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Subscribe to RSSDisturbing pictures have emerged of a classroom full of Chinese high school students hooked up to IV drips so they stay alert as they cram for the annual "gaokao" -- college entrance exam.
Some 9.5 milion students will take the two-day exam in June to compete for some 6.5 places in Chinese colleges. The competition is most intense for the elite universities like Beijing's Peking University and Tsinghua University.
See more photos here: Eye Opening: Senior High School Classroom Full of IV Drip Bottles in China
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I think China is very possibly one of the weirdest countries on the planet. The culture there is just bizarre. Couldn't they just drink coffee or have a red-bull?
It's like cooking a turkey with a flamethrower, it would make more sense just to use the oven.
On the other hand.......maybe they figured out the formula for a smart drug?
I am from China and I also think that is so weird. So please do not use this one story from one school in China to generalize the whole country.
I hope you, with your ignorant, little, western mindset can understand what I just said. You ignorant and arrogant American or whatever western countries you come from.
Learn english, jrt250, then maybe you can read the CoH.
Refrain from personal attacks. Reported.
jrt250,
I think you know very well that this "one little story" isn't the deciding factor for us calling China a weird and bizarre country. All of the stories from politics -- to a video of people purposely ignoring and avoiding a 3-year old who was hit-and-run by two cars... is our deciding factor!
Sure! Not everyone in China is like that, but there are enough oddities for us foreigners of your country to draw such a conclusion.
Oh, and to make you feel better, we think that North Korea is just a bit more bizarre and weird. Just a bit...
who cares how u think? idiot!
who cares how u think! idiot!
Sorry to puncture the racist fantasies of all you bigots out there, but apparently even the Chinese people find this practice a little bizarre for their taste. Aw, shucks ... maybe they're human too ...
Latest news is that the Hubei Province Education Bureau has launched a probe into the incident:
Deleted.
How do you say STOOPID in chinese ??
痴子 (Chīzi)
Well, first of all, Chinese don't drink coffee. The Westerners, such as Americans, according to Chinese, are weird too, for example, they drink cold water with ice even in pretty cold weather, plus they drink icy milk in the morning right after getting out of beds, for they use dryers to dry their clothes even if there's pretty sunshine and breeze in the open air. So, you can't say one's culture is weird simply because it's different.
Secondly, for those of you who have never lived in China or at least attended Chinese schools, you can never comprehend the competition. In China, in order to get a good job, you need a good degree, not just some degree, but one from a prestigious university with a good national reputation. Otherwise you will end up doing hard labor jobs earning nothing at all, unless your dad is rich enough to send you overseas. You guys can't even imagine, in China, after every major exams even elementary schools, there will be a rank showing each student, those in the top receive admiration and pride. Those in the bottom, well, they can just suck their shame and nobody feels sorry for them.
This doesn't sound like communism it's more like law of the jungle. Eat or be eaten. Not a pleasant place to live unless you have powerful friends.
Well who says China's communist anyway. It's only communist in name, an excuse the government uses to maintain the regime. In reality, nobody believes in Communism or Socialism in China, nor the country is being run a like a real Socialist or Communist like Cuba or even North Korea is. Everything in China is about competition----competition for wealth, fame and personal success. Everybody is focusing on how to get better jobs, earn more money, get bigger apartments and fancier cars. Public education costs a lot of money. The health care system has been completely commercialized, which should be provided free to all citizens in a real Socialist or Communist country. In fact, having living in the US for a few years, and I am still living here, America is in many many ways more Socialist than China is ...especially in my state----Massachusetts.
I remember a time when China had Honor. It sounds like it got thrown to the side due to the competition...
I'm in manufacturing, we import from China, India, Mexico, El Salvador, and even a little from Vietnam. The Bulk comes from China. The quality has deteriorated over the years, drastically. It's like they don't care what it looks like. Just how to make things cheaper without informing the customer.
Example: Lead Painted Toys. Mix Lead with paint, which paint costs more, and you have a cheaper product being produced but costing the same.
But understanding the whole competition for a better job thing, I saw the factories in China... WOW do they have a LONG way to go to make it up to our standards... Talk about sweat shops... They've gotten better though, with the whole "Workers Rights" movement in China... But still not up to our standards. I wouldn't want to work in one, that's for certain.
But at what point do you say enough is enough and this is TOO extreme?
@Lei Chen: The US of A socialistic?! NO WAY!!! /sarcasm
You're right, compared to China, many of our policies are socialistic in its leanings. China is about as capitalistic as it gets right now.
As for the article, this doesn't really surprise me, but I think they seriously did step over the line. Being half Korean, I know from first hand experience the type of drive most of the Asian countries (particularly S. Korea, Japan, China, and India) have with proving to themselves and to the rest of the world the things they can do in pretty much every aspect. My baby cousin is hoping to get in to Harvard and quite literally spends all day every day studying. It's definitely a worthy goal, and I totally support her, but sometimes I wonder if she pushes herself to hard. I definitely wasn't the best of students, considering the term "slacker" would've been to kind used on me, but this really does seem to be to much. Students are still children, and a child that doesn't get to play, to enjoy childhood, won't be the best developed as an adult. It's within social play and social activities that children develop the social etiquette and skills needed later; not when their noses are buried in books and their arms hooked up to IV drips.
What's that old cliche? All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. The competition shouldn't be so fierce that children have to sacrifice being children just to make it in the future. Is China raising humans or automatons who only know a daily grind?
communist china is not wierd even though in 2006 government ordered death of 60k dogs and those who had dogs in their homes was ordered beat it no they wierd plain in simple
I really do not understand what you want to tell us???
Say again..
hei, KrazyD111, how do you know that things, Chinese government always find some things to do ,because they have too much free time.
Lei Chen, I guess you are an Asian. America education is so self centering that anything not like the American will classifly as strange and cannot be accepted. That is the reason why they have to export their believe. Whoever not accepting their believe will be groupped as weird. The schoolboys and girls here start playing even before they get off from the schoolbus. Homework is not a word here in this country.
"Homework is not a word here in this country."
You must have been homeschooled, that or you are just an idiot.
What's wrong with homeschooling? I homeschool my 5 year old, and he's the BRIGHTEST child I know. He's also, contrary to what public school officials would like to admit, socially adept. He also plays just as hard as any public school kid would. The "homework is not a word here in this country" was an awesome statement, and it's the very reason I homeschool my child. Public schooling here in the USA means dumbing down the classroom to the least common denominator, for the sake of peace and being able to control everyone. Any homework given is both (a) a result of the teachers spending too much time trying to keep Slow Joe up with the rest of the class, and (b) watered down for the sake of allowing the 'overworked' (cough) teacher and opportunity grade all the papers. What a joke education in the USA is!!!
Thank God i am not chinese.
whey too much MSG in the Chinese food.
Meet your competition,then go order two more pizzas and pick up another half-barrel.
You can still get your degree in communications with a 2.0 GPA
Meet your competition! Are you for real? That's not Competition.That's COMPLETELY SICK, and has no regard or respect for any human being.I don't give a flying rat's ass of they're Chinese or American.IT'S DISGUSTING.
The 2.0GPA and the half barrel with 2 pizzas are more realistic than this sh it!UnFricken Believable!
I can imagine the Suicide Rate among these Poor Kids, and that's aiming HIGH!
gloria babe, drink some icewater and calm down.
This is a extreme case even in China, however it refelcts the sad reality. While wealthy family can send their kids overseas, normal Chinese family doesn't have much choices. Most of people I talk to in China feels the education system is totally broken. Chinese school goes too far on paper test, while American public school lack of it.
I really feel for these kids, that there is so much pressure just to be able to get into a good school that they go to this extreme when studying for their college entrance exams.
If only more of our kids in the US placed even half that amount of importance on doing well in high school, getting into a good college and then doing well in college, I have to believe the high school graduation rates, etc. in America would be so much better. I firmly believe that the difference lies with the parents. Granted some kids will never be potential Ivy League students due to IQ limitations, etc. but I do believe that there are many kids who underachieve for one reason or another. As parents we HAVE to realize that their child's education is as much of our responsibility as it is the school's, I can't see our education system improving. I come from a family of teachers and I hear about the lack of involvement of the parents, particularly for the kids who are doing poorly in school. It's a sad state of affairs, really.
This is not surprising at all. In China if you don't have rich/connected family, then you don't have the fall-back of being able to study abroad, in a relatively cushy western institution desperate for the Chinese tuition $.
This exam will decide whether you go to a 1st ,2nd or 3rd tier university; which in turn will often decide what sort of job you'll be able to get into upon graduation. The link between the two is huge. Those going to your Beidas of this world will almost always get better jobs than those getting into provincial colleges, and thus subsequently, will have more comfortable lives and better opportunities.
There is so much competition taking the Gaokao, anything you can do to get an advantage, however small that may be, is going to be tried. The pressure on these kids is immense... I count my lucky stars I didn't have to go through this system.
The western systems for all their failings are more egalitarian.
Wow. I'm very thankful for the excellent public school system I attended which encouraged and prepped my friends and me for our university education, without using IV drips. I am also thankful for the little bits of Red Bull in the later years of college, and not having to use IV drips, to keep my high GPA.
As someone in an earlier post stated, a little bit of fizzy energy beverage might have worked just as well. I understand competition among over one billion people is intense, but this method of keeping students alert is quite extreme.
I guess that is the difference in a free world and a communist world,
Besides some minor discrepancies Chinese people have the same freedoms as you. What can you do that they can not?
VeniVidiVici
I can travel to HK without a visa. These PRC citizens can't go to HK without a permit from their own local government, and a travelling document, even HK is supposedly part of China. I can move from city to city to village to whatever within my country without permission from anybody. And I don't need permission from anybody to reside in any community within this country. PRC people moving from place to place have to have permission to move their hukou, or get a "temporary residency permit".
Odd methods. But it seems to be working for them. Its only for 2 days and if it improves test scores and increases the amount of students entering universities then it must work. Most likely this is an experiment that the US has tried to portray as common practice in all schools of China. These kids will most likely one day be running businesses around the world to make up for the lack of educated people in other countries.
Increase the amount of students entering universities ? You mean the enrollment limits of universities would increase because these students were having drips ? They suddenly would have more classrooms, labs, instructors, etc. etc. just because of these drips ? That must be a major scientific breakthrough only possible in China.
Chinese are pretty fond of IV drips. They give IV drips to people with a flu, a fever, a anything... So IV drips of amino acid is not surprising. What is surprising is that they did us the sure fire formulae: Ground up the text book, about 200 gram, add two cups of water from snow melt, and an egg. Boil for two hours in medium heat, or till only half cup of liquid is left. Put into IV drop, running at 2 cc per minute. Students will remember everything in the text book and will forget within 48 hours. So don't do this till just a day before the exam.
It is sad the extremes people go to for university admissions today and how competitive the admission process for most universities are. America's admission process is competitive enough, but to get into universities in China must be a nightmare with only so many spots and such a large population.
That country is F'ed up
9.5 million people competing for just six and half spots? That's CRAZY!
Also, what does half a spot look like?