Little Soldiers

by Lenora Chu

  Every June, the gaokao inspires a barrage of media photos, which indicate the fiercest of academic pressure cookers: Hangar-size warehouses with row upon row of black-haired heads bowed over exam papers. Students hooked up to IV drips for energy during test prep. Busloads of students on their way to exam sites, revving past thousands of pedestrians who raise arms in salute. Throngs of anxious parents camped outside the exam hall gates.

  My favorite was taken by a photographer with a bird’s-eye view of an entrance gate: On one side of the photo are hordes of students walking shoulder to shoulder to exam rooms, while on the other side, parents wait with sun umbrellas, bottles of water, snacks, and spare pencils. The children have been sent off to battle.

  I once overheard a phone conversation between our ayi at the time and her thirteen-year-old daughter, a student back home in Anhui province. Though entrance exams are certainly the most critical, a relentless churn of weekly and monthly exams riddles the path of every Chinese schoolchild starting in first grade. I could hear only Ayi’s side of the conversation. In this and nearly every future call I heard, the topic was the same.

  “Did you test already?” Ayi asked, speaking urgently into the mouthpiece.

  “Which day did you test? The score didn’t come out yet? Well, then, what did you think about how you tested?”

  “Did it feel easy?”

  “How many do you think you missed?”

  “Then,” she said, leaning into the phone, “how many do you think you got right?”

  Because families have peered skyward at the rungs on those ladders for years, the need to study, and study hard, has always been ingrained in Chinese culture, even from a very young age—a hard work ethic becomes muscle memory.

  I knew we’d probably relocate home to the United States long before Rainey would be of gaokao age. Yet, as long as Rainey was a child in this system, working alongside students trapped in this cycle of test-study-advance, study would have to be part of his daily routine. As Rainey grew older, Big Board’s tally would change from height and weight to exam results and subject proficiency. This was inevitable; it was a deeply rooted feature of Chinese education.

  For the moment, with what I knew, I felt okay with this prospect for my son. Growing up inside the competitive environment my parents created left me with a persistent, nagging feeling that other drivers were sprinting past me on the highway, though my own car was already at the speed limit. Yet there were also clear benefits: Like Darcy, I felt that knowing where I stood helped motivate me in key areas of my life and defined a clear goal to shoot for.

  Still, I wondered whether competition set inside China’s test-heavy system might deliver more detrimental effects, and I made a note to watch Rainey closely.

  * * *

  On a Wednesday toward the end of the school year, Soong Qing Ling School held its annual sports competition. The meet would pit the classes of Small Class grade against each other in a series of physical challenges and tests.

  Teacher Chen, of course, had decided Small Class No. 4 must triumph.

  A few weeks prior, Chen had sent out notices via WeChat, urging children to get plenty of rest and to rehearse “athleticism.” “We have been practicing at school for this great challenge, and we urge you to prepare at home for the big day,” Teacher Chen tapped out on WeChat. The parent cacophony chimed its affirmation.

  Challenges might include a timed ladder climb, a sock-hop, or a tricycle race around Big Green. It all sounded innocuous enough, but I figured the character of such competitions would depend on the spirit of the leadership. Sure enough, the Great Ball Bounce of the following year would prove intense; in the weeks leading up to that meet, teachers handpicked parent-and-child teams and required them to huddle over basketballs at home, recording the number of bounces on gridded sheets. During morning drop-off, the school would set up practice stations on Big Green, and I observed hunched pairs of parents and children slapping down basketballs as quickly as they could. Lin Guanyu and his mother were among the victors that year, together logging an astounding 128 bounces in ten seconds. “We’d been practicing since March and expected a top-place finish! New records were created!” the teachers would effuse.

  This year, the central challenge would be a game called Mountain Hole.

  “We’re most worried about this last game,” Teacher Chen barked at a group of parents assembled in Small Class No. 4’s classroom on the big day. The black bits between her teeth seemed as ominous as her intensity, and Rob and I joined the crowd, seated in child-size chairs arranged stadium-style, murmuring dutifully: Parent becomes student.

  Chen laid out the competitive landscape. “There are five classes in the Small Class Grade Level, and two of them are fast—lightning fast. I’ve observed them during practices,” Chen said. “For these two classes, the teacher might already signal her team has finished, and the other groups hadn’t even started crawling yet!”

  A collective gasp rippled across the room, and I saw that Teacher Chen was pleased with our reaction.

  “We need to plan for action,” Teacher Chen concluded. She described the Mountain Hole challenge in detail. Fathers would stand shoulder to shoulder on Big Green, rubber mats forming a path at their feet, with the children lining up at one end of the row of dads. From there, the race would unfold in two parts.

  In part one, the first father would grasp the child at the front of the line and pass him to the next father, then repeat, until the entire group of children had been transported from one side of the father line to the other. Last child safely delivered, the men would then bend at the waist, hands outstretched to touch the other side of the mat to form a tunnel with their bodies.

  “This tunnel is the mountain hole,” Chen said. “For this part, the children must crawl as fast as they can in the direction from which they started.”

  The class whose children got down the line and back through the tunnel fastest would win. Teachers and classroom ayis would be placed strategically: one at the start to launch the children, another at the midpoint to urge for speed, and one at the finish to coax the kids home.

  “Mothers? You’ll be cheerleaders,” Chen said, as she distributed pom-poms and horns, and I received a plastic contraption that wailed like a trussed-up duck. Battle instructions complete, we parents journeyed down to Big Green, descending the stairs in double-line formation. I clutched my horn, while Rob dutifully stepped right-left-right, mirroring the father in front of him.

  We arrived to find parents from Small Classes 2 and 3 already in the heat of practice. Spurred on, our fathers stepped right into the action. One man began passing an imaginary child to an imaginary waiting parent, twisting forward and back, forward and back like a weather vane caught up in a tornado. Another man began bouncing, knees bending and straightening, in anticipation of bearing the weight of a child. Rob stood off to the side, taking it all in.

  “Shouldn’t you be stretching or bouncing or something?” I teased my husband, as he snorted. Rob and I didn’t relate much to the urge to win we saw in the faces of parents all around us, but we wanted to show support for our son.

  When the children arrived, Rainey beamed in our direction from his place in line. Chen immediately began barking orders at the kids, a sudden urgency to her voice as other classes began assembling around us on Big Green. “Stiffen your bodies and hold your elbows tight to your waist as the fathers pass you down the line,” she yelled.

  For the parents, she had explicit instructions on gunning for speed: “Man One, grab a child by the elbows, Man Two grab at the waist. Man Three would alternate back to the elbows. Alternate the anchor point while passing the children. This way your hands won’t get entangled,” Chen said. “Maximum efficiency—and don’t drop a child! The team will be docked five seconds.”

  “Five seconds!” a man bellowed, and the other parents murmured, pondering the size of this penalty. Chen offered more pointers for the tunnel part: “Men, suck in your bellies as you bend over, to
allow room for children to crawl.”

  “I’m too fat!” one father yelled back.

  “Then do a back bend,” another responded, a needed break to the intensity.

  “Are you ready?” the Soong Qing Ling principal suddenly proclaimed, from her perch at the head of Big Green, surveying the nearly 250 children and parents gathered before her, shirts color-coordinated by class.

  The first child in our line wore red shoes, and he held his hands high above his head, mummified, waiting to be grasped at the waist. The fathers crouched, rubbing their hands together in an attempt to roust up energy.

  “Yibeiqi—Begin!” urged the principal. Red Shoes leaped into the first father’s arms, and with that, the race was on. Instantaneously, the order of Big Green gave way to a screaming, maniacal mass of competitors. Parents yelled encouragement, children bounced impatiently, and teachers raced the length of their lines, urging speed.

  Red Shoes was passed to the next parent, and then the next, and then on down the line. The next kid followed, and the next, and pretty soon each father was grappling with a kid, handing him off, only to quickly turn to receive the next child.

  “Small Class Number Four—Jiayou! Jiayou! Add oil! Add oil!” Teacher Chen yelled, her heels rarely touching earth as she scrambled the length of the line.

  One by one, the children were snatched and passed. Instructions were forgotten in the heat of the race. Most children forgot to keep their hands by their sides, and in their haste the fathers forgot to alternate elbows and waists. Instead, they began grabbing at whatever body part they could make contact with: underneath armpits, on the hips, by the upper arms.

  “Add oil! Add oil! Add oil!” Children were grabbed and passed, grabbed and passed.

  “Faster faster faster! FASTER!” Teachers Chen and Cai traversed the length of the line, clapping and chanting.

  Red Shoes reached the end of the line, and he stood waiting at the west end of the tunnel. As the last child touched down, the fathers collapsed, hands touching down on the other side of the mat with their feet anchored in place, butts up in the air to form a tunnel. I recognized the back of Rob’s blue jeans against the pants of the father next to him. The teachers elevated the chants as the children began to crawl. “Add oil! Add oil! Fast, fast, fast, fast, fast!”

  The noise was astounding. The kids had also begun screaming, and together they formed a mass of moving arms and legs as they crawled, one child’s head so close to the preceding child’s rear that they almost looked attached. Like a chain of caterpillars, the kids shimmied on hands and knees toward the west end of the mountain hole.

  From my vantage point, the tunnel’s exit was obscured by a crowd of waiting parents gathered three and four deep. I noodled my way in, until I finally caught a glimpse of the end of the mountain hole, where the children were emerging headfirst.

  There, I saw Cai and an assistant teacher in furtive heat. They were yanking children out and tossing them into a heap at the end. The children, blinking and dazed, got up and went over to sit on the curb.

  They’re pulling the kids out—that’s cheating! I thought, in amazement. I stood on my tippy toes, peering over the heads of the thronging parents, but I couldn’t see the western ends of the tunnels of the other classes. Was everyone cheating?

  Teacher Cai began clearing the kids away from the end of the tunnel to prevent a traffic jam. The fathers chanted, “Faster, faster, faster!” I crouched down to peer at Rob, obediently perched in tunnel form about halfway down the line.

  Abruptly, I saw Cai stand tall like a gazelle, craning her head to survey the landscape. There, she paused, decided it was safe, and pulled out a new tactic. Dropping to a crouch, she scooted into the tunnel to meet the next child head-on. She grasped the little boy underneath the armpits and scuttled backward, dragging him with her. Once out, she turned around and tossed him onto the grass. She did this a few more times, each time meeting the next child head-on in the mountain hole.

  “Go, go, go! Add oil! Add oil!” the chants continued. I looked around, scanning faces. None of the parents standing with me seemed to register the fact that the leaders of Small Class No. 4 were unabashedly flouting the rules.

  Finally, the last child passed the perimeter. Chen’s hand went up fast as lightning—as fast as the lightning strike she’d ascribed to the other teams in practice—and where seconds before she’d aimed to escape attention, now she sought out the eyes of the principal.

  “We won, we won, we won!” Chen announced loudly, her other hand joining the first in a frantic double-handed wave. I glanced at Teacher Cai, and she noted my look. I detected a shimmer of embarrassment.

  The rest of the parents beamed, energized from the win, as the tunnel of fathers suddenly righted itself and began peeling away one by one, in search of progeny. I glanced over at the other races, but they were still in progress. Small Class No. 4 had cheated its way to victory!

  My eyes found Rob’s in the horde, and without a word we raised our eyebrows, almost in unison. I didn’t want to be a killjoy, but I struggled to digest what I’d just seen. Children served an important purpose in Chinese society: making the adults in their lives look good. Here, the students had performed perfectly for Teachers Chen and Cai, who would now be celebrated by the principal before the entire school. An additional thought flashed in my mind: I knew that cheating was a well-documented problem inside the Chinese education system, and here I’d witnessed evidence of teachers taking shortcuts in the face of competition. This was just a kindergarten sports meet, but didn’t it also set an example for the children of Small Class No. 4? Did Chinese students learn this type of behavior from the men and women who stood at the front of their classrooms?

  Soon enough, it was time for the award presentation.

  The principal brandished a handwritten certificate, which declared the winner: CHAMPIONS for Small Class No. 4 in the Second Annual Sports Meet. “I am healthy because I do sports,” the certificate read, and Teacher Chen grinned as she grasped the paper with both hands.

  Later, Chen and Cai assembled their children for a group photo. They posed under a red banner that stretched from tree to post and read second annual physical health competition.

  In the photo, which I later slotted into a pile of Soong Qing Ling notices at home, the members of Small Class No. 4 are lined up in three rows, and they are smiling. The broadest grins of all belonged to Teachers Chen and Cai, who stand in the back, leaning over their tiny students like two Chinese elm trees. The children seem neither overjoyed nor burdened, but simply indifferent, which seemed to me appropriate expressions for pawns in a championship game.

  I peered closer at Chen and Cai.

  Both teachers held up two fingers in a V for victory.

  Part II

  Change

  6

  The High Price of Tests

  Learning something and taking a test on something are two completely different things.

  —Xu Jiandong, a teacher and former education official in Changzhou

  Summer after Small Class year, we headed home for a break.

  For Americans who live abroad, summer back home ushers in fresh air and state parks scattered throughout the United States, bookended by visits with friends and family. We hopscotched from Southern California beaches to Minnesota’s pristine lakes to the humid, sweltering heat of Texas.

  Rainey turned to me halfway through our trip. Liberated from his Mandarin tutor, blessed with lush green American parks and seemingly football field–size swimming pools, drowning in ice cream and hot dogs, my son had a simple question.

  “Mom, why don’t we live in America?”

  While summertime kindled Rainey’s curiosity about his parents’ lifestyle choices, it gave me the opportunity to observe my little boy against American priorities and habits. I liked what I saw. In short, our little boy was winning accolades from American friends and family, against whose children Rainey’s habits stood in stark contrast.

&n
bsp; Rainey bounded down to breakfast with greetings for all the elders, which particularly pleased my father. He waited his turn. One time Rainey stood so patiently in a winding line at the American Museum of Natural History in New York that a stranger marveled, “How old is he? He’s so well behaved.”

  His eating habits were decidedly un-Western, and his preferences came into clear focus against the American palate’s mess of machine-processed nutrition. One friend’s little girl ate only things that are white, such as pasta, rice, and bread. Rainey’s cousin preferred food that came out of a box or plastic freezer bag: Chicken and fish nuggets were a top choice. One Saturday in Houston’s museum district, I watched a little girl at the next table devour lunch. She stabbed a Capri Sun drink pack with a straw and ripped back the cover of a plastic pack of bread sticks, partnered by a container of chocolate goo. Dessert awaited her in a bag of bright orange Goldfish.

  Soong Qing Ling school has an in-house nutritionist, and a chef whose sole job is to slap-and-pull fresh dough by hand, coaxing out delicate, elastic Chinese noodles. Green leafy vegetables accompany every Chinese meal. Rainey’s school environment, along with Teacher Chen’s take-no-prisoners approach last year, meant our little boy now eats eggs of his own free will. He happily eats whole fish with skin—nugget form not required—sheets of seaweed, and raw almonds, and he doesn’t shy away from anything green, yellow, or orange.

  One summer night, Rainey had sat down at the dinner table and reached for a piece of stir-fried bok choy. This surprised even me, and I put down my fork to stare at him.