Life for a child in China is a lot different than life for an American child. It is a lot more stressful for the Chinese, a study was taken that said 45% of urban residents are at health risk because of the stress, with the highest rates among high school students. Their history books teach them to hate Japan because of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, where the Japanese killed 300,000 Chinese people. One girl, who’s in the 5^th grade, was told by her parents that she was too old for toys. Life for a child in China does not sound like a lot of fun. 

Some have noticed that kids in China, like in America, have to help their parents with the new things in society. Almost everything in China is a competition; they always have to do better than anyone else, whether it is in the school, karate, or the Olympics. The opening ceremony at the 2008 Olympics was amazing, but a friend of my mom’s, whose from China, said that they did so well because the army stepped in and controlled the training. I also heard that the little girl who sang their national anthem was lip sinking, because they thought that the girl who actually sang it was too ugly to represent China.

The girl I talked about earlier, her American name is Bella, was forced by her mom to takes busses and walk home from school in the third grade. Instead of having a class president they have a class cadre because China is communist. Campaigning for a position was not saying things you will do, but stating a flaw about yourself and pledging to fix it, and if you said it wrong the teacher would single you out in front of the class, and make you fix your mistake. Even life is hard for the teachers; they get paid on how well their students do in class. One teacher was fired after only 3 weeks because parents said they covered too little in class.

Even in gym class the slowest student was punished with an extra lap around the track. Bella had moved to a bigger apartment, but their cleaning lady stole from them and ran away. Bella’s father drove her to and from school now because he thought that the neighborhood where the school was in was unsafe. The Chinese can only have one child, if you have two you have to pay and fine and you would risk getting fired from your job. Bella wants to marry a foreigner because she thinks they are richer and more reliable.

In China they do not believe in the “rebellious teenager”, they just believe that you either succeeded in raising your child or you failed. Bella described China, “On the surface China looks luxurious, but underneath it is chaos. Everything is so corrupt.” She also described life as a teenager as “I sit in my middle-school classroom, and the teacher wants us to say good-bye to childhood. I feel at a loss. Happiness is like the twinkling stars suffusing the night sky of childhood. I want only more and more stars. I don't want to see the dawn.”