{"id":19695,"date":"2012-04-05T17:14:18","date_gmt":"2012-04-05T09:14:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chinahearsay.com\/?p=12577"},"modified":"2012-04-05T17:14:18","modified_gmt":"2012-04-05T09:14:18","slug":"hangzhou-school-bans-young-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/2012\/04\/05\/hangzhou-school-bans-young-love\/","title":{"rendered":"Hangzhou School Bans \u2018Young Love\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>And now for something completely different — just because I can. Hard to resist this story about a draconian set of rules at a high school in Hangzhou whose administration seems obsessed with public displays of affection. You have to read the entire China Daily<\/em> article<\/a> to appreciate this nonsense:<\/p>\n

A sophomore at Hangzhou Changhe High School said female and male students are not allowed to show up on campus in pairs, Hangzhou-based Qianjiang Evening News reported Thursday.<\/p>\n

The student also said there are two additional rules, which say that the distance between the sexes must be at least 50 centimeters while at school, and they cannot have meals with the opposite sex at the same table.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I wonder where they came up with that 50 centimeter number? Is there something those crazy kids could manage at a distance of, say, 40 centimeters, but not at 50? I know plenty of folks whose extremities are well over 80 centimeters, so these kids could get into a lot of trouble even with that limitation.<\/p>\n

Hey. Get your minds out of the gutter. Eighty cm was a reference to arm length. That\u2019s way too long for . . . well, for other kinds of appendages.<\/p>\n

You know, it occurs to me that perhaps this 50 cm rule doesn’t go far enough, unless kids in Hanghzhou these days are all Lilliputian? My goodness. What are they feeding those poor wee bairns? The school might wish to review its nutrition program as well as campus morality.<\/p>\n

But let\u2019s not jump to conclusions. What does the school have to say about all this?<\/p>\n

However, the school’s vice headmaster, surnamed Yuan, said there is only one ban on female and male students spending time alone, and that the other two bans are misunderstood by students.<\/p>\n

Yuan added that the prohibition is just to prevent male and female students from having too much close contact.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ah, this is all a big misunderstanding. There aren\u2019t any special rules on eating together or being within 50 cm of each other. There\u2019s just a blanket prohibition on \u201ctoo much close contact.\u201d Got it?<\/p>\n

You have to admit that when male and female students get too close together, bad things can happen. Increased heart rate, blood pooling to certain extremities (yes, now I\u2019m talking about those extremities), a rush of hormone production, hysterical blindness, nitrogen narcosis, scurvy and the vapors. It\u2019s tragic, actually.<\/p>\n

This school would do just as well in Texas as Zhejiang. Well, if they brought Jesus into the mix. You know, instead of \u201cit\u2019s bad for males and females to touch one another,\u201d it would be \u201cit\u2019s bad for males and females to touch one another, because [we firmly believe] Jesus said so.\u201d These kids all want a U.S. education these days \u2013 maybe the school could just pick up and move there. They\u2019d have to give up teaching evolution too (probably just should just ditch the entire science curriculum), but it\u2019s a small sacrifice. I bet all the local churches in Texas would chip in and give these kids abstinence jewelry to wear: promise rings, chastity belts, maybe iron maidens. You know, native dress.<\/p>\n

I have to wonder what the kids think of all this, though. Must be frustrating, what with their raging hormones indirectly speaking truth to power on a daily basis:<\/p>\n

“It is impossible to enforce the three prohibitions, and it’s normal to have meals with classmates,” said a male student surnamed Shen.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Then again, these kids are probably quite motivated to do the nasty, or at least hold each other\u2019s hands, and unless they are put under a microscope and watched continuously (and that policy would create problems of its own, I suspect), they\u2019re going to be able to get away with sub-50 cm behavior. You almost feel sorry for the administration; talk about a Sisyphean task.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t want to leave you with a skewed view of all this, though. It\u2019s not like these policies don\u2019t have their supporters. Here\u2019s one girl that seems to have her political<\/del> priorities in line:<\/p>\n

However, a girl surnamed Shao said that the three prohibitions are reasonable and the purpose of the rules is to prevent young love.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I bet she gets a lot of attention from the boys.<\/p>\n

\n

\u00a9 Stan for China Hearsay<\/a>, 2012. |\nPermalink<\/a> |\nNo comment<\/a> |\nAdd to\ndel.icio.us<\/a>\n\nPost tags: education<\/a>\n<\/small><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The sheer number of complex public health challenges facing today's school administrators is daunting. It's heartening to learn that they are up to the task.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[213,325,194],"tags":[7803],"class_list":["post-19695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-china-news","category-education","category-news-chinese-law","tag-education"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19695","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19695"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19695\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}