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China As It Is

Golf Drive and Gay Student Union

golf course in china“The highest embodiment of the education system is producing socially elite people with the best education,” said the president of Xiamen University in Southern China. His university, therefore, requires golf a compulsory subject for law, business and computer students. The university is also building China’s grandest on-campus golf course.

When hearing the news, I was wondering again where China is heading to when an university’s president can be so vulgar and vision-less in his view about higher education. To produce elites who can play golf is the highest embodiment of the education system? Give me a break. When the world is globalizing, what we need are students who are able to be critical in thinking, creative and aspire to engage the world. And this president is talking about social elite who can play golf!

I am not very surprised, though. In rich cities like Beijing, the parents spend thousands of RMB each month to send their children to golf courses or social manner classes – the aim is nurture them to be the social elites who can play golf, piano, etc. and know the western manner.

Being in the ranks of elites is what distinguishes the rich from the poor, and those with power from those powerless. It is a weapon of defense against competition and the encroaching of current elite status, so the uinversity is offering the weapon to its students, and parents are making use of it on the behalf of their children.

There is some exciting news about China in the past week though. The Sun Yat Sen University in Zhuhai, also in the southern China, has approved the establishment of the first gay/lesbian student union on campus – it is a great breakthrough in the scene of China’s higher education, and even in the the whole China. Wonder if this is the first time that a gay organization is recognized by an authority in China.

By Anna

With a wanderlust and lusts of other sorts, I look to sth new, sth different, sth fulfilling, and find myself on a journey...

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