Steel, Glass, and gleaming white concrete

I’ve been hanging out too much with the dying and the dead here (grandparents, graves of grandparents, etc), and it’s extinguishing my spirit for life a little. Today, my little cousin (16) came back from school for the weekend, and I made a special effort to spend some time with her, to absorb some youthful energy, to get a feel for the spirit of the Chinese youth, but also because she’s the closest thing to a sister I have (what with the one-child law and all).

Turns out, the spirt of the Chinese youth is pretty extinguished of the spirit for life as well, which is even more depressing, because it should be bursting with it. Not that my sister is dull, no, she is wonderful, it’s her lifestyle–and the strictly enforced lifestyle of every other Chinese high school student–that is suffocating and terrifying. First, high schools in China are all boarding, even if they are 15 minutes away from home (like in my sister’s case). This is necessary, because their schedules are thus:

5:50 Wake up

Breakfast + morning stretches

Morning Independent Study (memorizing texts; ‘independent study’ means all the students sitting at their assigned desks in their classrooms doing homework separately and quietly under the supervision of a teacher)

3 Classes

Lunch

1 hour nap time (Chinese siesta tradition, although many students use this time to do homework. I asked my sister if  students used this time to play, hang out, relax, she thought for a moment and said ‘not really’)

4 more classes

dinner

a series of evening independent studies

9:20 return to dorms 9:40 lights out. no flashlights allowed in rooms.

For free time, the students have the one hour nap after lunch, and ten minutes break in between every class. Also, they have the ‘weekend,’ although it is severely shortened. My sister’s last class of the week ends at 1:50pm on Saturday, that is when my uncle goes and picks her up and takes her home, and then she has to return to school by 5:00pm (for evening independent study) on Sunday. There is lots of homework assigned as well, so the major portion of the ‘weekend’ is spent doing that. To further emphasize the image of rigidity, I must add that all the courses are fixed for everyone–all Chinese high school students take the same classes, in the same classroom with the same classmates. Also, please note that this is not some special academic boot camp, but an average good Chinese high school.

‘What are your dreams?’ I asked my sister.

‘I want to test into a good college and get a good job.’ she said. And who can blame her for not wanting anything more or less or different, when these two things have been drilled into her head since wee-hood, and her education–which is her life–is so regimented and crammed to the brim with learning and memorizing that she has not a moment to breathe, to have fun, to think.

There is something very wrong with the system. 90% of these kids will forget 90% of the crap they spent 90% of their waking lives drilling into their heads after they fulfill their life dreams and test into a good college and get a good job. Furthermore, it seems to me that China is training its people to be a joyless flock of sheep. High achieving, really knowledgeable sheep, but sheep sheep sheep.

My aunt called the school today to ask for a vacation for my sister so that she could have dinner with us–vacation in this case meant 3 hours, she was to be back at school by 8pm. After dinner, I went with my uncle to take her there. This is what I saw: a large spacious campus, with many modern-looking buildings, steel, glass, gleaming white concrete, bright lifeless fluorescent lights. In the rainy dark, the school looked like an empty steel shell, part of its architecture included a claw-like curve that made me think of the Vatican, intimidating, imprisoning, cold. It seemed deserted. As I walked across campus, the clicking of my boots on the tile echoed in a sterile way. We spoke in whispers. But, as I walked my sister up to her classroom, I noticed that every single bright fluorescent classroom in the big steel monster was packed, filled with students working silently at their desks, a teacher supervising silently up front. It was evening independent study. As the door closed on my sister’s happy waving image, I felt like I was placing her in a prison or a hospital, or some sick mixture of the two.

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