The first ever museum showing the life of educated youth (a name reserved for middle-school graduates, who settled down in the countryside in the 1950s, 60s and 70s) working for reclamation of land from the sea will open to the public on October 1.

The museum will be in the Fengxian District of Shanghai, which lies very near the East China Sea.

Chen Chunyan, spokesman for the project, said, the reason the site in Fengxian was chosen is that the first batch of Shanghai educated youth started the strenuous reclamation work in the first State-run farm there in 1954.

From then on, a total of 370,000 Shanghai young people have worked in the farms in Fengxian.

They have reclaimed more than 52,000 hectares of land from the sea for Shanghai.

This year is the 50th anniversary of the educated youth's first-ever act of reclamation. The city decided to invest in a museum building in memory of the golden old days for the youth.

Chen revealed that investment in the museum will surpass 12 million yuan (US$1.45 million). It will have a floor space of 4,300 square metres, composed of two exhibition centres -- a three-storey European pastoral building showing historical archives and documentaries and a one-storey modern building showing the tools used in the-then reclamation work.

All the exhibits are categorized into groups under three different themes -- the reclamation process, the model workers among the educated youth, and the achievements made by them.

The educated youth who had engaged in the reclamation work in the farms in Feng Xian are now mainly middle aged or even seniors, and will shoulder the responsibility of designing, constructing and even managing the museum, according to the Shanghai Agricultural, Industrial and Commercial Group.

"The most moving thing is that many educated youth have donated their valued personal belongings to the museum as exhibits."

(China Daily April 5, 2004)