The interview was conducted in Mandarin Chinese and originally published on 10 April, 2025 in Simplified Chinese characters. This translation was made using AI and then minimally edited for clarity and readability by Jesse Coffino. The original Chinese text can be found here.

Anji Play on the road of reform | Anji Play: an educational revolution leading a sustainable future (Part 3) - Interview with Cheng Xueqin, founder of Anji Play

Interviewed experts | Cheng Xueqin, Education Bureau of Anji County, Zhejiang Province

Text | Staff reporter Cheng Jie

In June, September and November of 2024, a reporting team from this magazine conducted three in-depth investigations into the Anji County region, and then interviewed Ms. Cheng Xueqin, founder of the Anji Play Approach, a dialogue that focused on the conditions and process that led to the development of Anji Play,  its underlying view of children, how to implement this new view of children, and how to continue to deepen the reform of regional early childhood education.

Reporter: According to your explanation of the five key principles of Anji Play in the last issue, should "love" be understood in this way: true love is not about control, but about choosing to believe and let go? So, should we also understand "close your mouth, put down your hands, open your eyes, and lift up your ears" from a deeper level? I have heard some teachers question: "Isn't letting go just giving up responsibility? If you let go, why should you be a teacher?" What do you think of such questions?

Cheng Xueqin: “Close your mouth, put down your hands, open your eyes and ears” is our principle of action for implementing a new concept of children in play. "Close your mouth" is when teachers provide space for children to play and problem-solve without adult guidance or intervention. “Put down your hands” means that teachers do not immediately extend a helping hand, and thereby provide children with independent space to explore and take risks. “Open your eyes and ears” means that teachers should open all sensory channels such as their ears and eyes, and use their whole mind to perceive: what stimulates children's curiosity, what attracts them, what problems are they solving, what do they want to know, and how do they communicate? With this understanding, as teachers we can develop a clearer understanding of children's needs and abilities, we can make more informed decisions about play materials and environments, and we can provide the truly necessary support to meet the needs of each child.

In reality, we are always in a hurry to set a specific goal. Teachers often interfere with children's joyful, deep discovery for their own goals. For example, we interrupt conflicts between children and provide mediation strategies from an adult perspective. We always think that children should learn something instead of letting them have their own discoveries and experiences. If we focus on observing and discovering children, we need to step back and see how children interact with their materials, environment, and each other, rather than always investing ourselves in children's play.

Of course, letting go and stepping back does not mean giving up responsibility, but rather allowing ourselves time to consciously observe, listen, and record as children play. When we take this stance we are developing a new view of children: one that trusts children's ideas and problem-solving strategies and respects their joy and initiative.

We pursue the greatest degree of letting go and the smallest degree of intervention to ensure that children’s rights to active learning are maximized. These principles of action warn teachers to intervene with caution. As mentioned in the “Assessment Guide,” do not rush to intervene or disturb children's active learning.

Teachers close their mouths, put their hands down, open their eyes, and lift their ears. Since the main focus is on observing children, teachers themselves can achieve rapid professional growth, understand more and more the characteristics of children’s play, and understand more and more children’s development. Based on this principle of action, there will be new breakthroughs in the role of teachers and the relationship between teachers and children. Our teachers are no longer traditional teachers who preach and teach. Our teachers are discoverers, supporters, and companions of children, and learners who learn from children. We have replaced the education model of “teachers take the lead in play, and children follow closely" with “children take the lead in play, and teachers follow closely to support.”

In the past, teachers felt that they were the leaders, and behind their teaching was the traditional dignity of teachers. However, we have found that in the process of caring for children, the more teachers do, the smaller the child's room for autonomy becomes. In this way, the teacher’s eyes cannot see the true child. Teachers need to witness the child in play and in life to help them become aware of their own views on children and education. When a teacher’s eyes see every child, they will truly believe in the children.

Reporter: Therefore, "close your mouth, put down your hands, open your eyes and your ears" is a whole. You cannot just "close" or "stop", and you cannot overlook observation and reflection. These four practices are not the purpose. The more essential purpose is to renew one’s view on children and education. Therefore, to truly “close your mouth and put down your hands,” we cannot rely on the coercion of managers or one-size-fits-all administrative orders, but on the self-awareness of teachers’ concepts.

So, is the emergence of “play stories” and "one-on-one listening" also related to the self-renewal of teachers’ views on children and education?

Cheng Xueqin: Of course it has something to do with renewed views of children and education. First of all, “play stories” come from play, where teachers let go to the greatest extent and children are completely immersed in their own experiences, thereby gaining significant direct experience. No matter what discoveries are made in play, what difficulties and problems are encountered, and what kind of play situations occur, it is the direct experience of the child. After play, the children return indoors and draw their play story after they have had direct experience. In this process, they review their play experience or recall their own experience again. For the first time, they express their direct experience in an abstract way and start their first reflection. At present, we have chosen a form of representation that is relatively easy for  young children to grasp - drawing, to help children complete independent recording, because mark-making is natural for children in the preschool stage.

Then, the children express their experiences to the teacher. When expressing, they will reflect again on their discoveries, thoughts and inspirations in play. This time, they express their experiences in spoken language, abstracting and reflecting on their experiences for the second time.

At the same time, the teacher listens to the children one-on-one and faithfully records the child’s expression. The child sees their experiences being carefully recorded by the teachers in abstract words. The teachers will also read back to them carefully and the child will hear their experiences being recited by the teachers in spoken language. This is the third abstraction, refinement and reflection of the children's experience. 

These representative records of children, which are called “play stories” in Anji Play, will be displayed on the wall of the classroom by the teacher. Children will continue to look at it repeatedly and have a dialogue with their own graphical representations. This is the fourth time they contend with their own reflections. 

In every reflection process, including the final process of revisiting their own play stories, the child continues to reproduce or recall the play that they have experienced at various levels. As the famous psychology expert Wu Zhihong said: “Our minds need to evolve from the primary thinking process to the secondary thinking process. The ‘language’ of the primary thinking process is images, and the language of the secondary thinking process is called ‘symbols.’ But we cannot lose primary thinking. Creativity comes from here. Once it is lost, you will no longer be able to connect with your own feelings. When we don’t have this ‘truth’, it is a purely false thing and is not creative.” Children’s rich play experience and reflection and expression with the help of teachers are key elements to support the development of children’s thinking.

Reporter: Did "one-on-one listening" also develop from practices of observation and reflection? Is it also related to the self-renewal of teachers’ views of children and education?

Cheng Xueqin: Indeed. In June 2012, I was observing play at Langcun She Ethnicity Kindergarten in Anji. For the first time, I suggested that teachers listen to and record in words the children’s expressions of the play stories they drew. Then Anji County Central Kindergarten also began to implement the practice of “one-on-one listening and recording.” Later, more and more teachers began to do “one-on-one listening and recording,” including listening to children's expressions while recording them, and recording and then repeating these records to the children. The educational value achieved by doing “one-on-one listening and recording” cannot be ignored. First, it provides young children with opportunities to reflect from action to thinking. Children reflect on and understand their own experiences, and express their experiences. Wonderful ideas are born every day. These opportunities allow children to further explore. Secondly, it supports young children’s metacognitive process and cultivates their ability of insight and in-depth discovery, which is a key process for high-level thinking and long-term cognitive development. Third, children’s written (symbolic) representation ability and oral narrative ability are developed. Fourth, it respects the expression of every child, treats every child fairly, and realizes the return of the child’s right of expression. I have interviewed many kindergarten teachers and primary language arts teachers. I ask if there are any children who have not spoken for a year in traditional group learning settings. The teachers generally answer
“definitely.” When asked whether there were children after two years, the teachers answer, “yes.” When asked after three years, after some thought, the teachers reply, “there will be some who do not speak.” I asked primary school language arts teachers if there were any students who have not spoken during their entire six years of primary school, and the answer was of course “yes.” Words are not necessary to express what this outcome means for children.

The value of teacher professional development achieved by doing “one-on-one listening and recording” cannot be ignored. For teachers, “one-on-one listening” provides an opportunity to further see and understand children’s behaviors and the thoughts behind them, effectively promotes a heart-to-heart connection between teachers and children, and improves the relationship between teachers and children.

Moreover, “one-to-one listening and recording” is what the child themselves say, which is the child’s authentic self-evaluation. It is a vivid record of the child’s growth and has unique value in evaluating a child’s development. Reflecting on the past, when teachers made records of a child’s development, they often took some photos and wrote a few comments. It was often difficult to grasp the true development of the child. The content of “one-on-one listening and recording” also plays a special role in establishing mutual trust with parents. When parents see those rich expressions that reflect their child’s growth being faithfully recorded by teachers, their respect for teachers and satisfaction with kindergarten improves greatly.

When we discovered that this work has so many unique and important values, we incorporated it into the day-to-day life of the kindergarten as an important link. As administrators, we also let go of the power to organize and arrange the schedule of the day and gave it back to the teacher. We applied a process of subtraction to mandated daily activities and reformed our concept of day-to-day activities to support teachers in listening and recording children’s expressions with quality.

A large number of listening records tell us: every child is worthy of our trust. One child in the youngest class told the full story of taking two different bus routes from home to school and then back home again. He told the story going in one direction and then told it again in reverse. When describing the route in reverse, he corrected himself and added things he had just missed in the first telling. He said: “Teacher Xu, this is my ‘Journey to the West,’ not Wu Chengen's ‘Journey to the West.’” This child creates more than a dozen episodes of his own “Journey to the West” every day. He is now in the third grade. I heard that he has created more than 70 episodes of his own version of “Water Margin.”

Children interact with the environment every day, discover the world every day, and form their own opinions every day. If we don’t have the opportunity to listen to and discover the child, we will never know what the child is thinking or how amazing the child is. Children cultivated in this education model have logical thinking, pay attention to the basis for doing things, and consider problems comprehensively.

Reporter: It turns out that “play stories” and “one-to-one listening and recording” are all closely related to the cultivation of children's thinking. So how did “thought sharing” develop? Does it also focus on the development of young children’s thinking?

Cheng Xueqin: At the beginning, we also carried out traditional post-thought sharing activities, which focused on talking to the children about “what we played today,” “who we played with,” “what difficulties we encountered” and “what methods we used to solve them.” However, I found that this kind of sharing still remained at the level of teachers asking questions and children answering, and it did not break through the bottleneck problems I discovered in our research before reform.

So, I began to wonder, what is the value pursued in thought sharing activities? How can our view of children and education established in play reform be transferred and applied to discussion activities organized by teachers? What kind of breakthroughs can we make in post-thought sharing and discussion compared to past group learning?

I often talked on the phone about these initial questions with my daughter, who was in college in Australia at the time. Although she majored in science and engineering, she gave me a lot of inspiration. It felt like it cracked a hole in my head. She told me: “You can film the children's play and let the teachers analyze how the children play, or you can film some play clips for the children to discuss. The teachers can listen to the children’s thoughts and see what different ideas the children have. No matter what the children’s thoughts are, as long as the children think it makes sense, you must respect it.” She told me that when she first asked a teacher a question in Australia, she heard the teacher ask her “What do you think?” and she was very embarrassed that she couldn't answer. She also told me: “No teacher has paid attention to these things since childhood. You need to reform and cultivate children's habit of thinking about problems.” There were no smartphones that could take pictures back then, so I bought a video camera to take videos and photos. Later, smartphones appeared, and I encouraged teachers to use modern devices to support their own observation, interpretation of play, and thought sharing activities.

Based on my daughter's suggestions, I positioned the sharing activities after the play as a collective reflection, and encouraged teachers to take out some of the photos and videos they recorded during play to share and discuss with the children, sometimes with the whole class, sometimes in smaller groups. In this process, it is not the teacher giving a lesson or teaching content to the children, but understanding the children’s play experiences, thinking processes and inner thoughts on another level.

The move from traditional group learning methods that focus on children’s passive learning of knowledge and experience acquisition to an active learning method that focuses on children's ideas and thinking process is a huge challenge for teachers. For a while, many teachers felt that they could no longer teach. So, I asked some key teachers from Anji County Central Kindergarten, including Pan Leyun, Lin Die, Wang Zhen, Zhou Li, Xia Qiuhong, Miao Lei, and Wang Jia, to try it out first. After constant attempts, these teachers quickly mastered thought sharing methods that support children's active learning. I also tried it with Teacher Miao Lei, who had no idea how to do it at the time. After several follow-up visits, Teacher Miao was soon able to share exciting videos of play with the children and then reflect. Since then, I have also organized many special training sessions on post-thought sharing. With the accumulation of these first-hand experiences, teachers no longer worry about not being able to teach.

In 2022, I discussed these practices with Mr. Zhang Hui, the former Deputy Director of the Institute of Basic Education of the Jiangsu Academy of Educational Sciences, and unified the term “thought sharing” so that when everyone sees the words “thought sharing,” they will know that this activity focuses on thinking, and it is clear that it is designed to support the development of children's thinking, and is a platform for dialogue built for children's true abilities to be discovered by everyone. In this “thought sharing” activity, children help each other, question each other, think more deeply about what they or their peers have done, and use this opportunity to solve problems together. This is a complex thinking process to solve problems, which gives birth to various wonderful ideas and realizes a broad range of child development, including cognitive, social, emotional...

The dialogue and reflection in “thought sharing” activities help children interpret and reconstruct the meaning of play together with their peers. It also allows teachers to see the complex ideas in the minds of all children, the problems being solved, the hypotheses being tested, and the various skills the children are learning in play. Teachers use questions to stimulate children’s thinking and interpretation of play, from discovering problems to asking questions and answering questions, to questioning each other, and constantly clarifying. Teachers pay more attention to stimulating children to express their own opinions and think about their own thinking process, that is, to critically analyze the ideas of others and their own.

Teachers respect and respond to each child's ideas and questions. When a child encounters difficulty in their thinking, the teacher can ask another question for them to think about to support and expand each child's learning. Teachers allow and encourage children to participate in heated discussions and debates, do not limit the topics discussed by children, and do not instill their own adult understandings into children. Even if teachers provide their own ideas, they are only intended to support children in expressing their ideas.

Compared with traditional group learning activities, “thought sharing” has five major breakthroughs. First, the learning content comes from the children's own experience, which is a real situation, rather than from the teacher's instruction book. Second, the materials are videos and photos of the children themselves, rather than virtual pictures and animations. Third, “thought sharing” is centered on a discussion of real problems - real problems raised by children after personal experience or observation of play, rather than questions specially designed by teachers to challenge young children. Fourth, children are in the front and teachers are in the back, allowing children to control the entire discussion process. Because these are real, shared situations and real, shared problems, every child will have some part in the experience, and something to say. The teacher only facilitates the discourse based on where the children are taking it, rather than making the children follow the teacher's pre-designed process. Fifth, the goal of teaching is no longer the transfer of knowledge and no longer focuses on a standardized conclusion, but the development of children's thinking and the birth of children's wonderful ideas. The test of achievement of teaching goals is to see the flexibility of thinking shown by children, and the test of teaching quality is to see the extent to which teachers stimulate children's enthusiasm for thinking.

Of course, “thought sharing” also brings new challenges to teachers: it specifically tests and exercises teachers’' ability to observe, analyze, and understand children’s play, as well as their educational acumen; it challenges teachers’ ability to capture valuable questions in play; it challenges teachers’ ability to understand children’s ideas through listening, for instance whether they can understand the thinking behind a child’s words after hearing their voice; it challenges teachers’ ability to stimulate children’s enthusiasm for thinking, for instance whether they can empower the child and reduce their own high level of control, to stimulate children's interest in independent participation, to identify “topics” that are meaningful to both children and teachers, to subtly stimulate the birth of children's wonderful ideas, and to trigger more in-depth learning; it challenge teachers’ sensitivity to children's development, for instance the ability to empathize with each child's experience so that each child can has the opportunity to develop at their own level; it challenge teachers’ ability to “interact” with children rather than “interfere,” for instance whether they can let go of themselves in their day to day interactions with their children and step back to observe and support.

In the practice of Anji Play, we advocate “the principle of simplicity,” which does not require teachers to complete complex curriculum design, but strives for simplicity, because what we need to do is to promote children to think complexly and solve complex problems independently, so that we do not need to intervene too much. Therefore, no matter what level or region, early childhood education programs can creatively use the concepts of Anji Play to reform their own educational practices. Anji Play has begun to bear fruit all over the world, especially for children across China, who have benefited widely and now have the opportunity to enjoy equal, high-quality preschool education. A single spark has gradually started a prairie fire.

Reporter: Finally, could you please talk about your expectations for the future of sustainable development of Anji Play?

Cheng Xueqin: Looking back on the past, we were also tired and helpless. We were also confused by the dilemma of “primarification” and “de-primarification.” We were also entangled in the contradiction between the concept of reform and the demands of parents. We were also confused about how to coordinate play and teaching. We were also helpless in overcoming the gap between the requirements of reform and the professional level of teachers.

However, over the past 24 years, we have persisted in sticking to the green hills, taking root in front-line research, studying children and play in non-stop reflective practice, and persisting in pursuing real problems in practice, using action principles of pursuing questions to their end, explaining clearly, and putting them into practice, to make breakthroughs one by one. Over the past 24 years, we have insisted on returning the right of play to children, from the “no play” stage of “primarification” to the “false play” stage influenced by utilitarianism and formalism, to the “true play” stage of returning to children's nature.

Only by not forgetting your original intention can you achieve success. Anji Play is a non-stop reflective practice process. Only through constant reflection and breakthrough can we maintain strong professional vitality. The spirit of Anji Play is one word “truth” - removing the false and preserving the true, removing formalism, and removing utilitarianism are its core spiritual connotations. Anji Play is the mission of Anji County’s successive educational leaders to draw a blueprint. The emergence and development of Anji Play cannot be separated from the love and support of many leaders and experts with a love for education. Here, I am particularly grateful to my teacher, Professor Hua Aihua, for her company and guidance along the way! Thanks to our colleagues across the country for giving us encouragement and working with us to discover children.