Chinese students often try to make themselves invisible to the teacher who throws out a difficult question and looks around patiently for answers. Usually it is accomplished by making the teacher invisible to the students themselves by lowing their faces or hiding their blank eyes behind the students in the front rows. But in this scenario, the tricks become impossible, since the only two students in the class sit abreast .

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From Chongqing Evening Paper

“Live in famous house, study in prestige school” is the real estate advert that attracted Li Lin to buy an apartment in this “famous” Zhongbo Community 4 years ago. After the spring festival, he planned to transfer his son to the promised prestige school but almost got rejected because the school is severely overcrowded.

Located at the busiest area of the county with a view of the Long River, Zhongxian Experimental Primary School was designed to enroll 1500 students, yet it had a total of 5315 pupils on board now, exceeding the standard by 254%.

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From Time Weekly:

78-year old Su Huawen sat quietly on the side of his bed, wearing a blue Chinese tunic with worn out sleeves he’s been wearing for the last 30 years, and black-rimmed presbyopia lenses. Lying on the bed was his 66-year-old wife who was suffering from brain shrinkage and cerebral arteriosclerosis, covered in thin but stiff cotton quilt.

“He has so little money that he has to make his quilt cover with clothes from a used banner,” said Su Guotong, one of Su Huawen’s students.

Like many other citizen-managed teachers, Su Huawen is a teacher in rural citizen-managed schools and he does not receive the normal remuneration from the government. He’s been teaching in Shanwei Village Primary School for half a century and has educated numerous students. He could have retired as an honorable teacher and lived well for the rest of his life had it not been for the document issued in 2000 by government of Leizhou City, which fired all the citizen-managed teachers overnight, canceling out all their work they’ve done. He lost his source of income, plus the wife’s brain illness, the old couple has sunk deep into poverty.

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“The most expensive website in history” is the infamous name for the new Confucius Institute website, a name dubbed by the Chinese media and public. The Ministry of Finance recently announced the cost of the new Confucius Institutes website (here) and the new China Trade Union website. It seems to be the general consensus among the netizens that 35,200,000 RMB and 6,700,000 RMB are absolutely ridiculous amounts to be paying for a single website. A Chinese netizen, DASH, who owns a website is quoted as saying, “Any website can be made with less than 100,000 RMB.” So why are these websites costing so much? (The famous Confucius)

This is undoubtedly a case where the Chinese government has been following through on its promises of becoming more transparent, but Chinese netizens are arguing that this increase in transparency is not necessarily achieving the desired result – a decrease in corruption.

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From Xinhua:

“Genius comes from hard work
Tobacco helps you to be successful”

After the Wenchuan earthquake last year, Sichuan disaster area has established a “Sichuan Tobacco Hope Elementary School”, not only the “China Tobacco” name and logo was clearly printed on the top of the school building, the stone monument in the center of the school writes “Determine to contribute to society, Tobacco helps you to be successful”. According to statistics, there are at least 17 Hope elementary schools that are named after Tobacco industry. (Wuhan evening news, 12/14/2009)

Chinese folklore says “Smoke makes writing and wine makes poetry”, but the tobacco company directly shuts out “Tobacco helps you to be successful” in a school. They want to tell the students, come, tobacco can help you to be successful and hope the students to remember, it is tobacco that helped you grow, so please repay us later. The tobacco company which is already the public enemy on TV and newspapers, all of sudden turns into Santa Claus giving presents away, opening a mouthful of yellow teeth, I am ugly, but I am your savior.

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A new system

For most Chinese students, the most harrowing event of their lives is the dreaded gaokao, the exam that has omnipotent powers to determine where they go to college. Unlike college entrance in the U.S., which is determined by a combination of SAT scores, grades, activities, recommendations, China has used the gaokao system since 1977 and has not had drastic changes to the system since then.

Until recently.

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[Netease] A few days ago China Education Department published “General Standard Chinese Characters Table”, a draft for reviews and feedbacks by the general public intended to revise 44 Chinese Characters, also restored 51 variant characters. Review period begins on the 12^th ends on the 31^st of this month. This news resulted controversy debates. Yesterday according to the internet survey about 80% of netizens are against the change.

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