Jr. High & High School Life in China

Two weeks ago I met a high school junior in her school uniform at a walk-in noodle restaurant. We we both by ourselves so we sat down together. She took the initiative to serve me some hot peppers and soup which, to my ignorance, were included. We chatted a little bit, exchanged contact info, and went our ways. She called me a few days ago to invite me to a singing competition at her school. I wasn’t particularly excited about going to watch high-schoolers sing, but I’m glad I did. I met her at her school at the time she specified and discovered that all the students were already seated. She then escorted me to her class’s section near the front of the crowd. Being a foreigner in China, this drew huge attention from everyone and probably gave my student friend a lot of “face” (the Asian concept of face has some relationship with standing, respect, “props,” etc.). I didn’t quite know the purpose of the event but found out it was related to the promotion of Chinese nationalism, one of those “we love our country” days. The historical root came about in 1935 when many university students in Beijing unified themselves against a government that willingly allowed the Japanese into Northeastern China. I was struck with how different this activity was than anything I ever experienced in high school. For one, how many schools enforce uniforms at the high school level? Also, I found that many students took this event as an opportunity to study. I can’t even imagine that happening in my own high school. One of the driving forces for Chinese students is that since there are so many of them, only a small percentage get accepted at higher levels. The way China has traditionally evaluated students is through written tests, especially before graduating junior high and high school. It amazes me that many seniors know exactly how many days until their high school exit exam—and it’s still 170-something days away! For Chinese youth, education is life. A lot of them leave school around midnight, get home (if they don’t live at school), go to bed, and wake up around 6AM. They have mandatory classes and study times in the evening and on weekends. I ran into a student one Sunday ago with her school uniform on. I asked if they ever had a day off. I know they didn’t have Saturday off but I wasn’t sure about Sunday. So I asked her why she was wearing her school uniform on Sunday if this was her day off and she said she had to make up classes. It does seem to be the case that for Jr. high students, they “get off” Friday and Saturday evenings. When I asked what they do in their free time, they said they “do homework.” Students will readily admit that a student’s life is “painstaking,” but also empathize with the system and tell you, “There are too many Chinese people. The competition is too intense. It’s the only way.”At one point in the morning my friend pulled out the day’s program and asked me if I could identify which class was hers on the singing roster. Since it was all in Chinese, I failed to find it. But when she pointed it out, I noticed that her name was listed as the class’s conductor. She had told me at the when I first arrived that she would no longer be participating, but I assumed this mean she wouldn’t be singing. As it turns out, she had rehearsed as the conductor up until the week of the event when her teacher let someone else have the position. The reasoning: she was “too small.” I thought she was referring to age since stature isn’t a major issue here, but she clarified that it wasn’t age but size. When I discovered she was disappointed by this last minute change, and knowing that many times Chinese will tell you something bogus just to “save face,” I probed for a better explanation. In the process, I found out she did not want to her tell mother about this. On this morning when her mother saw her wearing her school uniform, she asked what clothes she would be wearing as conductor. My friend just told her that she planned to borrow some at school. For whatever the reason, she didn’t want her mother to know. I began to gather that this was a painful experience for this young girl and before long, she began to cry. She said her teacher tried to console by an educational lesson about the future—namely that disappointments happen in life often in our society, perhaps something like a “life’s not fair” speech. But it was evident that this young girl still felt the pain. I guess if it’s not Japanese aggression, it’s examination pressure or personal rejection...