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Subscribe to RSSBEIJING – Zhang Xinyu meticulously completes her eye exercises twice daily. Her teacher tells her they will help keep her eyesight sharp. At age 12, Xinyu has already been wearing glasses for two years.
For 49 years, the Chinese Education Ministry has required students to exercise their eyes in the name of the Communist Revolution and to combat myopia, or short-sightedness.
The prevalence of myopia, however, is skyrocketing. An estimated 80 to 90 percent of Chinese are short-sighted by the end of high school – triple the U.S. rate. Few Chinese questioned the effectiveness of the eye exercises over the past five decades – until a recent post challenging the exercises was published earlier this summer on Sina Weibo, China’s widely popular answer to Twitter.
“China has had eye exercises for 49 years,” posted a microblooger under the alias “Live from Shanghai.” “Of all the countries in the world, only China uses these eye exercises. The eye exercises are no good for people’s vision. Today, more than 360 million Chinese teenagers have myopia, the second largest percentage in the world.”
Watch an educational video about the eye exercises distributed by China's Ministry of Health in 2009.
The post ignited a firestorm online. Within a day, the post was re-tweeted more than 10,000 times and had received 1.5 million comments on Sina Weibo.
What are Chinese eye exercises?
All schools in China require students to do the exercises daily, playing familiar music over loud speakers during the workout. The Education Ministry even organizes occasional competitions to reinforce the program.
This uniquely Chinese activity dates back to 1961, when the Beijing Education Bureau noticed a sharp increase in the rate of myopia and appointed a Chinese doctor to create exercises to stop the growing problem.
“The Beijing government must have taken this issue very seriously,” said Yan Yirou, a retired employee from the Beijing Education Bureau who worked closely on developing the eye exercises. “There were only three people in charge of students’ health, and two were sent out to handle the project.”
It took two years to develop the exercises. Chinese students have been performing them ever since, except during the 1966-1976 Cultural Revolution, when schools were often closed.
Are they effective?
“For the Communist Revolution, let’s protect eye sight and prevent short-sightedness,” was the explanation school children received for the exercises until recently.
The Chinese Education Ministry cannot provide a scientific rationale for this practice. Under pressure from netizens following the recent Weibo post, the ministry told the Oriental Morning Post, “We’ll ask the experts and make an announcement as soon as possible.”
Ministry officials declined an interview request from NBC News to explain the benefits of the exercises.
Zhu Tianyu, a Beijing local in his 40s, admitted his doubts about the exercises. “I do not know whether they help or not. My eyesight is awful, but I never took the eye exercises seriously.”
His wife, Du Yu, disagrees. “It works,” she said. “I still do them now. Every time I exercise, I feel my eyes are more relaxed.”
Not everyone is convinced.
“It’s difficult for me to say whether they are good or not. But even if they are, their advantages are not apparent,” Xu Yujing, who's been a high school teacher for more than 25 years, told NBC. “Students do not know the pressure points… Everyone does it for the sake of inspection.”
Ian Morgan, a visiting scholar at Zhongshan Ophthalmic Center in Guangzhou, is even more skeptical of the Chinese routine.
“I think it is pretty obvious that Chinese eye exercises do not prevent myopia,” Morgan said. “There is no scientific evidence that they do anything useful at all.”
Student pressure
There is broad consensus that China's hyper-competitive education system is a prime cause of the prevalence of myopia.
“The Chinese believe that exams and the Gaokao [the Chinese college entrance exam] decide a student’s future,” said Yan Yirou, the retired Education Bureau employee. “The eyesight problem is obviously from the heavy school work. In my survey for the Education Ministry, I found myopia rates were the lowest during the Cultural Revolution because no one was studying."
Chinese school children's excessive workloads have only gotten worse with time and are widely believed to be contributing to the problem.
“When I became a teacher in 1986, only one third of students were short-sighted,” said Xu, the longtime teacher. “Today, most students in my class are.”
Pressure for students to study is intense – especially since a student’s Gaokao score can largely dictate his or her future career path.
Despite the prevalence of myopia and the flawed eye exercises, there appears to be no solution in sight.
“It’s unlikely that either the Chinese education system or the eye exercises will change anytime soon,” said Zhang Xin, chairman of the Beijing Education Association Students' Health Division.
Some recent research has shown that children who spend more time outside during daylight hours do not become short-sighted, even if they study a lot. But getting children outside is difficult when the pressure to study is so great.
Some Chinese parents are now taking their overworked children to so-called “eye exercise centers,” where children can rest while masseurs do the eye exercises for them.
At only $3.50 for one treatment, the cost seems like a bargain way to combat short-sightedness for the glory of the Communist Revolution.
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I have always suspected that childhood reading causes myopia. If during much time during growth, the eye is subjected to the strain of the focusing muscles moving the focus distance in from the rest-infinity to a page-distance, it seems likely to me that the plastic and growing eye would accommodate to this focusing distance as its "rest focus", which is precisely what myopia is. The vast majority of my literate friends wear either glasses or contacts; I suspect this is not unusual. I'm childless, but had I had children, I think I would have gotten them reading glasses (positive diopter lenses to transform the effective focus of eye-to-page up to infinity, thus relaxing the lens-focusing muscles) and instructed them to wear the glasses whenever reading. Who knows, it may have worked to prevent myopia.
It seems obvious to me that regular reading causes us to spend substantially more time than ancestral eyes spent at close focus. Expecting our eyes to do a lot of reading, especially during growing years, and still retain a rest-infinity focus just seems beyond what we'd expect evolution to design.
You have a good point there. I was the classic bookworm (still am). My mother taught me to read when I was 3, and I had my own library card by 5 and my book volume was based on what I could carry, there was no problem with getting them all read and returned on time. I did play outside some, but I spent more time reading. In glasses by the fourth grade, contacts now.
Progressive accomodative myopia. It's somewhat controversial, but I can tell you from personal experience, it exists. The muscles in the eye that focus the lens for close reading eventually start to accomodate the constant close work and fail to relax fully when viewing distant objects. They eye can't easily focus on distant objects. Glasses then get prescribed for myopia that get worn for reading (which the should not!). They the cycle starts all over again as the eye compensates even more to focus on close objects again. Then new glasses, stronger than the old ones get prescribed. The situation was recognized and my corrective lenses were reduced and then eliminated and I started using reading glasses for reading. The driving license restriction requiring corrective lenses was removed. This is a situation that starts at a very young age when the child spends a huge amount of time with close reading, such as schools. In places where school is all year with no long summer break, it can be even worse because the eye gets no chance to recover over the summer months.
Wish I'd known that, it would have been easy to just take my glasses off when reading. My glasses have gotten progressively stronger over the years, just as you said (although I did do 'ortho keratatomy' at one point, wound up with an astigmatism and abandoned the idea). But now I do most of my reading with either no correction or with readers when I have my contacts in (because my correction for distance has now completely screwed up my near vision). May have a little chat with the eye doctor about it. I've always requested to be over-corrected for distance because I like having super sharp distance vision, but switching to under corrected may be an interesting experiment. I need a new pair of glasses anyway and my glasses are always single vision (contacts are multi vision, and are intentionally not balanced (both eyes not corrected to exactly the same thing)).
The only benefit I saw to these exercises was that it taught me how to count to 8 in Chinese. :)
To be honest, it's kept for the same reason that first year university students have military drilling during their first two weeks of class. While it serves no purpose, as it pertains to actual health, it is a great tool of indoctrination: breaking off the individual and promoting the "Group", and not questioning the silliness of what you have been told. - If they can get you to goose step around in the dirt an
The only benefit I saw to these exercises was that it taught me how to count to 8 in Chinese. :)
To be honest, it's kept for the same reason that first year university students have military drilling during their first two weeks of class. While it serves no purpose, as it pertains to actual health, it is a great tool of indoctrination: breaking off the individual and promoting the "Group", and not questioning the silliness of what you have been told. - If they can get you to goose step around in the dirt and dust for no reason when you start at the university... if they can get you to rub your eyes in circles every day... How much easier will it be for you to swallow everything else they ask of you?
I know... I know... I must be some sort of nutcase? Right? Well, please explain one thing for me then: Why is it that every morning, you hear the crackle of the loudspeaker, the familiar music starts, and the words "为革命！" ("For the revolution") right before they start rubbing their eyes?
Since absolutely NONE of those exercises exercise an actual EYE muscle, it's no surprise they have no effect on the eyes. I thought we were stupid here in the States.
This has no bearing on your stupidity...
I don't know if these excercises work or not...
but the girl in the video sure is pretty and that's
enough excercise for me.
What? For your right hand?
I taught first grade for one semester in China. Yes, we did eye exercises twice a day. The one thing that was most obvious was the fact that the class room of wild 6 year olds would calm down.
I too engaged in the eye exercises, and I still had to ware my glasses, but I can say for sure it was relaxing and soothing to my eyes, head and neck.
When I moved to Thailand I continued the exercises on my own; they relived my tension, but didn’t cure my myopia.
If I were to make an assumption as to why they have so much eye trouble, I would say it is the same thing that made those kids so hyper. It’s all the MSG they dump in the food.
There are lots of dross articles out there on the subject of eye health, thanks for posting a fascinating article - well written, informative and even culturally enriching. Please allow me to invite your myopic bloggers to a corrective strategy with proven results:
At www.ikonicvisionexpress4less.co.uk You can Try on (in both 2D and 3D) & Buy men's & women's prescription glasses and sunglasses. We also supply ice-cool prescription sunglasses by Police, Guess, Skechers and Gant designer brands. All frames complimented by the lowest price prescription lens packages online.
I know I sat to close in front of the TV when I was a kid....my mom yelled at me...but I remained parked in my comfortable position soon after she left the room....so.....I struggled and squinted my way through grammar school and got mercilessly put in the front of the room for lack of seeing the blackboard clearly.......but thats ok, I felt Priviledged, I was closer to the nuns at that time and it was easier for them to select me and others in the front for jobs like erasing the blackboard, watering plants and just doing running errands to the principle.....it was ok.
First the facekinis and now the eye exercises...OK China, I'm hooked!
Progressive accomodative myopia. It's somewhat controversial, but I can tell you from personal experience, it exists. The muscles in the eye that focus the lens for close reading eventually start to accomodate the constant close work and fail to relax fully when viewing distant objects. They eye can't easily focus on distant objects. Glasses then get prescribed for myopia that get worn for reading (which the should not!). They the cycle starts all over again as the eye compensates even more to focus on close objects again. Then new glasses, stronger than the old ones get prescribed. The situation was recognized and my corrective lenses were reduced and then eliminated and I started using reading glasses for reading. The driving license restriction requiring corrective lenses was removed. This is a situation that starts at a very young age when the child spends a huge amount of time with close reading, such as schools. In places where school is all year with no long summer break, it can be even worse because the eye gets no chance to recover over the summer months.
I reduced my myopia from a -4.00 to -2.50 in four months. Myopia rehab clinic in Austria (Frauenfeld Clinic), they also do distance programs online and with therapists. Quite simply, it works.
Find the source of the eye strain, eliminate strain, then rehabilitate through exercise. Focal plane work, prescription changes, all very methodical, German style, scientific, no strange voodoo magic. 2-3 years, I'll be back to 20/20
That's the stupidest thing I ever saw. She didn't even touch her eyes or anything that could be beneficial. However I would like eye massage with happy ending preeze!
I'm sure some Rhino horn or Tiger testicle extract would help their myopia problem.