A drone photo taken on April 19, 2024 shows National Highway 321 winding through the mountains at Babu Town in Bijie City, southwest China's Guizhou Province.[Photo by Shi Kaixin/China News Service]

In a remote mountain village in Bijie City, southwest China's Guizhou Province, a group of parenting coaches, often called "temporary mothers," trek along the winding mountain paths with homemade educational toys on their backs. They visit families with infants aged 6 to 36 months, offering one-hour weekly sessions of early parenting guidance. Acting as both first teachers and a source of emotional support for those left-behind children, these women help fill a gap in parental care.

This initiative is part of a social experiment under the China Rural Education and Child Health project (China REACH), which was launched by the China Development Research Foundation (CDRF) in July 2015. By providing scientific intervention in rural areas of central and western China, the project aims to break the cycle of intergenerational poverty and explore new pathways for early childhood development in rural China.

For more than a decade since 2012, CDRF has been conducting such a social experiment in Bijie. This initiative has evolved from improving the rural kindergarten system and providing in-home parenting guidance, to the establishment of the "Comprehensive Demonstration Zone for Rural Children's Development" in September 2021 — all aimed at exploring a new pathway to support the development of children in rural China.

Data shows that through these interventions, the prevalence of developmental delay among children aged 0–3 dropped significantly from an average of 29% to 13%, while the risk of social-emotional delay fell sharply from 52% to 11%. After entering kindergarten, the children showed qualitative improvements in cognitive domains such as numeracy, reading and writing, with the overall child ability index increasing by 9.4%.

Predicament in deep mountains

Deep in the mountains of Dayin Town, Bijie, lives 67-year-old Grandma Ding, who bears the weight of raising seven grandchildren alone. With her son and daughter-in-law working far away, the duty of parenting has fallen entirely onto her shoulders. Her 18-month-old grandson is a key focus for parenting coach Deng Man. Yet, Deng Man's early education sessions were often disrupted by the cries and squabbles of the other children. "The toys are snatched away the moment I take them out," Deng Man sighed helplessly. "The adults are already overwhelmed with chores and have little time to play with the children."