in girls because they cannot pass down family names through marriage, which is considered to be important to expand family lineage.

Now attending a four-year undergraduate program at the Minzu University of China in Beijing, Wang said Mountain Phoenix has awarded her an 8,000 yuan ($1,210) scholarship, which helps cover a large chunk of the annual 12,000 yuan tuition and accommodation fee. Coupled with government-subsidized loans for poor students, Wang said the program has enabled her to choose a major that she truly loves.

"Art majors are costly, and I had been hesitant about the choice because I have two younger brothers," she added.

The program was launched early last year by the Zhejiang Women and Children's Foundation, a government-endorsed charity headquartered in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province.

Ma Lin, deputy head of the county's education bureau, said 29 girls from 10 villages were awarded similar incentives in 2019, and the number has ballooned to 150 this year.

Apart from the scholarships, the program also hands out subsidies ranging from 2,800 to 5,400 yuan for less academically outstanding girls, he said.

Special subsidies

Though such subsidies are common in many places, Ma said theirs are special.

Instead of depositing the money into their bank accounts, village officials hire drummers, light firecrackers and deliver the money in person. The extravaganza helps make girls and their families proud.

"I saw tears in their eyes," he said.

Efforts to shift people's attitudes are crucial in regions where "older relatives and neighbors usually express strong disapproval for parents who allow their daughters to stay in school for so long," he added.

In the past few years, China has worked successfully to slash dropout rates in rural primary and middle schools as part of broader efforts to curb rural poverty and build China into a "moderately prosperous society in all respects" by the end of this year.

Counties with large numbers of unschooled children are not allowed to remove their poverty labels, which will lead to censures from higher-ups.

China had 600,000 children who dropped out during the first nine years of schooling, according to the Ministry of Education.

That number had plummeted to less than 6,800 by mid-June. Only 97 unschooled children were from families labeled as impoverished.

Though poor students can get easy loans to attend high school and university, many poor parents lack the incentive to invest in girls' education. Instead, girls are told to join the workforce, sometimes to offset the financial burden caused by educating their brothers.

"People in my village do not take girls' education seriously," said Wang. "Even girls themselves do not take education seriously and choose not to continue."

Wang said she was the lucky one. She said her parents are well aware of the difficulties facing illiterate migrant workers and allowed her to continue. But she cannot help interpreting her parents' decision as a way to get her to pay for her brothers' tuitions after graduation.

"One of them is in a vocational school, and the other is a second grader," she said.

The gender bias in education is an even greater issue early on.

Gun Dongmeng, a senior at Guizhou University, said it was common a decade ago for girls in her village in Liping county to start working after completing the ninth grade.

The 21-year-old has a sister in high school and brother in middle school. Both she and her sister are beneficiaries of the Mountain Phoenix program.

Gun said her fellow villagers have grown more supportive of girls' education after finding that female students take lessons more seriously when given the opportunity to carry on with studying. Banners have also appeared everywhere, reading "knowledge is power", which has inspired younger generations of rural women.

"The younger girls that I know of in my village now are all clinging to their studies," she said.

Shifting attitudes

The progress in the southwestern village is a sample of a broader shift in Chinese people's attitudes toward empowering women.

As the decadeslong one-child policy barred families with a daughter from having a younger son, more parents accepted girls as their heirs and invested more in their future. That trend has manifested in education figures.

According to a 2019 white paper released by the State Council, China's Cabinet, women account for more than 52 percent of undergraduate and vocational college students, despite the fact that China has about 30 million more male citizens. That is 28.4 percentage points higher than in 1978, when China embraced the market economy, and 32.7 percentage points higher than in 1949, when the People's Republic of China was founded. Women also comprise 48.4 percent of China's graduate students.

The public's attitude toward gender-based prejudices is also decreasing, making it morally unappealing for parents to terminate girls' education.

The anti-sexism sentiment was manifested in a public outcry last year after netizens spotted 47 male beneficiaries among 100 students who received funding from the Spring Bud Project, a government-endorsed charity program that helps slash dropout rates among rural girls.

The China Children and Teenagers' Fund, which launched the project in 1989, later issued a statement explaining that they included boys in their assistance list as their teachers do not want the poor boys to drop out because of exclusive treatment. But netizens were not convinced, and the scrutiny quickly expanded to the charity's other programs.

A netizen commented: "Our money is for poor girls to buy new schoolbags and clothes, not for boys to buy cameras and fulfill their so-called dreams."

Che Weiwei contributed to this story.