"Story in Autumn" -- a Xinjiang boy's school life

During a class of Virtue and Life on Nov. 4, 2009, Yedos glues the triplet colors of red, yellow, and green leaves onto a white paper, and draws inter-strip patterns of blue and black, by which Yedos composes a work known as Story in Autumn. As the severe winter with windy and snowy weather draw nearer.

Yedos' home is over 100 km away, deeply inside the pasture of Mountain Tianshan. He was once such a light-hearted boy enjoying insouciant life by indulging on the expansive prairie with her elder sister.

Sense of loneliness struck on the little boy on day in 2007 when his sister bid farewell to him to go to boarding school in town. Yedos yearned so eagerly the life in school, and longing for studying and playing game with his little fellows.

His dream of going to school came true in the Autumn of 2008, when his father took him and his sister to the central primary school at Sardawan Town, 30 km south of Urumqi City, the capital of Xinjiang. With over 520 pupils on campus, the school attracts Yedos with its spacious ambiance strewing with verdant groves around the playground and classrooms.

The boy feels everything exciting and refreshing, he scampers about all around in exultation, trying on new suits and skim through all new textbooks.

Yedos gets quickly adaptable to the new life on campus, particularly active on the class of physical exercise, running, skipping rope and shooting basketball with inexhaustible vigor. In full excitement, Yedos spent away the first Autumn of his school year, and the stormy snow ensued come along with the early advent of winter. The location of Sardawan is a famous wind gap with its geographic token of Asian Center visible on campus. As a result of local government's efforts to tap tourism, a number of sculptures with typical tokens of Asian countries are erected up. Yedos followed teacher to have a geography lesson here and he was most impressive with the roaring gale that blow up sand and grits. Children have to hold hands together to trudge against the gust. Fearing the kids might be blown away by the gale, some parents even load heavy stones into the their satchels.

The gale is still ravaging and withering, Yedos bends over the window in the classroom, nibbling at his yogurt biscuit from his mom, watching the trees are being overwhelmed in the gust.

"Gale will blow people down," as teachers remind the students of not going outside. Feeling scary, Yedos slips into teachers' office, mumbling, "When the gale could weaken a little bit?"

"As long as all the trees grow as high as enough," as teacher points to the saplings that bend over in the gale, "then the wind is sure to be lessened on our campus."

Now comes the second autumn in Yedos' school year, he ascends to grade 2 and the saplings on campus also grow much higher and stronger. Yedos now bears a mind, eagerly to see these trees grow into denser and stronger hurst, tough enough to resist the ravaging gale, as he draws the pattern of the handicraft work Story in Autumn.