Century-old Shimenkan

　　    Shimenkan, situated in Ronghe Village, Shimen Township, Weining County, is 142 kilometers from Weining County and 60 kilometers from Zhaotong, a major city in northern Yunnan. It is a legendary cultural site and a unique example of the integration and coexistence of Chinese and Western cultures.

　　    Shimenkan is not an administrative unit at the provincial or county level, but merely a small village barely visible on the map. Yet many media outlets and publications refer to it as “China’s Shimenkan,” which is itself quite thought-provoking. In the early 20th century, a British missionary named Samuel Pollard founded the first civilian primary school in the Wumeng Mountain area here — Shimenkan Guanghua Primary School. In the years that followed, the area witnessed many remarkable phenomena in China’s cultural history: the creation of the Miao script, ending the history of the Miao people having no written language of their own, and pioneering bilingual education; initiating the practice of co-education and mixed-gender swimming pools in modern China; establishing the first junior high school in the Miao-inhabited regions of southwestern China, where hundreds of notable educators have taught over the years; nurturing the first Miao Ph.D. graduate in history; promoting grassroots sports and becoming the cradle of football in Guizhou; and shaping the cultural landscape of China in the first half of the 20th century.

Century-old Shimenkan