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News on China’s Education Sector

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Olivia’s Cambridge Diary

Spanish for beginners
Jan 17, 2020 (WiC 479)

In sociolinguistics, we talk about learning languages as accumulating “linguistic capital” – investments with stable returns both personally and professionally. Today, it is estimated there are 10 million Chinese speakers of English, just ...

Olivia’s Cambridge Diary

Food friendship with Chinese classmates
Dec 6, 2019 (WiC 477)

A spontaneous decision, fuelled by the need to find a better work-life balance, led me to a house party just north of Jesus Green. Upon arriving, I gravitate towards a friendly-looking Chinese student in the corner of the kitchen. His face is ...

Olivia’s Cambridge Diary

Month one: my Chinese cohort
Nov 15, 2019 (WiC 474)

I’m hunched over my laptop punching in the key words and concepts that my professor is spewing at an unholy speed. Then he leaps up mid-sentence to announce we’re going to play a game. I glance at my neighbour who is equally startled, ...

Henan school case puts spotlight on bullying teachers
Oct 25, 2019 (WiC 471)

The Chinese media has a bleak expression to describe the methods employed by some of the country’s 17 million teachers. Dama Jiaoyu literally means ‘teaching by cursing and beating’ – and reports of this pedagogical brutality ...

Don’t count on it

Education bureau blocks new maths teaching
Oct 4, 2019 (WiC 469)

The history of maths scholarship in China is illustrious, dating back to the second millennium BC, when bamboo rods were arranged to represent the numbers one to 9, and then into columns to represent tens, hundreds and thousands. The ...

University challenge

Education writer Olivia Halsall looks at ‘background enhancement’ services
Sep 20, 2019 (WiC 467)

“To enrich your family, there is no need to buy good land: books hold a thousand measures of grain,” advises a Confucian maxim. The sage’s teachings would later become the core of imperial China’s civil service examinations. These evolved ...

Raising Arizona

University aghast after Chinese students denied entry
Sep 13, 2019 (WiC 466)

America was once the top choice for Chinese parents wanting to send their children to study overseas. Now, a combination of visa refusals, unexpected repatriations and tighter scrutiny of Chinese students, have mainland families reconsidering ...

Not coming to America…

How parents in China are turning against their kids studying in the US
Jul 12, 2019 (WiC 459)

Outside the Sterling Memorial Library at Yale University there is a statue of Yung Wing, the first Chinese scholar to have graduated from an American university. After receiving his degree in 1854, Yung returned to China to pioneer the Chinese ...

High school lows

A TV drama about Chinese students studying in the US gets mixed response
Jul 12, 2019 (WiC 459)

A survey published in 2013 by Yale researchers found that 45% of Chinese students in the US reported symptoms of depression on campus, and 29% were suffering from anxiety. The rates were startling, compared with the roughly 13% reporting ...

Not singing praises

New Oriental bosses lampooned by employees
Feb 8, 2019 (WiC 440)

It is not uncommon for Chinese companies to feature theatrical performances in their annual gatherings (see WiC438 for more background on the nianhui culture). Last year Tencent’s Pony Ma dressed in hip-hop attire to sing a popular Sandy Lam ...

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