The county, with a population of a million, has 14 other pilot kindergartens and they are leading the way for the other 155 kindergartens, says Liang Wenzheng, an education official of Zhongxian County.
"The idea of learning corners has been widely accepted," Liang says. But to him, the change in education ideas is the most important.
"In the past, the kids learned from books and teachers, but now, they learn from games and by themselves," he says.
In some pre-schools and kindergartens in Chinese rural areas, investment is marginal and costs are cut where possible. They rarely have equipment or furniture suitable for preschoolers. The curriculum is often with an emphasis on rote learning.
This situation is aggravated by poorly trained teachers and a lack of professional development opportunities, says UNICEF project official Lou Chunfang. They work with oversized class rolls with little assistance and face pressure to implement an academic curriculum, while most are untrained in ECD.
But ECD training for teachers is only part of the solution. Problems in the classroom require regular on-site training, says Zhang Yinna, a pre-school education researcher and one of the training experts in Zhongxian County. She says they had 35 on-site sessions last year.
However, some parents and guardians have been skeptical.
Like other counties in western China, Zhongxian has seen young parents migrate to cities to work, leaving their children in the care of aging grandparents with more traditional ideas.
Helping them understand education is another aim of the ECD project, which promotes open days so parents and guardians can visit kindergartens and talk to the ECD experts.
Li Shulan, 59, admits she often phoned the teacher in the past to ask her to assign more homework to her 5-year-old granddaughter. But after talking to experts, she realized that "children should develop in all aspects."
Under the new methods, she says, her granddaughter talks more: "She tells me what happens in school every day."
A recent survey released by UNICEF showed that two-thirds of China's 90 million children aged six and under still live in rural areas and get insufficient early childhood education.
The central government has endeavored to improve pre-school education in rural areas. In 2010, the State Council issued its landmark "Guiding Opinions on Pre-School Education", and pledged an investment of 50 billion yuan to improve access to early childhood education in remote areas.
But a major gap in teaching quality persists between rural and urban areas and is at risk of growing, says UNICEF China education specialist Chen Xuefeng.
A recent survey of the five proposed rural pilot sites, led by the National Institute of Education Sciences, Peking University and UNICEF, found that 38 percent of teachers had no teaching license and 75 percent of caregivers had no caregiver license.
The government needs to improve the ECD teacher training system at county level, Chen argues, and it must roll out policies to encourage professional urban teachers into rural early education.
Shi Yulan is now working hard to become a better teacher. She hopes that her students too can broaden their horizons and walk out of the mountain one day.
