Borderless classroom

At a gateway school on China-Myanmar frontier, shared textbooks rewrite futures

As the Children's Day approaches, students at Jiegao Primary School in Ruili — a border city in Southwest China's Yunnan province adjoining Myanmar — rehearse a poem celebrating a kinship: "From equations' soil, twin fruits take root. Two nations' tomorrows, solved in one shared proof."

Nestled within the Ruili Border Economic Cooperation Zone just 100 meters from Myanmar's northern Muse city, this "gateway school" mirrors the neighbors' intertwined destinies.

Classroom walls display bilingual mottos — "Study hard, improve daily" in Chinese and Burmese — where white-bloused girls from Myanmar mingle seamlessly with their Chinese peers. Of its 463 students, 183 are Myanmar nationals — a figure rising steadily since enrolling two pupils from Myanmar in 2005.