| 24 August 2006 (seond
Lunar July 1) The
Torment of the Devoted Parents
Last
Friday an article along with six photos
titled The Torment of the Devoted Parents
(可怜天下父母心)
appeared on the Tsinghua University’s
BBS message board, bringing to light a
heartbreaking episode. After escorting
their son or daughter to enrol in the
tertiary courses, and doing all the room
cleaning and bed making for their
precious offspring, some parents had no
bed to sleep themselves. When the author
of the article, pen named Big Stomach Li,
returned to the dormitory at night, he
witnessed over a hundred mid-aged men and
women sleeping under the open sky or
sitting in the corridors. Upon inquiry he
was told that they did so partly because
the hotels nearby were all packed to
capacity, and partly for saving money.
"Hey, it’s a nice summer night,
fresh and warm outside," they said,
sounded cheerful. But he felt sad, as he
clearly sensed some of them had spent all
their savings on this trip with no money
left for a decent bed in a hotel,
regardless of whether or not there were
vacancies.
The
article at once caused a big splash in
China’s online forums and blogs. Many
accused the university of lacking of
heart, some criticised the over-devoted
parents enslaving themselves to their
children. Still others pointed their
fingers at the market economy driven
education system that places a hefty
financial burden on the ordinary
families.
According
to the figures released by the Tsinghua
University, there were about seven to
eight thousand parents and relatives
escorting 3000 new students to campus. On
Tuesday the university authority public
appealed the parents to forgo their trip
to Beijing.

A
lakeside scene in the Tsinghua campus
Similar
stories:
Baby I'm Watching
You
A Chinese
Professor
23
August 2006 (Lunar July 30)
Money
Hungry, Literary
Zhang
worked as a bookkeeper for his village
Linjiawan in Jingbian County. Last year
the government offered a financial
compensation package of 200,000 yuans for
using their land to build gas pipes.
Following
the regulations, Zhang distributed about
half of the sum to the relevant groups
and individuals, and was asked to
temporarily store the rest of the cash in
a safe place. He had never seen so much
money in his life, and understandably was
worried to death that somebody might come
to steal it.
It
may be because he has watched too many
guerrilla warfare movies, or he could
just be a reincarnated guerrilla fighter,
he came up with an ingenius idea of
digging a pit in his stable and hidding
in it the notes wrapped in plastic
sheets. Having done that, he happily went
off to tender the farmland.
Yet
he did not realise that the thieves were
closely watching what he was doing right
from the beginning to the end. As soon as
he left home, 10 thugs dug the money out,
and enjoyed the notes as if they were
rice cookies. When Zhang’s wife
returned home to feed the sheep, she
found in her horror that they had already
treated themselves to a 100,000 yuans snack
banquet.
By
the time Zhang received his wife’s
emergency phone call and rushed home, it
was all too late. Of 100,000 yuans,
97,000 had been safely stored in the
stomachs of the sheep. Among the greedy
ten, a goat
is said to be especially money hungry –
it alone swallowed 50,000 yuans of cash.
The fragments of the evidence were
extracted from its stomach through the
autopsy after the execution of the guilty
ten.

The place where
Chinese money is printed out
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