Xiangxi Tujia and Miao Autonomous Prefecture Overview — Social Undertakings (I)
Chapter 11: Social Undertakings. After the founding of New China, with the continuous development of the ethnic economy in Xiangxi, unprecedented progress occurred in education, science and technology, culture, arts, news and publishing, radio, film and television, sports, medical care, ethnic medicine, and social security. Section 1: Education. Education in Xiangxi originated in the Eastern...
This article has been compiled from historical materials in the "Zhangjiajie Tour Guide Network" (33519.com · City Overview section). Some administrative divisions, population, socioeconomic data, and policy information may be outdated and are for reference only; for the latest situation, please refer to official releases by the local government and scenic areas.
Chapter 11 Social Undertakings
After the founding of New China, with the continuous development of the ethnic economy in Xiangxi Autonomous Prefecture, social undertakings such as education, science and technology, culture, art, press and publication, radio, film and television, sports, medical and health care, ethnic medicine, and social security underwent unprecedented development and changes.
Section 1 Education
Education in Xiangxi Autonomous Prefecture originated during the Jianwu period of Emperor Guangwu of the Eastern Han Dynasty, but ethnic education in the true form of modern school education began in the 29th year of Guangxu in the late Qing Dynasty (1903). At that time, the main form of schooling was converting tun and Miao charity schools into mengyang schools and lower primary schools. During the period of the Republic of China, "Frontier Compatriot Primary Schools," "Short-Term Compulsory Primary Schools," and "Border Region Primary Schools" were successively established. Due to warlord separatism and frequent wars at the time, the people were displaced, and only children of wealthy families and officials and gentry could attend school. After 1949, the Communist Party of China and the people's government implemented a correct ethnic policy, "opening the doors to workers and peasants" and "opening the doors to ethnic minorities," and vigorously developed ethnic education. After more than 50 years of struggle, ethnic education throughout the prefecture has formed a system, and various types of education have achieved remarkable results. In 2005, the prefecture had a total of 2,229 schools of all levels and types, including 3 universities, 26 secondary vocational schools, 193 regular middle schools, 1,786 primary schools, 3 special education schools, and 218 kindergartens. There were 533,559 students enrolled, including 25,731 university students, 16,420 secondary vocational school students, 35,343 regular high school students, 146,127 junior high school students, 264,280 primary school students, 45,385 kindergarten children, and 273 special education school students. There were 37,497 faculty and staff in total, including 2,153 in universities, 1,137 in secondary vocational schools, 11,047 in regular middle schools, 14,086 in primary schools, 62 in special education schools, and 1,426 in kindergartens, as well as 7,586 retired faculty and staff. Among them, primary schools, regular middle schools, and secondary vocational schools had 13,204, 9,351, and 753 full-time teachers respectively.
I. Ethnic Education Developed Through Twists and Turns, Compulsory Education Achieved Outstanding Results
In the winter of 1949, the 10 counties in the prefecture established local people's governments at all levels one after another and began taking over old schools. At that time, there were very few schools in areas inhabited by ethnic minorities in the prefecture, and some places had no schools at all. In some middle schools and normal schools run in towns, there were even fewer ethnic minority students. According to statistics, in 1950 the 10 counties of the prefecture had a total of 530 primary schools with 11,719 students and 1,220 faculty and staff; 9 middle schools with 1,200 students and 210 faculty and staff; and 3 normal schools with 906 students and 85 faculty and staff. At that time, per 10,000 people there were only 77 primary school students, 7 junior high school students, 0.8 senior high school students, and 6 normal school students. Not only were there very few ethnic minority students in schools of all types, but many schools had no female students. At that time, school buildings were extremely dilapidated and were mostly ancestral halls, temples, or borrowed private houses. Only a very few schools had organs, basketballs, and sports grounds, and generally there was no library equipment or sports equipment. At the same time, teachers' treatment was extremely low, and monthly wages were not enough to buy back daily necessities such as oil, salt, firewood, and rice. Housing was simple, and medical care was not guaranteed. Therefore, some teachers had no choice but to abandon teaching and seek other work in order to survive.
Xiangxi Autonomous Prefecture has always regarded universal compulsory education as a key task. In the early period after the founding of New China, it earnestly implemented the spirit of the First National Ethnic Education Work Conference in 1951, adopted the policy of "consolidation and improvement, appropriate development" for primary education and the policy of "rectification, adjustment, consolidation, and improvement" for regular middle schools, opened schools "to workers and peasants" and "to ethnic minorities," and mobilized children of all ethnic groups to enroll; actively trained primary school teachers, vigorously developed normal schools, and attached great importance to the development and construction of the ethnic minority teaching workforce. In 1952, a total of 113 Miao teachers were trained. To ensure students' enrollment, secondary schools uniformly waived tuition for ethnic minority students in difficulty, and in addition to public funding, secondary normal school students from poor families were given a subsidy of 15 yuan per term. By the end of 1952, primary schools in the Xiangxi Miao Autonomous Region had grown to 1,661 with 125,341 students and 4,271 teachers; regular middle schools had increased to 11 with 2,962 students and 266 teachers; and secondary normal school students had increased to 1,613 with 107 teachers. Afterward, educators were earnestly organized to study the Party's educational policy, improve educators' understanding, strive to improve school conditions, and improve schooling methods, and ethnic education developed relatively rapidly. In 1957, when Xiangxi Tujia and Miao Autonomous Prefecture was established, primary schools throughout the prefecture had increased to 1,778 with 206,424 enrolled primary students, including 93,867 ethnic minority students; regular middle schools had increased to 25 with 9,716 enrolled middle school students, including 4,830 ethnic minority students.
In 1958, Xiangxi Autonomous Prefecture launched the "Great Leap Forward in Education," which departed from the realities of economic development and led to the establishment of various types of schools on a massive scale. Schools of all kinds sprang up like bamboo shoots after a spring rain in a short period, resulting in teacher shortages, difficulties with school buildings, disrupted teaching order, and declining teaching quality. From 1957 to 1960, due to the expansion of the Anti-Rightist Struggle in Xiangxi Autonomous Prefecture, a number of cadres and teachers were harmed, causing a group of teachers to leave their posts and weakening the teaching force. Coupled with the natural disasters of 1960, ethnic education was severely affected. In 1961, the People's Government of Xiangxi Autonomous Prefecture implemented the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China's "Eight-Character Policy" and the Cultural and Educational Leading Group's "Regulations on Educational Work," promptly correcting the tendency of ethnic education to develop too rapidly, depart from the realities of economic development in ethnic areas, and exceed economic capacity. From 1962 to 1965, ethnic education throughout the prefecture overcame various difficulties and embarked on a track of "planned and proportional" coordinated development. After the "Cultural Revolution" began in May 1966, schools at all levels and of all types in Xiangxi Autonomous Prefecture gradually suspended classes. Later, after "resuming classes to make revolution" and then "opening the school doors to run education," a wave of school-running was set off, with blind and frenzied establishment of schools. Compulsory education appeared flourishing on the surface, but teaching quality was extremely low.
After the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee of the Communist Party of China in 1978, the Party's ethnic policies were once again implemented, and ethnic education gradually regained its vitality. In terms of compulsory education, the principles of adapting measures to local conditions and providing classified guidance were upheld, and the method of universalizing education in stages and advancing by township was adopted. In the 1980s, the entire prefecture worked hard and pragmatically to universalize six-year compulsory education. In running schools, in light of the characteristics of ethnic areas, measures were adapted to local conditions, and a combination of centralized and decentralized approaches was adopted. To remove language barriers, bilingual and dual-script teaching was implemented in areas where Miao and Tujia ethnic groups lived in concentrated communities, in order to improve teaching quality and accelerate the pace of universalization. To develop ethnic education in remote townships where ethnic minorities lived in concentrated communities, in June 1983, the People's Government of Hunan Province decided to pilot the first batch of ethnic boarding primary and secondary schools in Xiangxi Autonomous Prefecture, specifically organized and implemented by the Provincial Ethnic Affairs Commission, with special funds allocated for building school buildings, adding teaching facilities, and subsidizing teachers and students for study and living expenses. By 1992, the entire prefecture had basically universalized six-year compulsory education. Starting in 1996, regional advancement by township was implemented to accelerate the pace of "universalizing nine-year compulsory education." By 2000, after acceptance inspection organized by the People's Government of Hunan Province, the entire prefecture had basically universalized nine-year compulsory education. From 2001 to 2005, the prefecture continued to place "universalizing nine-year compulsory education" in the "top priority" position in educational work, further consolidating the achievements of "universalizing nine-year compulsory education," raising its level, carrying out assessment and evaluation of county and city educational work and school-running level with "universalizing nine-year compulsory education" as the focus, establishing a regular supervision and notification system for "universalizing nine-year compulsory education" throughout the prefecture, strengthening government action for "universalizing nine-year compulsory education," intensifying efforts to control dropout and ensure school attendance, and reducing student dropout rates. At the same time, quality-oriented education was comprehensively promoted to raise student pass rates. In 2005, the primary school enrollment rate in the prefecture was 99%, the annual retention rate was 99.3%, the graduation rate was 99.2%, and the transition rate was 94.5%; the annual retention rate of junior middle schools was 97.1%, the reference rate for direct promotion through the unified examination was over 75%, and the pass rate for direct promotion through the unified examination was over 60%. The enrollment rate of 6-year-old children in rural areas was 80.1%, and the kindergarten enrollment rate of children aged 3-6 in urban areas was 98.8%.
II. School Conditions Greatly Improved, and the Construction of the School Attendance Guarantee System Continuously Strengthened
In the late 1950s, schools at all levels and of all types, on the basis of takeover and transformation in the early days of New China, developed on a relatively large scale, and the people's government built a batch of schools in a planned way through state appropriations. In the 1960s and 1970s, to meet the needs of the "educational revolution," various localities built another batch of "rammed-earth" school buildings using makeshift methods. Because the quality standards for building construction at that time were low, and coupled with years of neglect, by the 1980s many school buildings had become dangerous structures. In the early 1990s, counties and cities began to build a batch of relatively standardized ethnic boarding primary and secondary schools. By 1992, schools throughout the prefecture had basically solved the problem of "one without and two with" (no dangerous buildings, having classrooms, having desks and chairs). Afterward, the government increased construction investment even more. The state launched the "Compulsory Education Project" for impoverished areas, mobilized social forces to implement the "Project Hope," and used World Bank loans to build schools. During the "Tenth Five-Year Plan" period alone, the second phase of the prefecture's "Compulsory Education Project" included 180 project schools, with a total investment of 111.95 million yuan, newly renovated and expanded school buildings of 160,000 square meters, and the purchase of a batch of instruments, books, desks, chairs, stools, and information technology education equipment. In 2004, the prefecture launched the construction of rural boarding schools. According to the requirements of "six-year planning, three-year implementation," it planned to invest 330 million yuan, build 308 project schools and 707 civil engineering projects, and complete a building area of 610,000 square meters. By the end of 2005, 511 civil engineering projects for 258 project schools had been completed, with a school building area of 390,000 square meters (including the renovation of 180,000 square meters of dangerous buildings). At the same time, the pace of high school construction was accelerated. During the "Tenth Five-Year Plan" period, Longshan County No. 1 Middle School, Luxi County No. 1 Middle School, Fenghuang County No. 1 Middle School, and Huayuan County Ethnic Middle School basically achieved the separation of junior and senior high school. With a total investment of more than 200 million yuan, Longshan County Senior High School, Huayuan County Biancheng Senior High School, and Fenghuang County Senior High School were built. The prefecture also established 5 private senior high schools, effectively alleviating the contradiction of "difficulty in enrollment" in ordinary senior high schools. In 2005, the total area of primary and secondary school buildings in the prefecture was 2.92 million square meters, of which primary schools accounted for 1.5 million square meters and middle schools 1.42 million square meters; the per-student school building area rose from 2.6 square meters in 1981 to 5.4 square meters for primary schools, and from 6 square meters in 1981 to 7.6 square meters for middle schools. At the same time, internal supporting facilities in schools, such as faculty dormitories, libraries (rooms), and audio-visual instrument rooms, were also gradually improved, growing from nothing to something, from small to large, and from scattered to roughly scaled.
In terms of building the school attendance guarantee system, since 2003, the prefecture and its counties and cities have respectively established primary and secondary school assistance and donation centers, set up leading groups for assisting impoverished college students, created student aid websites, established electronic archives for impoverished students and assisted students, extensively carried out fundraising and assistance work, persisted in taking the reform of the rural compulsory education funding guarantee mechanism as a breakthrough point, and focused on building the school attendance guarantee system for students from impoverished families. In 2005, the prefecture distributed 63.53 million yuan in assistance funds for the compulsory education stage, including 26.3 million yuan for central free textbooks, 24.07 million yuan for provincial exemption of miscellaneous fees, and 13.16 million yuan for local subsidies for boarding students' living expenses, assisting a total of 270,000 student-times from impoverished families in the compulsory education stage and effectively controlling dropout among impoverished students. At the same time, through efforts on multiple fronts, assistance to impoverished students in the senior high school stage was also increased. On the one hand, starting in 2004, the "9+2" student aid plan was implemented to assist impoverished vocational education students. On the other hand, the prefecture established the "Li Yong Xiangxi Senior High School Student Aid Fund" and the "Xiangxi Sanmin Student Aid and Reward Fund," focusing on subsidizing impoverished ordinary senior high school students with both good character and academic performance. In addition, assistance to college students from impoverished families was also increased. From 2003 to 2005, the prefecture raised and distributed a total of 4.14 million yuan in assistance funds for college students from impoverished families, of which 2.5 million yuan was allocated by prefecture, county, and city finances, and 1.64 million yuan was raised from society, helping 1,004 newly enrolled college students from impoverished families smoothly enter university campuses.
III. Remarkable Achievements in Ordinary Senior High School Education, and Steady Development of Higher Education
Middle school education in Xiangxi Autonomous Prefecture went through a difficult development process. In 1957, the prefecture had only 5 senior high schools, with a total of 1,321 students, 3.7 times that of 1953. After the Great Leap Forward in 1958 and the "adjustment, consolidation, filling out, and raising standards" in 1962, by 1965 senior high school education in the prefecture had returned to a normal development track. During the "Cultural Revolution," middle school education developed blindly, and the number of senior high schools in the prefecture reached as many as 130 at its peak. After the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, middle school education, after adjustment and reform, developed steadily and in an orderly manner. In 1981, the number of senior high schools in the prefecture was reduced to 53. After further adjustment and reform, by 1998, the prefecture had 23 ordinary senior high schools, including 21 complete middle schools and 2 provincial key senior high schools; there were 11,132 senior high school students in total, 31.5 times that of 1953 and 5.4 times that of 1965 (excluding statistics from Dayong and Sangzhi counties). The proportion of ethnic minority students among students increased several times over. In 1957, the proportion of ethnic minorities among senior high school students was 49.7%, and by 2005 it reached 87.4%. The number of ordinary senior high school students per 10,000 people was 7 in 1957, 44 in 1998, and 133 in 2005. The quality of ordinary senior high school education and teaching continued to improve. In 2005, the pass rate of ideological and moral evaluation among primary and secondary school students in the prefecture reached 99.5%; 9,100 people registered for the college entrance examination in the prefecture, and 6,892 were admitted to colleges and universities (including 2,090 admitted to undergraduate programs or above), with an admission rate of 75.7%, 8 percentage points higher than the provincial average.
In terms of higher education, in 1958, Xiangxi Autonomous Prefecture founded its first institution of higher learning—Jishou University. In 2005, the prefecture had 3 institutions of higher learning, namely Jishou University (including Jishou University Normal College), Xiangxi Ethnic Radio and Television University, and Xiangxi Ethnic Vocational and Technical College. In 2005, the number of university students in the prefecture was 25,731. The higher education system developed from only teacher-training junior college education in 1958 to various types of junior college, undergraduate, and graduate education, with majors covering industry, agriculture, electric power, medicine, finance and economics, life sciences, politics and law, computer technology, physical education, Chinese, foreign languages, and other categories. Students from nearly 30 provinces, municipalities, and autonomous regions studied at Jishou University, cultivating various types of talent at different levels for the economic and social development of Xiangxi Autonomous Prefecture and even the whole country.
IV. Considerable Development of Vocational, Adult, and Private Education
In the 1950s, vocational education in Xiangxi Autonomous Prefecture began to start, but it was opened and suspended from time to time and was extremely unstable. During the "Cultural Revolution," various vocational schools basically ceased operation. After the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, vocational education ushered in a spring of development. In 1979, the number of various vocational schools grew to 24, and in 1980 it was adjusted to 18. In 1983, Xiangxi Autonomous Prefecture combined the development of vocational education with social and economic development and incorporated it into the overall plan for national economic development. In 1985, a higher vocational school was founded—Wuling University (later placed under the jurisdiction of Zhangjiajie City). By 1998, various secondary vocational schools in the prefecture had grown to 31, including 15 primary vocational schools and 16 secondary vocational schools; there were 20,295 students in total, 5.7 times that of 1980, of which 13,388 were students in secondary vocational schools, with a ratio to ordinary senior high school students of 1:1.2. In 2005, Xiangxi Ethnic Vocational and Technical College was established; Jishou City Vocational Secondary School and Longshan County No. 1 Vocational Middle School became among the first batch of national key vocational secondary schools; afterward, Xiangxi Ethnic Finance and Accounting School was also approved as a national key vocational secondary school; the number of students in vocational schools throughout the prefecture exceeded that of ordinary senior high schools.
Along with the development of vocational education, adult education and private education achieved considerable development. In the early 1950s, rural areas were full of illiteracy, and the educational level of cadres and staff was very low. By 1998, the prefecture had 6 adult secondary specialized schools, all 218 townships had agricultural schools, and the coverage of village farmers' cultural and technical schools reached 100%. The illiteracy rate among young and middle-aged people dropped from 1% in 1984 to 0.72%. In 2000, after acceptance inspection organized by the People's Government of Hunan Province, the prefecture had basically eliminated illiteracy among young and middle-aged people. Since entering the 21st century, adult education throughout the prefecture shifted from literacy elimination to labor skills training, employment training, and labor export training, completing 9,000 person-times of medium- and long-term training, 13,000 person-times of labor service training, and 330,000 person-times of rural practical technical training each year. In 2004, the People's Government of Xiangxi Autonomous Prefecture issued the "Several Opinions on Promoting the Development of Private Education." In 2005, a Private Education Development Section was established in the prefecture education bureau, and private education schools throughout the prefecture grew to 400, with more than 14,000 students.
V. Notable Results in Teacher Education
Since the founding of New China, teacher education in Xiangxi Autonomous Prefecture gradually formed a system, establishing corresponding educational institutions from the training of preschool teachers, primary school teachers, and middle school teachers to the training and further study of in-service teachers. Schools for training preschool teachers and primary school teachers included Jishou Ethnic Normal School, Yongshun Ethnic Normal School, and Jishou Preschool Normal Vocational School; schools for training middle school teachers included Jishou University and Xiangxi Ethnic Radio and Television University; schools for training in-service teachers included the Prefecture Teacher Further Education College and teacher further education schools in 8 counties and cities. According to statistics, by 1990, Jishou Ethnic Normal School and Yongshun Ethnic Normal School had trained a total of 18,000 primary school teachers. Graduates of Jishou University accounted for more than 50% of middle school teachers with formal academic qualifications in Xiangxi Autonomous Prefecture. In 2001, Jishou Ethnic Normal School and the Prefecture Teacher Further Education College merged into Jishou University Normal College, undertaking the task of training and cultivating primary school teachers with junior college qualifications; Yongshun Ethnic Normal School was restructured into the Prefecture No. 2 Ethnic Middle School. In 2004, the prefecture carried out reform of the educational personnel system, streamlining 113 internal school institutions, reducing 186 leadership positions, newly appointing 341 principals, appointing 23,397 teachers, rationally diverting 1,315 personnel, with 660 urban school faculty and staff diverted to rural schools, while 200 outstanding young and middle-aged teachers from rural primary and secondary schools competed for posts in urban schools. The structure of the teaching force was optimized, and resource allocation became more reasonable. The overall quality of the teaching force throughout the prefecture continued to improve. In 2005, the qualification rates of primary, junior middle, and senior high school teachers in the prefecture reached 99.2%, 97.7%, and 80.8% respectively, and 1,012 had senior professional titles. In March 2004, the Ministry of Education's "Launch of a New Round of Comprehensive Quality Training for Teachers and Exchange Meeting on Staged Achievements in New Curriculum Teacher Training" was grandly held in Jishou City, Xiangxi Autonomous Prefecture, giving high praise to teacher education work in Xiangxi Autonomous Prefecture. A total of 22,400 teachers in the prefecture had completed comprehensive quality training, with a participation rate of 98.4%. Achievements from 219 comprehensive quality training projects received commendation from the Ministry of Education. From 2003 to 2005, Xiangxi Autonomous Prefecture was rated by the Ministry of Education as an advanced experimental area for comprehensive teacher quality training for three consecutive years.
VI. Smooth Progress in Educational Informatization Construction, and Fruitful Results in Educational Research
After the 1990s, a number of schools in Xiangxi Autonomous Prefecture began to have modern teaching instrument rooms. On the basis of the original "two rooms," a number of key urban primary and secondary schools began to add language labs, multimedia rooms, electronic lesson-preparation rooms, electronic libraries, campus networks, labor and technology rooms, and art rooms, install closed-circuit teaching television, and equip slide projectors for electrified teaching, video recorders, and computers. By 1998, all 8 counties and cities in the prefecture had achieved universal experimental teaching. In 1960, the total value of teaching instruments in primary and secondary schools across the prefecture was 243,000 yuan; by 1998 it had risen to 23.6 million yuan, and by 2005 it reached 100 million yuan. In the 1980s, computer teaching was mainly offered through lectures in some key urban primary and secondary schools; in the 1990s, it began to be listed as a primary and secondary school course. In 1990, there were only 56 computers in primary and secondary schools across the prefecture. By 2005, rural primary and secondary schools across the prefecture had 1,752 modern distance education sites, with a coverage rate of 92%, including 2 national experimental schools for modern educational technology and 13 provincial experimental schools for modern educational technology; primary and secondary schools across the prefecture had 16,000 computers, 95% of central complete primary schools had built computer classrooms, the student-to-computer ratio in primary and secondary schools was 29:1, classes from grade five upward offered information technology education courses, and more than 70% of young and middle-aged teachers were basically able to use modern educational technology for teaching; four county-level education information networks had been built in Longshan, Luxi, Huayuan, and Fenghuang, more than 380 schools had gained internet access, more than 30 schools had set up web pages, more than 20 schools had established campus networks, and the prefecture-level education website and the modern distance education network system for primary and secondary schools had been built. The prefecture implemented routine management of modern educational technology and routine management of experimental teaching, raising the level of application of modern educational technology equipment in primary and secondary schools.
Since the 1950s, education and teaching research at schools at all levels in Xiangxi Autonomous Prefecture had highlighted its own characteristics, such as "Miao-Han bilingual" teaching. In the 1980s, education and teaching reform research began with teaching methods, and then touched on teaching content, educational thought, the examination system, teaching management, the education system, and school-running models. In terms of research organization and methods, it moved from working alone to mutual cooperation, from single-item research to overall research, from stop-and-go to continuous and orderly work, and from scattered and dispersed to mutual integration and overall advancement. After the 1990s, ethnic education scientific research work gradually developed from experience toward science. In this process, the prefecture popularized theoretical knowledge and operational skills in education scientific research and educational experiments. Education scientific researchers went deep into the grassroots to provide on-site guidance, combined with frontline experimental teachers, and at the same time offered education scientific research and educational experiment courses or held lectures to train teachers, and used computers to process data, greatly improving work quality and efficiency. By 2005, the prefecture had initially established a three-level education scientific research network at the prefecture, county, and school levels, established an education scientific research system for primary and secondary schools, and education scientific research work had embarked on a path of reform and innovation, achieving unprecedented good results. More than 2,000 teachers engaged in various types of experimental research, most of whom gradually transformed from "experience-based" teachers into "research-based" teachers. Since Hunan Province began education and teaching reform and educational experiment award activities in 1990, Xiangxi Autonomous Prefecture won a total of 29 awards in five rounds of evaluation, ranking at the upper-middle level in the province, and basic education scientific research work was in the advanced ranks of the province.
Before the founding of the People's Republic of China, on this land of Xiangxi, a group of politicians, military strategists, scientists, writers, and painters once emerged. In the future, Xiangxi Autonomous Prefecture will produce even more talents of all kinds. "Every age has its own talents, each leading the field for hundreds of years." The outstanding figures of the past were products of bygone eras, so "to find truly great figures, we must look to the present." The mountains of Xiangxi and the waters of Xiangxi will be even more enchanting, and the ethnic education of Xiangxi will cultivate even more talents of all kinds needed by the times.