{"id":4218,"date":"2016-03-25T02:01:09","date_gmt":"2016-03-25T09:01:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/?p=4218"},"modified":"2016-03-25T02:01:09","modified_gmt":"2016-03-25T09:01:09","slug":"three-gorges-and-a-pioneer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/2016\/03\/25\/three-gorges-and-a-pioneer\/","title":{"rendered":"Three Gorges and a Pioneer"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Janine\"<\/a>
The first girl!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This trip is almost over. We\u2019re about to pass\u00a0through the final of the Three Gorges: Xiling. The other two are magnificent.<\/p>\n

Yesterday we sailed through Wu Gorge in a small, thirty-seat tour boat. \u00a0Despite the beauty, most interesting was our guide, who gave us the name “Janine” because \u201cmy Chinese name is too hard to say.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 A lovely 26-year-old with a great sense of humor, she was the headline for me.<\/p>\n

She is the first girl from her village \u2013 tucked into the side of the mountain, several hours walk away \u2013 to go to college. The first girl.<\/p>\n

She was able to do this, although\u00a0she\u2019d never been away from home, because\u00a0Chinese businessmen have begun \u201csponsoring\u201d college educations for local girls, and she received one of the scholarships.<\/p>\n

I asked her about her village, assuming, correctly, that there was a lot of push-back from the community about her choice. \u00a0Did neighbors give her parents a hard time, ask them\u00a0\u201cWhat are you doing? How can you let her do that?\u201d Yes, yes \u2013 especially challenging her dad. Her mother didn\u2019t even want her to go, but her father stood firm and supported her, and off she went.<\/p>\n

\"View<\/a>
The view from our boat. It looks like that one in front of us.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It was tough \u2013 busy and noisy, especially for a girl from a little mountain village. \u00a0“I cried and cried” she said. \u00a0But she stuck it out – able to return home only once a year. \u00a0She’s very proud of what she’s done and is working hard to enable her two younger sisters to follow.<\/p>\n

I’ve been involved in issues regarding women for a long time, and admired groups like the UN Foundation<\/a>‘s Girl Up<\/a>, Vital Voices<\/a> and The Elders<\/a>‘ battle against child marriage<\/a>. \u00a0Janine, however, was the first person I’d met, in her home environment, who’d benefitted from such undertakings. \u00a0It was quite an inspiration \u00a0— delivered just down the mountain from where she started, sharing her education and her English major with us as she led\u00a0us \u00a0through the beauty that has surrounded her most of her life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This trip is almost over. We\u2019re about to pass\u00a0through the final of the Three Gorges: Xiling. The other two are magnificent. Yesterday we sailed through Wu Gorge in a small, thirty-seat tour boat. \u00a0Despite the beauty, most interesting was our guide, who gave us the name “Janine” because \u201cmy Chinese name is too hard to … Continue reading Three Gorges and a Pioneer<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[27,9,78,29],"tags":[3781,3757,3780,1765,1611,3782,3775,3779,3778,3777,3776,3783],"class_list":["post-4218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-affairs","category-politics","category-travel","category-women","tag-child-marriage","tag-china","tag-elders","tag-girls","tag-girls-education","tag-girlup","tag-three-gorges","tag-un-foundation","tag-vital-voices","tag-wu-gorge","tag-xiling","tag-yangtze-river"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4gBq8-162","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4218"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4218\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4225,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4218\/revisions\/4225"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}