The World of Chinese, 2012, Issue 5: Education

5/2012 Comfort for Scholars

T

he path of Chinese study is long and arduous, both for those learning the language and Chinese students themselves. Language learners must usually spend years applying themselves to unravel the mystery of Mandarin fluency, while Chinese schoolchildren face the grind of prepping for the monumentally important gaokao exam, before deciding whether to pursue their studies overseas, or stay at home and graduate into an ever more competitive job market. But then nothing worth having ever comes easy, or in the words of Confucius, “A scholar who cherishes the love of comfort is not fit to be deemed a scholar” (士而怀居,不足以为士矣。 Sh# 9r hu1i j$, b& z% y@ w9i sh# y@).

Don’t fear though, help is at hand. All of us at The World of Chinese have undergone these trials and tribulations, putting us in the perfect position to advise prospective students on their best course of action. Editor Liz Tung takes the lead with an invaluable breakdown of the relative merits of different approaches to studying Mandarin in China, from university programs and immersion courses, to less formal options like learning with friends or parachuting into a remote area and using your wits to survive (page 26).

Studying in the West can give Chinese graduates a vital leg-up when looking for a job, but how many of them know who China’s first overseas student was and how much they have to thank him for? Liu Jue gives the low-down on overseas study pioneer Yung Wing, and assesses why so many Chinese are now choosing to follow in his slippered footsteps (page 42).

Elsewhere, Zhu Beijing looks back on the infernal gaokao university entrance exam, analyzing whether the test remains as important as it once was, and offering insight into how the nature of the questions has changed (page 36). Edoardo Gagliardi also tackles the gaokao, training his expert eye on “Gaokao 1977,” a film that reaches back in time to the reinstatement of the gaokao after an 11-year hiatus during the Cultural Revolution (page 78).

Ginger Huang rounds off our features by tracking the evolution of Chinese majors over the last 30 years, beginning with the halcyon days when the government made all the hard choices on students’ behalf, and concluding with the increasingly complex decisions facing today’s prospective graduates (page 50).

As always, there will be chapters in the story of Chinese education that we have missed, but I hope students gearing up to study in China will find useful insights in the pages that follow, not just to aid their own progress, but also further their understanding of what their Chinese peers are going through.

Warm Regards, David Green Managing Editor

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COVER STORY

Learn Chinese or Die Tryin’ 舍身学汉语：二十名高手的奇招妙术 The best Chinese speakers don’t necessarily pick it up in school. We explore five hardcore ways of tackling tongue-twisting Mandarin, not all of which necessarily involve drinking (though it helps).

Cover Story

42 Overseas Ambitions 精英到平民的海外求学史 Increasing numbers of students are following in the wake of Yung Wing, who in 1848 became the first Chinese student to study in the US

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COver Story

36 The Gaokao: Still Life’s Most Important Test? 高考还是人生最大的坎儿吗？ The super exam still weighs heavily on students, but is no longer considered life's only route to success

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30 YEARS

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30 Years of Majors 大学专业三十年

To be a math nerd was once glorious, but as times and academic policies have changed, so have Chinese university students’ study preferences

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怎样像个民国老爷一样说话

when i grow up

A Chinese-language textbook from the 1940s reveals the evolution of foreigners’ lives—and manners—in China

Photographer Chris Cherry gets inside the mini-metro-polis play parks where China’s children can try their hands at a plethora of future jobs

SOCIAL CHINESE

How to talk like a wealthy expat 85

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孩子们的职业梦工厂

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CHI LE MA Gluttons for glutinous oil rice

on the road Discovering Xinjiang

台湾油饭

A traveler and her family become involuntarily over-immersed in Kazakh horse culture while exploring China’s Wild West

Don’t let the literal translation ‘glutinous oil rice’ throw you off; this starchy dish will power you through the day

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KALEIDOSCOPE

马背上的新疆行

1 EDITOR’S LETTER 卷首语

7 News 新闻

8 THE HARD SEAT 多棱镜

9 Strange but True CFP (gaokao)

趣闻

街头俚语

14 DON’T MISS 不可错过

17 Made in China 中国制造

90 ON THE CHARACTEr

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魅力汉字

CITY STROLL

Two Days in xining 西宁两日游

by

Dinah Gardner (statue), Chris Cherry (kids), Caroline Killmer (rice), Fotoe (chemistry)

and

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Photographs

Perched on the edge of the Qinghai-Tibet plateau, this high-altitude provincial capital offers a cultural mish-mash of mosques, Buddhist temples and snack streets

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AUDIO-VISUAL wORLD Gaokao 1977 《高考一九七七》 A collective of educated urbanites sent down to the countryside during the Cultural Revolution leap at the chance to take the university entrance exam the year it was reinstated

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92 PIONEER 对话先锋

94 ADVENTURES IN CHINESE 我学我行

96 THE GEEK CORNER 高手学堂

WANT MORE LIKE THIS? You can find more articles like these on our newly revamped website, www. theworldofchinese. com, which is updated daily with recipes, travel tales, language lessons and more!

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新 闻 NEWS

Ironmen of Fengtai The World of Chinese’s executive publisher Wen Xuechun met with Qiao Xiaopeng, Vice Director of Publicity for the CPC Beijing Fengtai District Committee, on August 23 to discuss channels of media cooperation to promote Beijing’s Fengtai District. Based on the new publicity agreement, The World of Chinese agreed to serve as the media partner and provide follow-up reports on the 2012 Beijing International Ironman Triathlon, the very first Asia-held qualifying event in the 30-year history of the Escape from Alcatraz Ironman Triathlon. Our team produced a handy walking guide to the sites surrounding the epic course (which can still be found online), as well as web reports of the event itself.

DocBrazil Festival

Education Issue Release Party

Beijing Book Fair

The World of Chinese was delighted to partner with the 2012 edition of the DocBrazil Festival, which took place over two days from September 2 at Beijing’s Dos Kolegas bar.

The event opened with a video art exhibitions that featured our “Faces of China” photo contest entries, as well as a complementary “Faces of Brazil” feature, before going on to showcase documentaries from a host of Brazilian filmmakers. The night concluded with a question and answer session with a series of special guests.

Get down to the Culture Yard on Friday, September 28, to celebrate the release of this issue with a movie night and discounts galore. For RMB40, guests will be able to view a screening of “Gaokao 1977,” the movie reviewed in this issue’s AV World column, receive a free copy of the issue, and enjoy refreshments and a chance to win an RMB100 coupon for a Culture Yard language course. Those who buy a year subscription to The World of Chinese magazine (normally RMB90) will receive an RMB50 coupon for a language course as well!

The 19th Beijing International Book Fair was held at the China International Exhibition Center from August 29 to September 2, 2012, and The World of Chinese was in prime position to enjoy the excitement. Publishers from all over the world descended on the exhibition halls to view the thousands of publications on display, most with an eye to securing digital copyright and distribution rights.

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in order to scare away the devil and win back her true love. In a bleaker fashion, many elderly men traditionally twist up their hair in a dark turban that is later worn on their heads for their funeral services.

Other Yi funerals are marked by an edible “headdress” used in a tiaocai, or “dancing dish” performance, wherein dancers balance up to 20 dishes on their heads without spilling so much as a drop before delivering the food to the attendees. Aside from towering feasts, it seems that the signature ebony hats beat even their 10-gallon peers when it comes to size: some sources say that they’re made with four kilograms of wool, and are more than 10 times the size of an average human brain—clearly those Yi men weren’t thinking! - Jessica rapp (阮洁茜)

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Hats off to the Yi

You’ve seen the sun visors akin to welders’ face shields, worn by Chinese on sunny-day bike rides to keep UV rays off of the skin, and you’ve certainly encountered the pom-pom laden wooly caps that combat those biting Beijing winters. But if you head down to the northwestern part of Yunnan Province, you’ll encounter a whole new kind of lid— one that, according to legend, was designed by a handful of fearful Yi men to keep their ladies’ brains from growing too big. The towering, five-pointed black hats are just one of various headdresses worn by members of one of the Yi ethnicity’s many subgroups.

Yi people in Yongren County wear colorful, embroidered hats shaped like a cockscomb flower (鸡冠花 j~gu`nhu`) to honor a mythical heroine who learned to mimic a cock’s crow

Eddie Chang

THE HARD SEAT

Photograph

多 棱镜

you say

wHAT? ...says the guy who has no idea what his shirt says – liz tung (董怡)

Beijing Punks go POstal

STRANGE but true by jim norton

toilets' star-rated makeover

网

read an interview with the author at www.theworldofchinese.com

Photograph

by

Guillaume

m a r ce n y

(You Say What)

Creator Mark Oi! on the postcards' text: "Most of the postcards have writing on them; some are the names of songs I like, some are names I picked out for the photographs and some don't have any meaning—they're just for fun.

Sick of sending hackneyed postcards of hailing Maos and majestic Forbidden Cities? Well there’s nothing that says Beijing like a bulldog taking a whiz in the sand, flanked by the word “BULLSH*T.” This, friends, is but one example of the new postal brainchild of photographer/professional skinhead Mark Oi!, who for 13 years has been playing bass for legendary local punk band Misandao. Mark says he started taking pictures in 1997, when Beijing’s punk scene was just starting to explode. “In 1998, I’d go to Scream Club [a now-defunct punk club] every week to see shows, and I just started taking pictures of my punk brothers around me.” By

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2009, Mark had collected enough photos that he was ready to put together a book. There was just one problem—the money. So rather than blowing his paltry capital on a large-scale project, Mark decided to do something a bit more practical with his decade of photos: postcards.

“You can spend RMB5 on a postcard to send your friends, so there are at least two people who will see your photograph, and probably more.

Also, this is something that poor punks can buy.” Beijingers can pick up the postcards for five kuai a pop or RMB200 for a tin box set of 60 at Old What Bar, Underground Kidz, DDR Vintage and more locations listed on our website. - Liz Tung (董怡)

To the literal relief of tourists visiting China’s capital, Beijing is busy giving the city’s notorious public toilets a makeover. Weird Asia News reports plans are afoot to introduce 350 more three, four and even fivestar rated toilets to the 70 already installed at tourist hot spots. The initiative comes after it was revealed that a third of all complaints to the Beijing Tourism Administration (BTA) were toilet-related, with visitors mostly objecting to the smell, residue and communal style of the 公 厕 (g4ngc-). Now toilets are subjected to mandatory checks by inspectors using a 28-page quality assessment report, with two failed inspections resulting in a downgrade and fine.

Mirrors, background music and landscaping are all considered, and they must also have a 4:6 ratio of men’s to women’s areas (based on a study showing woman spend an average two to three minutes a day longer on the toilet). The rating systems are being adopted elsewhere too—a proposed five-star toilet in Chengdu even features a TV, fish tank and Wi-Fi, and will resemble an ancient courtyard.

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taste of taiwan

Talking through time

A delicious snack that may have helped build the Great Wall of China

Revisit 1940s China, a time of coolies, house boys and questionable personal hygiene

p. 85

p. 73

sex doll slows speedsters An innovative 67-year-old lady has used salacious tactics to solve the problem of speeding cars in her local town. Lin Chen from Zhejiang Province was infuriated by vehicles dangerously hurtling through a set of traffic lights near her house and the lack of action from police. So she bought a blowup sex doll, dressed it in raunchy red lingerie and tied it to a tree at the side of the road—the logic being that the testosterone-fuelled speedsters would brake to take a closer look. “I thought that drivers would slow down if I could give them something worth looking at,” explained Lin on Orange News. She was proved right when police revealed accident figures had dropped since the dummy was installed.

Sheep Milk? Can't Bleat it!

Most soon-to-be parents just buy a cot and give the spare room a lick of paint, but this wasn’t enough for one proactive dad in Changsha, Hunan Province. Scared by recent scandals over poisoned baby milk products, Wei Xingyu, a 36-year-old wine salesman, sourced safe milk for his baby daughter by converting his roof into a dairy farm, according to Orange News.

"We decided that only fresh milk, produced right here at home, would do,” Wei said. Earlier this year, baby milk was found to contain unusually high levels of mercury and, in 2008, milk contaminated with melamine killed six babies and made 300,000 ill.

As a result, Wei now has two ewes and one ram lodging four stories high in a farmyard penthouse.

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Catching the cicada bug Need a diet after over-indulging this summer holiday? Then why not try China’s low-fat traditional snack: cicadas. The noisy locust-like insects, with their large eyes and transparent wings, can be found deep-fried, boiled or blanched all across China. If you can get past the squidgy texture, asparagus flavor and unappetizing sight of a bug on a stick, the nutritious little critters can be a great source of vitamins, minerals and protein—the same amount pound for pound as red meat, in fact.

Cicadas are not just for the belly, though. Traditional Chinese medicine found a use for their ground-up empty shells, which also had a religious subtext similar to the sacred scarab in ancient Egypt.

Shedding their shells represented reincarnation and immortality for the ancient Chinese and, during the Han Dynasty (206 B.C.-220 A.D.), cicadas were carved out of jade and placed in th e m o u t h s of the dead. Even the deceased wa n t e d a bite—bug appetit! - JIM NORTON

A summer If you visited a Qingdao beach in Shandong Province this summer, you’d be forgiven for thinking you’d stumbled across a lucha libre retirement home for Mexican wrestlers.

You’d be wrong though, as these are in fact China’s middle-aged hipsters wearing this summer’s must-have beach accessory: the nylon face mask. The snazzy

an exam that changed a nation Movie "Gaokao 1977" reviews the seminal return of China's super exam

p. 78

murder in binbei It’s polite to humor colleagues by downing baijiu at dinner parties, but this protagonist favors keeping a clear head—and rightly so. Meet Hong Jun, a criminal lawyer fresh out of Chicago with his doctorate and two years of work experience at a law firm, ready to take on Beijing and “build ‘the rule of law.’” His secretary is skeptical of his bold goal, well aware of just how bumpy the Chinese legal system of the 1990s can be for a fresh-faced counsel, and encourages Hong to take on commercial cases instead of criminal ones.

But before long, Hong finds himself kneedeep in a 10-year-old

murder mystery in the snowy drifts of the Binbei State Farm, working on behalf of a client seeking to avenge his younger brother’s unfair trial and prove his innocence.

What starts out as a series of interviews with witnesses quickly evolves into something altogether more dangerous, pitting Hong’s levelheaded logic against local superstitions and legends.

He Jiahong’s “Hanging Devils” keeps readers on tenterhooks until the very last page, delivering a classic whodunit with a modern Chinese twist.

- Jessica rapp (阮洁茜)

Photograph

by

CFP

Tan's Masked enemy (albeit intimidating) headgear was dreamed up seven years ago by a local and is a hit with Chinese ladies keen on keeping a pale complexion. Sun cream, it seems, is no longer good enough to satisfy the age-old Asian preoccupation with looking as white as possible in order to appear wealthy and beautiful. That belief stems from ancient China, where the

Issue 5/2012

adage “one white covers up three uglinesses” was passed through generations. Though it might strike some as a bizarre fad reserved only for the most daring of holiday-makers, looking like a bank robber on vacation has become so popular that according to China Daily, the peculiar summer balaclava is already being mass produced. - JIM NORTON

Domino Domination Though China lost out to the USA in the Olympics medal tally, they can at least sleep easy knowing they have retained dominance in mattress dominoes.

Earlier this summer, volunteers in China broke the USA’s world record for mattress dominoes in an empty shopping mall in Shanghai, reports Weird Asia News. The sequence lasted just over 10 minutes as a total of 1,001 volunteers, each armed with a mattress, fell backwards onto each other. It trounced the previous record set by a US hotel chain—which could only manage 850 mattresses—in New Orleans just five months earlier.

Mini Skirt Discount Girls happy to hitch their skirts up high enough have been enjoying a half-price discount to a theme park in southern China this summer. The Guilin Merryland Resort offered 50 percent off the RMB110 entry price for female visitors wearing miniskirts shorter than 38 centimeters. The discount was part of the Resort’s annual “Love Miniskirts” campaign and saw visitor numbers skyrocket.

“The stipulation [aimed] to encourage female visitors to showcase their beauty in summer,” said the Resort’s Deputy Manager Li Wenxing. However, the promotion provoked fierce criticism from angry commentators decrying its inherent sexism. “We have been hearing negative comments about the campaign since we launched it, but their numbers are decreasing every year,” an unfazed Li said on ShanghaiDaily.com.

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STREET TALK

Illustration

by

Sun Hongjia

D

o you have friends whose grace and quiet power could give Meryl Streep a run for her money? Well now you can give them the respect they deserve with the popular new address “御姐” (y&ji0), which means “a true lady.” 御姐 stands in stark contrast to a popular term for cute young girls “萝莉” (lu5l#), a variation of Lolita that can carry the same sexual connotations as those explored

by Nabokov. 御 (y&) literally refers to dominant things or people, so by adding the character 姐, this phrase has come to refer to women who typify

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feminine grace and power.

You might have also heard of “女 强人” (n)qi1ngr9n), literally “power women,” or those heavily focused on their careers. However, 御姐 is more concerned with temperament than material status. Women seldom refer to themselves as 御姐; rather, they attain this status by being mature, confident, flirtatious and elegant.

If you’re lucky enough to have someone tell you “你真有御姐范 儿。” (N@ zh8n y6u y&ji0 f3nr, You really have the style of a true lady), you’re likely a paragon of modern style and poise. As for those still reluctant

街头 俚语

you really have the style of a true lady N@ zh8n y6u y&ji0 f3nr.

你真有御姐范儿。

to grow up and leave their girlish youth behind, just remember this idiom: “萝 莉诚可贵，御姐价更高” (Lu5l# ch9ng k0gu#,y&ji0 ji3 g-ng g`o)—a Lolita is rare, but a true lady is more precious.

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不 可 错 过 ! qufu

10.24 Qufu confucius culture festival As the birthplace of Confucius, the walled

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city of Qufu (曲阜) retains the right to host the great philosopher’s birthday celebrations.

And unsurprisingly, as the founder of one of the key Chinese philosophical doctrines, the festivities are more ostentatious than mere cake and candles. The festival in southwest Shandong Province is one of the largest to commemorate the ideologist, educator and founder of Confucianism, featuring reconstructions of original rituals and a grand ceremony showpiece.

Visitors can watch further performances at two of Qufu’s UNESCO World Heritage sites: the Temple of Confucius and the

Cemetery of Confucius.

While there, you can visit the cave in Mount Ni, 30 kilometers southeast of the city, where a baby Confucius was allegedly abandoned by his mother for being too ugly. Beware though: Qufu is a bustling hub of tourists at the best of times and the festival brings even more crowds.

So if it all gets too much, try to remember one of the master’s maxims: “When anger rises, think of the consequences.” – Jim norton

All over China

9.30 Mid-Autumn Festival The 15th day in the eighth month of the lunar calendar is the MidAutumn Festival (中秋节), or “Mooncake Festival” in China. A variety of customs surround the holiday, from lighting

lanterns to wearing pomelo rinds and moon-gazing, but stuffing your face with mooncakes is likely to top the bill. Stamped with traditional imprints like clouds, moons and rabbits, most are filled with lotus seeds, red-bean paste or dried flower petals, and so are not to everyone’s taste.

Still, even these taste better than the revolutionary exhortations that were baked into the cakes in the 14th century by Han Chinese cooks eager to encourage seditious activity against their Mongol overlords. Fortunately, modern-day mooncakes have been reinvented to satisfy even the pickiest palate, with delectable centers ranging from pineapple or strawberry to branded delights like Häagen-Dazs ice cream, while gourmets can opt for fillings such as dried monkfish. Whichever flavor you choose, the festival is a time for reunions, so make sure you share your treats with friends and loved ones. – Marie Cahalane

SHANGHAI

9.3010.6 shanghai INternational Music fireworks festival

Photograph

by

Getty (Confucius)

Born of 12th century China, fireworks are now a universally welcome means of marking an event, not least in China, where they’re also believed to dispel bad luck and ward off evil spirits. But why wait for the excuse of marking an occasion when you can celebrate fireworks for themselves? Dubbed “the symphony of fire,” the Shanghai International Music Fireworks Festival

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does just that. During the course of the three-day festival, a series of intricate firework programs are set to music to conjure a kaleidoscopic extravaganza in the skies above Century Park, Pudong. Since 2000, it has been an annual event coinciding with China’s National Day on October 1 and is part of the Shanghai Tourism Festival. Set over three nights—falling this year on September 30, and October 3 and 6—six international pyrotechnic groups will compete to impress. Ultimately, the competition aims to show off firework products and

performances of light and sound, but bystanders are treated to a theater of the skies spread across six highly choreographed shows. – M.c.

PINGYAO

9.19-25 PIngyao International PHotography Festival As an exceptionally wellpreserved example of a Han Dynasty (206 B.C.-220 A.D.) city with a population of merely 50,000, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the walled city of Pingyao (平遥) in Shanxi Province is an odd setting for an international photography festival. Yet, for the last 11 years, artists have flocked

here to display their photos in disused factories, warehouses, temples, the historic magistrate’s office and on literally any other wall space that they can find. Alongside local Chinese contributors, photographers have come from as far as Brazil and Australia, with works on topics as diverse as the 2009 Iraq drought, life in Bangladesh and black-andwhite portraits of Tanzanian albinos. Leave your suits and cocktail dresses at home for this one––many of the exhibition buildings are in varying states of dilapidation, with some lacking even a roof. But the chance of a little dirt or downpour won’t keep away the thousands of tarparmed photographers set to attend this year’s festivities, making PIP one of the most talked about festivals of its kind. – joe Doran (杜乔)

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中国 制造 Made in China

Killers of the Three Kingdoms

T

he Three Kingdoms period of Chinese history is perhaps best remembered as a bloody interlude of intrigue and fighting waged among some of China’s savagest warlords. That's why I’ve always marveled that my first "experience" of the era came while sitting among friends in a cabin in east Tennessee. It was there that I was first introduced to the game Sanguosha (三国杀), otherwise known as “Killers of the Three Kingdoms.”

Inspired by Bang!, a popular Italian counterpart set in the Wild West, the Chinese card game initially was launched as a somewhat shabby homemade product sold on Taobao in 2006.

Yet Sanguosha obviously touched a nerve, and after a little more development it was re-launched in 2008, quickly going viral among college students and young white-collar workers in Shanghai and Beijing.

Combining the bloody events of the Three Kingdoms period (220-280 A.D.) with fictional elements from the literary classic “Romance of the Three Kingdoms,” the game seduced legions of bespectacled Chinese youth, who could be seen throwing down cards on restaurant tables across the country, accompanied by shouts of “Sha!” (杀, attack) and “Shan!” (闪, dodge).

The trend inspired a spate of new board game clubs, as well as a new life mantra among its fans: “If I’m not playing Sanguosha, I must be on the way to play it.” (我不是在玩 三国杀，就是在去玩三国杀的路上。W6 b% sh# z3i w1n S`ngu5sh`, ji& sh# z3i q& w1n S`ngu4sh` de l&sh3ng).

The game features 40 characters, each with special skills that conform to his or her role in the classic novel. For instance, as founder of the Wei Kingdom (魏国), Cao Cao

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(曹操) is ruthless, intelligent and a master of subterfuge, renowned for being able to bounce back from the brink of disaster and force enemy generals to surrender their service to him.

As such, one of Cao Cao’s skills in the game is the ability to absorb and assume control of a variety of his opponents’ tool cards.

In addition to the character cards they hold, each player has a secret identity (ruler, loyalist, rebel or defector), which the other players must attempt to guess based on their moves and strategy.

The intricacies behind Sanguosha have helped its popularity extend across the Pacific Ocean, not only to the wilds of Tennessee where I first encountered the game, but also to cities like Los Angeles, where a recent four-day tournament attracted hundreds of Chinese students.

Moreover, three ardent fans will this summer launch a course based on the game at the University of California, Berkeley. Besides learning the related history and reading the classic novel, students must actually play the game in order to pass the course. “Students will use knowledge from the book and historical events to examine the character card abilities of significant figures, such as Liu Bei (刘备), in relation to their historical roles,” reads the course syllabus.

With 129 cards in the basic version, Sanguosha incorporates people, idioms and historical events. It may take some explanation and several practice rounds to work out what’s going on, but half the fun comes from learning from different people and swapping stories of intrigue and betrayal related to the Three Kingdoms period.

For an English walk-through of the game, please refer to sanguoshaenglish.blogspot.hk. - Liu Jue (刘珏)

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镜像 中国 KALEIDOSCOPE

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GROW up P h o t o g r a p h s a n d t e xt b y c h r i s c h e r r y p h o t o s t a k e n a t b e y o u w o r l d a n d EE c i t y i n b e i j i n g

Role-play parks give Chinese kids the chance to suss out their career options early in life 长大后我就成了你:角色扮演创造孩子们的 职业梦工厂 Issue 5/2012

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n modern China, there’s at least one Marxist stronghold remaining: a place where all are treated equally, all dress alike and all jobs receive the same rate of pay. It is a true workers’ paradise, but there is one catch—all staff must be aged between three- and 12-years-old.

The idea of a children’s role-play park first began in Mexico in the 1990s, and has only recently come to China. Kids at Beyou World and EE City in Beijing can experience a variety of occupations including fireman, judge, pizza maker, dentist and even cow milker. Each job lasts around 15 minutes, and workers are remunerated with fake money that they can spend later in the gift shop. All of this takes place within a scaled down replica of a real city, complete with traffic lights, banks and theaters.

True to life, there is also pervasive advertising. Each mock work segment is sponsored by a corporation, so that kids bottle Coca-Cola, learn how to apply Orbis makeup and milk Mengniubranded cows. This unsubtle marketing has led some critics to dub the parks “advertainment,” a concept which would have Marx turning in his grave.

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Drowning out the noise at a Coca-Cola bottling plant L to R: Miniature police arrest their man; nurses feed a crop of newborns; judges review evidence in the courtroom

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a fresh recruit examines the business end of his new firearm 22

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Diagnosis: he’s made of plastic

STEWARDESSES LEARN THEIR HAND SIGNALS

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What this little boy doesn’t know could kill him—sandals are not appropriate footwear for putting out fires Issue 5/2012

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