In my school and university, if you write an essay with MORE than 5 thousand words if the teacher set that mark, he will grade you with a 0 for not following instructions. It happened to me.

My wife grew up in poverty in China, yet now she lives in America and makes $175,000 a year as a 35-year-old executive. By all objective measures, she is wildly successful, given her impoverished upbringing. And yet, all her parents do is criticize her and tell her she isn't good enough. They lament that my wife does not make seven figures, despite the fact that my in-laws made $10,000 a year as factory workers before they retired. The school my wife attended had 2,000 students, and I would guess that my wife is more successful than 99% of her peers. However, her parents constantly complain about my wife not making enough as their friend's daughter, a former classmate of my wife's who went on to marry a millionaire man 20 years her senior. That's it, that's the single person in her graduating class who's done better in life than my wife, yet all my in-laws do is compare my wife to her. They don't compare her to the 99% of former classmates struggling to get by in the 996 culture. They don't compare her to the former students making 20 or 30 thousand dollars year, which most of them are. Her parents' behavior has caused tremendous emotional damage to my wife's mental health, including severe depression. There's a very good reason we don't raise our kids the same way that she was raised. What is the point of raising a financially successful child if the methods you used make it impossible for them to enjoy their lives?

My friend at my university specialization is from China. She is many miles better a student than I am, I am very average but I do like doing my own little projects on the side. She eventually got curious about the hackerspace i was participating in, so when I first started getting to know her outside of school I will never forget one of the things she said to me: "You are so curious about everything, it makes me wonder how many years of my life I hadn't lived because I wasn't allowed to feel that"

As a foreigner studying in a Chinese high school, I'm really grateful that the problems surrounding Chinese study and work culture is coming to light. When I first came to China in middle school, as a high achiever, the drastic difference in the amount of effort I had to put in for a reasonable grade or even slight recognition within my courses came as a shock. The weight of inadequacy was unbearable. While in other Countries I'm seen as the "perfect" student, here it just isn't enough. I still remember my first month here, struggling to stay awake in classes, waking up in literal sweats every night, and then I would look at the life of my friends in my home country. They really don't know how lucky they are. I mourned the life I could of had. Things I had considered as little quirks of teenage hood had become the objects of my aspiration. To have free time and hang out with friends outside of school is just something you don't do here. By some miracle, and a lot of hard ass work, I got through to the second highest rated high-school in the country. All things considering, you do get used to it. My life has been reduced to a haze of sleepless nights and long hours spent at a desk but at least It's not as bad as it was. Me and my classmates get on average about twenty hours of sleep in a week. I go to school at 6:00am and come home after 9:00pm just to do more school work and homework, and that's not even that much compared to other students. A lot of my friends and classmates get home after twelve due to extra classes, eca's and tutoring. This system and it's students are broken and I've had to watch myself get sucked into the toxic grind culture that surrounds me and I just can't escape. My parents ask why I can't just take a break, they don't seem to understand THAT I LITTERALY CAN'T.

As someone who grew up in Europe, I've had it easy with only 6-7 hours of school per day, only 5 days a week but it still got me exhausted, so I can't even imagine how terrible is to have classes 17 hours a day.I would be dead after the first day of school in China, so on the other hand, I admire how Chinese students are so strong to survive through such a gruesome education regime.

I have a Chinese friend who has a lot of great academic achievements, but she told me about the study culture in China. She didn't have a childhood or teenage hood, it was just studying and sleeping and repeat, she'd go to school for 14 hours and then come home and study until 2 am. She was miserable, and as a result became a workaholic, constantly stressed out of her mind that she wasn't working hard enough at her PhD even though she worked 70 to 80 hour weeks. I will always remember when she told me that she was ranked second in her entire grade ( of like a 1000 students) and her mother scolded her for not being 1st.

My ex's sister had a nervous breakdown from the university entrance exam. She was in a hospital in Fuzhou on a floor for other kids who had broken down from studying for the same test.

The comment about the 4 year old's English vocabulary hit me... I taught some Chinese students online from the UK. One was eight, and was basically impossible to keep focussed because he was, well, eight. The parents seemed to have picked me as a teacher because I use story-based methods that are more fun and engaging for kids, but then after each class the mum would complain that he didn't speak with complex enough vocabulary and grammar - as if a native speaker 8-year-old would be talking like a university student! I also taught a 14-year-old boy who lived in Beijing who had amazing English. He could easily read novels in English. It seemed to me a complete waste of time for him to be taking after-school classes when he could just read books and watch films in English. And his parents also seemed to think his level wasn't good enough. EDIT: Just reached the part about foreign tutors being banned. I had no idea this happened. IIRC I was teaching these kids in 2020 and maybe early 2021 through italki, which is a Chinese company.

My company just implemented a 32 hour work week and productivity actually increased. It turns out having a day for errands and time off really helps you focus the other 4 work days.

I work in a chemistry lab and a couple of years ago we had someone from China who was used to the 669 schedule. At first everyone praised her for her productivity and work ethic. However over time it became apparent that she was so used to working in the lab that she had no personal time to develop critical thinking and other things outside the lab that would help you become a more well rounded chemist. She had terrible social skills and struggled to communicate what she wanted. She felt like if the more she worked, the more people would recognise her and give her a promotion. But the higher ups thought she was just good as a lab rat and so let her stay that way. She then became disillusioned and felt “invisible”, especially since the people who had work-life balance seemed to be happier and better chemists overall and so she ended up quitting. Last I heard she is working in a different lab.

I went to elementary school in China until grade 2. Chinese elementary schools have 6-8 year olds learning multiple step algebra and kids are expected to do homework for hours after school which starts at 7.30am and ends at 5pm. Most (like 99%) of families send their kids to tutoring/online classes from basically the moment you're born. From my experience, my teachers would send test results back to all the parents in the class groupchat and it included rankings and sometimes the teacher would make snarky comments about kids who are ranked low. During lunch breaks we are not allowed to go outside. You have to clean the classroom and if you're really young (like 1st graders), you have to sit there and read something educational like a textbook (I once got yelled at when I was 6 or 7 for reading a picture book lol). I remember being made class captain for the day and the other kids had to seek permission from me for literally everything. Someone dropped their eraser and had to ask me to let them pick it up- Also i swear every teacher acts like high school bullies: i remember lining up in front of the classroom and our teacher was joking with another teacher about kids being so dumb etc. The other teacher kicked one of her students. Not like a really hard kick, just to scare him. The student (who was in 2nd grade probably) flinched and they laughed so hard at him and then they both went around mime kicking/hitting ppl for a couple minutes before the bell rang. They also knew to only pick on kids with poorer backgrounds so I was never physically harmed because my family were relatively better off (my school was in an a area with different social classes because it was still being developed but I believe it has become more of a middle/higher middle class area now) which was why we were able to move to another country. And some more specific things I remember doing in class: -There was an exercise were 2nd graders had to answer 10 multiple step algebra questions within 2 minutes. The punishment for not getting every single one right is to copy the question the did wrong and the answer 60 times. -One guy in my class failed a math test (pass grade is 60% iirc) and had to copy down the ENTIRE PAPER THREE TIMES. It was a double sided A3 paper. this was in grade 2 btw. -One parent told out teacher that she's giving out too much homework and she got the poor kid to stand in front of the class and tell him that he'll never get into a good school, he's stupid and incompetent etc etc and the rest of the class had to agree with her in unison. -For some reason some teachers could cancel our electives?? Like the class would score low on a test on average and the math teacher would call the music teacher and just tell her the class has lost their music privledges and will be doing double math instead of music??? To conclude this is just my personal experience but i have heard stories from my Chinese friends that their tutors hit them with metal rulers and gave them even more work that school did which caused them to work past 12am (and these are people who left china before 5th grade). And I lived in Beijing so idk what it's like in other places. Obviously I didn't go past 2nd grade there so I can't speak to the experiences of high-schoolers/uni students/young adults in China. There is a phrase I've heard a lot of Chinese parents use that basically translates to "losing at the starting line" which they use to justify sending their young kids to tutoring death camps so some food for thought ig anyways sorry this was so long.

I had a professor who taught in China for a few years and he would tell us that he greatly preferred teaching in American universities because the Chinese students had never been taught to critically think so they couldn’t write essays or defend their viewpoints. Rote learning doesn’t prepare students to analyze problems and create innovative solutions to those problems.

I did my bachelors degree in China, you could even think the Chinese students were like robots. When you go to the library you could hear most if not all reciting the books, just cramming the whatever is in the books. There is no thinkin outside the box, just whatever is inside the books. Speaking to a number of proffesors, most were praising foreign students about how inquisitive we were and social with the faculty. Some said they could go weeks without students asking questions in class. It was really an eye opening experience

i remember my therapist telling me that the most important thing for a teen is to find a peergroup and friends. not grades. she told me that that is crucial for adulthood and u will have an extremly really hard time integrating into society and will probably end up in some job extremely unhappy because u never learned how to properly have a social life.

I went to an afterschool art program in China and what I saw was incredibly astonishing. The art displayed by the middle and high school students were absolutely incredible! In fact, you might think many of these young students had graduated art school already, however they all looked as if they were created by the same singular artist! Not much personality, yet extremely skilled! It was somehow a little eerie.

I used to live with a chinese guy, he worked constantly, doing the full 99-6 while living with me. Thing is, i looked at some of the work he was doing, so much of it was pointless busywork that would just be going straight to the shredder. I told him this, he was working more than anyone i'd ever met yet he was doing maybe as much work as i did in 8 hrs a day. The thing is, burnt out ppl get less done than ppl who take time to rest and recuperate, they get more done in the short term, but in the medium to long term they fall far behind. To any chinese or other asian people reading this who feel this crushing weight of constant work and impossible expectations. Take a break, breathe the air, take a nap, go for a walk and play a game. You can easily justify it to others by pointing out you're keeping yourself productive by avoiding burnout.

Even though I escaped from the system by coming to Germany 5 years ago and now working at a German company, I still can't stop thinking to push myself further and improve myself constantly as the whole involution idea is so deelpy embedded in my brain that I need to be better. Fortunately, the general working environment in Germany doesn't encourage working overtime and emphasizes emoployee mental health and work-life balance, which allows me to rethink what I really like and want to do in my life. Although this toxic thinking of involution comes back and forth, I am working on getting over it.

I met a korean girl that ended up leaving the country due to the exact grind detailed in this video. What struck me is just how socially accepted that kind of behaviour is, she said that she was effectively peer pressured into staying at school after classes to study so that she didn't give the impression of being lazy. Even after landing a job at Samsung she still didn't feel satisfied with her life, realized that her problem was the society she lived in and decided to leave.

I'm currently living in Japan and want to try raising a kid here up through preschool. I love the values Japanese preschools have for respecting each other and your environment. There's a lot of social skill learning that happens through play. But once my child starts going to elementary school, I'll be looking to move. I don't ever want my child to experience the academic competitiveness that comes with upper elementary school and middle school.

I used to teach in Korea and it was depressing on an existential level. Everyone but Capital in the country suffers a meaningless life of struggle. Students have to memorize facts for pointless exams. I had a kindergartener tell me he want to wnd his life over pressure for a first grade entrance exam and the Korean teachers and the parents just laughed it off and said he isn't working hard enough. Workers make their life about work. Mother in laws compete over who gets the most expensive handbag. I tried to talk about the things you are discussing in this video and was basically shunned if I brought it up. I was an absolute ahole to managers, coworkers, and parents to create a supportive and positive learning environment for my students (Kindergarten in the mornings, elementary cram school in afternoons) until the fight burned me out after three years. I had one 1st grade after school student who had cram schools from 8am to 12am (an effing piano class from 11 to midnight) who I let sleep on my jacket under a table sometimes because she'd come in delirious from exhaustion with bags under her eyes.

I think it's very telling that when the isekai genre first came into prominence, the protagonist usually died due to a car accident and was then reincarnated in a fantasy world where they basically became a Shonen protagonist. In countless modern isekai, the protagonist is dying due to overwork because of an abusive company. Then, when they reincarnate into their new world, they instead aim to live a slow, relaxing life to make up for what they missed out on in their previous life. That right there is a scathing critique of the modern-day workplace in Asia

To me, the assignment example is really strange! If the professor asked for a 2000 word essay and we turned in a 5000 word essay, we would fail the assignment lol. In my Uni (in Australia), every 10% we go over the word count, there's a 10% penalty.

im an american who did 996 for a little over a year at a job, i literally felt ground to dust at the end of the day, literaly eat a frozen tv dinner and sleep until the alarm wakes you up, no amount of sleep made you feel rested. The idea that some people do it for years must be insain

In Germany, anybody who passes their final school exam (with any passing grade, not just top marks) can sign up for any course at any university, and universities can't "filter" or reject applicants. Instead, people who aren't serious about their studies or have picked the wrong field are weeded out over the first couple of semesters, which are made deliberately intense (though not by Chinese standards, I imagine). And somehow, despite not pitting school children against their peers to "compete for grades", the post-war German university system has performed just fine.

Growing up in Taiwan, I remember during elementary school the teacher would show us everyone grades and their rank in the class, the top student would get some sort of prize and the last 3 students would get ridiculed and humiliated, they were trouble kids and most likely suffered from ADHD or some learning disability. Also it was very normal for my neighbors and parents friends randomly ask for your grades and class rank, I would just lie and say 10 or 12th instead of 20th because of the pressure.

Girl, I resonated with this video so much. I'm indian and we have similar shit here too. There are these extremely competitive exams (JEE and NEET). Because students are highly discouraged from taking career paths that are 'unconventional' ie literally everything that isn't doctor/engineer, many students take these exams due to external pressure.

I have to say i'm not chineese I'm indian. Here we prepare for JEE and NEET University exams. They're extremely difficult! And EXACTLY the same culture is present here. It's beyond stressful and overwhelming as well as exhausting. It causes widespread depression and anxiety. And the causes are the same as well. These things resonate sooo much to me especially the part about how when parents give up a part of their life for u you feel obligated to do the same !

As someone who grew up in Bangladesh, I relate to this a lot. I am in grade eleven right now. And in 2025 I will be giving a board exam that will decide my future. There are a total of 4 board exams in 12 years of school. One in grade 5, then in grades 8, 10 and 12. There is a thing called "GOLDEN A*" here. Students are divided into 3 groups in grade 9 which are science, commerce, and humanities. In society's eyes choosing science means you are very smart, choosing commerce means you want to be a banker, and choosing humanities means you are dumb and you don't want to study that's why you chose it. People think you are dumb and a failure just because you chose humanities. But in reality, they are the one who succeeds in real life. I chose science. I wasn't pressured into choosing it like some of my friends were. I chose it because I am good at problem-solving and the subjects are just easier for me to grasp. For group science there are two famous occupations in our country. Those are engineers and doctors. I still remember that when I didn't get an A* on my board in 5th grade, my dad was so disappointed that he didn't even go to school to get my marksheet. And when his friends brag about their kid having A* and gifting them expensive gifts he used to be ashamed. And my mom used to tell me how I made my dad ashamed in front of his friends and family. At last in 8th grade the marksheet of the 5th grade board exam was needed and that was when he decided to get the marksheet. I got 100 in English and 95+ in other subjects except one. That subject was BGS where I got 77 marks. If I got those 3 marks I would gotten an A* on my GPA. Then in 8th grade the pandemic started. And at the end seeing that the syllabus was far from being completed the government promoted every student to grade 9 without the board exam. But we were given weekly assignments. Then in 10th grade, the pandemic was coming to an end. And throughout the pandemic, I couldn't study at all. I was lazy and super unproductive. My grades were dropping. But still, I managed to improve my grades slowly. I was happy to see the little progress. It wasn't much but it was a lot for me. But that didn't satisfy my parents. Because for them that wasn't progress. You either get an A* or you are a failure. I never told my progress to my dad. He used to yell at me because of the low grades and didn't see the little progress. So, I stopped sharing my grades with him. I only shared it with my mom. And I have the best mom. She understands me yet she still used to tell me to push harder because she knows how much my relatives will criticize her and me. She was still supportive though. After 3 months of preparation, I took the exam and got the so-called "GOLDEN A*". Those who didn't get the so-called "GOLDEN A*", some even take their own life. I even saw news of some students in 8th grade taking their lives because they couldn't reach society's standards and get "GOLDEN A*". It's so heartbreaking. But I didn't get good marks. So, there was a lower chance of me getting into a good college.[ College is 11th and 12th grade]. And the college I vowed not to get into throughout my whole life my parents made me admit to the college. I can't even blame them for that because Dad became incredibly sick and we were having financial problems. It's not that the college is bad. It's just the environment it has. The teachers are good but lazy. They don't teach much in class except for two or three of the teachers. So, I got a 'C' on the first term exam. You know what's funny, only 12 students passed out of 80. This was only the science department. All of the teachers know me especially the principal. It was a shame when he asked my grade. But I can't even complain. Because two of my friends got an 'A'. I was always being compared to both of them. I still am. I don't know how they got an 'A' but for me, it's quite impossible. Because if I don't grasp the concept Very well I can't write it on the exam paper. When I told my dad that the teachers don't really make us understand the topic and just read the textbook he told me to study for 16 hours on weekdays. I have tuition from 7:50 -9:40am. then classes from --9:40- 1:55 with a 20-minute lunch break. Then I have another tuition. And I reach home at 3 pm. After showering, it's 4 pm and I watch an online lecture do my homework, or do nothing at all because of how tired I am. At 6 pm I study again for 2 hours then have my dinner and study again until it's completed. If I had another online class then I would have to finish everything and sleep at 1-2 am. Even if I didn't have any classes It would still be 1-2am to go to bed.[ I take an online course for all the subjects in college because I don't understand anything the teachers teach if you call it teaching. So, I have even less time to actually study.] I wake up at 6-7 am. And the routine continues. Now I can't even have 6 hours left to study and my dad tells me to study for 16 hours a day. Recently I have been facing burnout. And looking at the syllabus and realizing how far behind I am, I am scared to even start small because of fear of failure. Nowadays I can't even study for 1 hour. I can't even tell any of the teachers I take online classes because then they will start hating me and can't even leave the tuition because then they won't give me enough marks to even pass. They would make you fail. It happened to one of my friends and I am not looking forward to it. For my father and teachers the more time you put in studying the better grades you get. They don't care about my mental health. The fear of failure is rapidly growing inside me. And there is also a consistent comparison. My mom admitted me to this college even after knowing that there was a 99% chance that my grades would decrease. She did that because she belives that I could do well on my own like how I did on my 10 grade board exam. In 2025 after my board exam, the admission preparation will start. For science department students there are only 3 institutions in the eyes of the society. Engineering, medical, and university. The best engineering college here is BUET. Where you have to get 93+ in physics, math, and chemistry to even be able to form an application for the BUET entrance exam. And in medical college, you have to get into the government ones. Dhaka Medical College is the no. 1 medical college in Bangladesh. And Dhaka University is the no.1 university in the country. In the eyes of society if you don't get admitted to the best you are a failure. My life is miserable. There is no routine, no balance. In our country, they don't really give credit to hard work. When I was little everyone used to praise me for my excellent grades and told me I got those grades because of how smart I was. And because of that whenever I get bad grades I just say I am not smart enough and don't even try working hard. All I want to say is that being excessive of everything is bad and doing less is also not good. You should always stay in between. But I guess the society doesn't understand that. I just hope to survive in this curriculum. And thank you, mom, for being the only supportive person in my life and understanding my situation. There is a new curriculum coming and if it is accomplished perfectly the quality of the education will increase. I just hope this one works even though it's not for us but for our juniors. I hope they and my brother will get a better student life with the new curriculum. ( I appreciate you taking the time to read all my rambling. I didn't expect it to make sense because I was just writing all the things I couldn't share with anyone. It's not every student's situation over here, I just shared mine. Some have better situations and also worse situations. If I made any mistake please note that I am human and I am bound to make mistakes and hopefully you will forgive them. Thank you.)

A teacher living in Haidian, I have to say it must be one of the most intense places on the planet. It's heartbreaking to hear a six-year-old tell you how excited they were when their mother was quarantined due to the pandemic, just so they could get a break from their weekend classes. I struggle to convince the how this practice is really counterproductive, the diminishing returns on constant expensive tutoring should be obvious when you're sacrificing your child's mental health. Really loved the video, happy to have discovered your channel!

What’s interesting is as an American I’ve actually experienced this phenomenon working *in reverse.* You plan on doing your best on an assignment, then look to your right and left and seeing the other kids cutting corners. Over time you realize that it’s unnecessary to give 100% effort because even with 50% of what you’re capable of, youll still be slightly above average. So you slack. Which in turn prompts those around you to slack. And before you know it, you’re in a classroom of kids that have failed to meet the standards, so the tchrs lower their standards to compensate. Honestly the reverse phenomenon is just as bad-it can slow the progress of society as a whole (though luckily, this doesn’t happen in *every* classroom of course. It’s present but hasn’t yet taken over)

A had a lab mate fly from china to study here. We actually had a talk about our school systems while working on a lab paper. I showed how my district was notoriously violent that had him bug eyed. I was also shocked on hearing on how violence wasn't as prominent but yet kids are at the school almost the whole entire day. We joked about how the kids there were too exhausted to have bullying come up but it was still insane.

I grew up in China, and from a young age, I admired those abandoned children because I always felt that growing up without parents must be such a fortunate thing. When I told my parents these words as I got older, they didn't care.

The price of failure being so high also increases the amount of cheating in my experience. Especially "low risk" cheating, like plagiarizing at home assignments, etc. Students who realized they can't achieve the grades they think they need in order to guarantee their future will look elsewhere for help. And I'm not talking about "slackers", but some of the best students in the school. They work their asses off, still fail to meet impossible expectations, and cheat in desperation.

"But young people are realizing that whilst they might not be enough or do enough, they've *HAD* enough." That hit home.

I have worked in Japan and Taiwan, and I've noticed that there is a big difference between the time you spend at work and the actual amount of work you produce. In these countries, it is acceptable to go on social media and even take naps at work. In most of these countries, productivity is abysmal indeed.

I'm from Brazil, am 12 years old and I spent my entire year in 2023 trying to get perfect grades and academic success bacause I was jealous of one of my classmates (thank God I got back to my senses). It turns out that full marks (especially in 7th grade, I don't even know what I was thinking) are unecessary. Of course it's amazing to see the results, but it didn't do anything for me. If you focus on things that aren't just school and are also important (competitions, groups, extracurriculars, interactions, etc) and get good grades without killing yourself, it's so much better.

Something that scares me is what happens to those who may have learning disabilities. Not just severe global intellectual disabilities but things like dyslexia or a nonverbal learning disability as examples. Im in America so its different but even here my learning disability has caused me so much pain and stress in my academic career...i cant imagine how much more painful it would be in this kind of system. I legitimately dont know if id survive.

I'm Brazilian (of no Asian descent, by the way). I've been raised in a familiar environment similar to those of Asian cultures but on a lesser scale, I imagine. I developed depression, anxiety, insecurity and an unhealthy obssession for big achievements (there were other factors that caused this, but this was one of them). What really pisses me off is that I was psychologically tortured to become an overachiever in a culture that does not value this kind of person.

The main problem is. If everyone has the same strategy to be successful in life. Then you have high competition and a lot of unsuccessful people that can't help each other later on. But if everyone had different strategies to be successful competition will be lower. Then there will be more successful people from other areas that can exchange value. So the best educated can derive value from the less educated and the less educated found another way for success. Problem in asian countries there isn't status given for other forms of success.

Love your content. "Instead of questioning the rule of the game" is well described my sentiment toward many problems we collectively face.

You can't win a game when your opponent decides all the rules. The only winning move is not to play.

I teach kids who escaped the 高考system (at an international school). Some of them are still burnt out by it, some pretty rough depression or anxiety. But at least they’re out of it. I can’t imagine losing so much of my childhood for a few exams…

I am incredibly fortunate as someone Chinese who wasn’t raised in China. I admire my parents a lot, especially my dad. I’m probably biased but I really do think he’s a genius. His logic is incredible and he analyzes things carefully but quickly. He does put some pressure on me (in addition to pressure from myself and my mom) but he helps me alot, explains things to me, and most importantly, explains why for everything. He doesn’t tell me to get into a top college for no reason, he believes that it could offer great resources and experiences and we mostly have the means for it as well. He doesn’t compare me to my friends when I do worse just to make me feel bad but because his logic is, what’s the point of comparing yourself to people who did worse? That will give you nothing except a temporary sense of achievement but you shouldn’t keep sitting on that. If you compare yourself to people who did better than you, you don’t have to feel bad about it but instead use it as motivation to do even better. To improve. Sometimes he seems harsh to me but out of all asian stereotypes and parents I’ve heard of, I dare say my dad is pretty fair. Guys, remember (or at least food for thought): you’re the person who decides how to perceive things. I hate comparison because it can make me feel bad about myself BUT if you can take criticism to improve yourself, that’s great

Great video, I live in the United states and the competition here for college is not as intense as it is other countries. I have seen a similarity in the idea of Involution in the tech industry here, at the moment, landing a tech job is highly competitive due to the nature of an oversupply of coders. The pressure to stand out has raised the standards for technical questions to a level not seen before. Every coder knows these questions are ultimately useless in your actual job but in an effort to get the job, one has to answer and study hundreds of questions. Either way, it's at no level comparable to the Chinese exams so I'm grateful for that.

I’m a Chinese student who lives in England. I grew up in here my whole life, it wasn’t hard, the only thing that was hard was my parents physically and mentally abusing me, forcing me to be the best, etc. It was hard since there were many people that were as smart as me, or even smarter. Literally cried every single day if I didn’t get 100% or I didn’t get first just because I couldn’t impress me Chinese parents. I was so competitive, pushing everything but my education away.

Resonates with what I've experienced as a worker in Mexico, same mindset of "if you're not willing to do this overtime there's someone outside waiting to fill your position" from bosses. Thank you for the video

This was a very well articulated and researched video. Thank you for educating us on this issue, especially for those of us outside of China who do not know much about the working/studying lifestyle. You’ve earned a subscriber :)

The word count thing is so wild to me because in America you often lose points for failing to follow directions and be concise, because if you need all those extra words to explain then you did a bad job explaining/don't understand the topic well. And we prioritize doing as you're told as quickly and quietly as possible, no modifications

It's worth noting that the Chinese work ethic is so intense it even affects schools internationally. Here in the states, Chinese exchange students so outcompete their US peers that it causes all sorts of imbalances. That includes academic prejudice against those exchange students - they're often seen as a separate category, and measured against each other instead of the normal admission standards of the school. I'm sure many schools also keep a close eye on their demographics, trying to ensure that exchange students don't make up too much of the population, which would place a cap on how many international students can get in. Not to mention the broader adverse effects it has on race relations. Imagine if instead of everyone competing in a race to the bottom, it was a specific race from abroad importing a toxic work ethic. In the US (any maybe the rest of the west?) the paradigm for understanding these behaviors is 'the prisoner's dilemma.' A game in which betraying your peers is incentivized, resulting in negative outcomes for everyone, including the defaulter. It's not as prominent a movement in the US, because our work culture isn't quite so egregious (and would probably get different language if it were, the prisoner's dilemma isn't *that* well-known), but there's still some intense hostility toward people sucking up to their boss.

Stress is bad for the body, it makes me sad to see little kids stressed about school/their future. Wanting good marks and studying to the point your developing body doesn't get enough sleep are different, one is fine, the other is unhealthy.

I thought the indian education system was the worst in the world.

Really nice to see you included marx analysis on wage labor in this. A rare sight to see on youtube video essays

"the harder you work, the more hopeless things become" This has such a resonance for me. I'm at the point where I realized that at this point we individually can only do so much to improve our own lives. In order for us to collectively improve our standards of living on a global scale we have to collectivize and withhold our labor. I live in Canada and have been here for most of my life, and after attending university and getting an education I realize that even with all of this my prospects for a better life are quite minuscule given inflation and the rising cost of living.

As a person who grew up in an Asian country, I feel really uncomfortable watching this because it brings me back to the old, dark days when I could only see the light from the small window of cram schools. Due to the education system in Asia, I promised myself never to let my children be raised in Asia, or rather, never to have any children since I don’t want to subject them to some of my darkest nightmares. I hope all children can have bright dreams, not endless nightmares.

I came across your channel yesterday and it really broadens my perspective on Chinese 文化. This is really helpful motivation while learning the language. I also enjoy the scientific but down-to-earth approach and unobtrusive humour. 加油！

Thanks for sharing this. It's a more extreme version of what many of us have experienced. I'm glad people around the world are becoming more aware of these atrocities, thanks to people like you.

Exceptional video - factual, straightforward and well-documented. Also matches up almost perfectly with my own experiences and those of many colleagues in China. One point missed is how many Chinese with money are now sending their kids overseas to boarding schools as early as middle school just to avoid the rat race. Anecdotal evidence as well for a similar trend in South Korea.

The problem with writing 10,000 words for an assignment that asked for 5,000 words is, as with so much else with success based only on numeric metrics, is that it misses the point of writing an essay. The point of writing an essay should be about communicating information, and what should be measured is the amount of information and quality of communication and not the number of words used. The problem is that quality of communication is not an easily measurable metric so the count of the number of words is used because it can easily be measured rather than the more useful but less easy to measure quality of communication.

Beautiful doc, thank you so much for sharing this!

this was so interesting! thank you for your explanation

i live in Brazil, and we definitely have completely different educational problems from China, but this honestly reminds me of the ENEM season in Brazil, wich is pure chaos. You're prepared your whole school life for this one single exam and your whole worth as a person is defined by how much you scored on it. It's terrifying. I'm preparing to do it this year, since its the only way people who can't afford going to college can get there and im honestly losing my sanity.

One of my teachers in uni who was very strict and one of those "no one ever gets a perfect score from me" kind of teachers, always used to say: "It doesn't matter how well you do in something, there will always be a Chinese kid doing it better somewhere".

This is a fantastic video with the amount of research you've put into making it

I'm glad you made this video! I've been trying to put into words how I have felt about "missed opportunities" for months if not years now.

For most Chinese, the problem is not competition - but inequality in the competition. In college entrance exams, for example, it's 10 times easier to get into a 985 (Chinese Ivy League) university for someone from Beijing than someone from the neighboring Henan/Hebei provinces.

This just reminds me how my mum used to stop me from helping my childhood friend in her studies. She used to get really 'hush hush' and say 'you shouldn't help her focus on your own studies', even though i was getting a 4.5 GPA every year constantly. but i am glad i never let these types of things bother me

what an excellent video! i learned a lot, thank you aini!!!

Wow. Just when I thought I was having college troubles. I passed everything I signed up for. But no one was forcing it in my direction. This inspired me. I've always studied other cultures and some of them really do have a more harsh education system than most. I feel weak for having ever felt tired and stressed.

Sounds like the "lying flat" movement is exactly like the " quiet quitting" in the united States. Big corporations think and act the same no matter the country. When the workers act together in the best interest of the employees, corporations are forced to improve working conditions.

As a 24 yo who grew up in India, I realise now that the amount of effort I had to put on college entrance examinations and then college itself to get a decent paying job was meaningless. I still have to work more than 10 hours a day, and be available on weekends in case of production failures. It is funny how both our countries keep fighting over icy wastelands and we citizens cheer our side on, despite the fact that we live equally shitty lives and cry ourselves to sleep every night.

Truly great video! Very well researched, organized and summed up! We need more videos like this circulating all over. Coming from an Asian country, info like this must be circulated all around. We need more people who are not just aware of the consequences and causes but as a result also introspect to pave a better path ahead without societal pressures.

the only way to win is not to play

As an international animation student who just graduated from a Chinese university last summer, this is all true. We often had to decide between homework, eating, sleeping, and socializing. I often went to sleep 1 hour before I started school at 8 am because I was up all night finishing assignments. Then I would take a 10-20 min break during class to have breakfast around 10 am or 11 am. At lunchtime, I would sleep and then wake up for the afternoon session. When the afternoon class was finished at 5. I would go back to the dorm to relax or eat a snack. We then had elective courses until 9 pm. They have since added more electives to the system and changed the curriculum by adding new courses and teaching courses that were third-year or second-semester second-year courses to second-year students in the first semester.

I'm big into anthropology and I really appreciate your videos. It's hard to find English language Chinese cultural analysis that's well laid out and researched.

thank you so much for your videos, cant wait for more

You made a great video. Well done and thank you!

this was pretty scary but also insightful. worst off, i feel like a lot of other countries and places are trying to mimic this work ethic and style because it's seen as the highest standard

See I come from India and we have much competition too with parents pushing hard,peer pressure of seeing friends succeed, relatives asking you questions about your career in every family function but what I have seen in Korean culture and maybe Chinese culture, the long school hours, long private coaching hours,less sleep that too from junior classes, it's too much. I pushed hard but only in high school until then it was mostly chill. If you're sleeping midnight in like lower grades before middle school, it's bad, it shouldn't happen

The level of argumentation put in this video is top notch. Great job.

I really appreciated this, thanks.

Everyday I am thankful to my parents for bringing me to Canada at a young age. I grew up in hangzhou until I was 8 years old, but even as a child I understood how much competition there was. This type of life is not sustainable and creates genuinely soulless working bots. But if I could say one thing, it doesn’t have to stay like that. When my cousin came to our place for a bit, I saw a sliver of his real personality start to come out. I genuinely believe that many young people need to leave and find who they are outside of China

It's not only China, countries like Korea, Japan, Singapore are pretty much the same when it comes to educational systems and work ethics. In fact, Jack Ma of Alibaba used to say: " It's a bless for young people to be able to work at least 6 days a week and 10 hours a day. They should be totally grateful for having the opportunity to live in such a working environment." Not to mention the widely known Japanese social phenomenon of Karoshi (Death from overwork).

this video is so well-made, very informative 👏

woooo wasn't expecting to hear an Aussie accent, hello fellow Aussie! fantastic video, well researched and understandable

This makes me grateful that I'm a Chinese that was born and raised in Malaysia. I don't wanna just study all day. Where is the fun in that? We should enjoy our lives a bit.

When I was at MIT, sometimes classes would post the top 10 students in the class publicly. Almost invariably, it was a Chinese name at the top, sometimes an Indian name. It makes sense given this video.

This hit so deep with this recommendation and education difference

Fun story, I was really good at math back in school. I lived in that education system mentioned here. The teachers constantly turned down my original approach to a problem and told me to copy the one from the books. Everyone in my class did the same. I refused, multiple times. Got kicked out of the best STEM university in my country. Guess who's working at the big tech now? This system sucks. I felt bad for my classmate that got suppressed to walk their own path. They are the ones who are now living a harder life. Be original, everyone !!! It will pay off

This video hit pretty hard with me- I hear about Chinese student culture very often as most of my family is in China stuck in the system. My childhood friend has been bedridden for many years now due to the schooling system and I wasn’t able to meet her the time I went back to visit. My other childhood friend is stuck in extracurricular tutoring through all her breaks and instead of hanging out and going somewhere fun when we finally met up again after years, we went to her tutoring session and this was back in middle school where I was spending most of my free time drawing and gaming. I lived in HaiDian (the district mentioned in the video) and honestly I feel lucky to have the chance to move to the States and escaped the system. I was not a bad student in anyway but often I still feel guilty about not working hard like the students back in China. Having parents and grandparents who all graduated from Peking University has honestly made me feel guilty that I didn’t take the same path as my past generations but part of me is glad that I didn’t have to go through the system but my background and family have made me feel extremely guilty about not studying my ass off and overworking myself to the brink of death. My parents have never told me to my face that they think i’m a failure and I don’t think they think I’m a failure but often it’s hard to not compare myself to my cousins and other chinese students overworking themselves.

I’m so blessed to have been raised in England where school is from 8am to 3/4pm

I teach in China at the moment and this helped me understand my students' situation a lot, especially the one girl who keeps using that word "involution" in all her essays.

It reminds me of a video posted by South China Morning Post about a doctor who repeatedly passed out from exhaustion on his way to work. Most comments, including the video were praising his determination and sacrifice when I was like: .... wtf??? I wouldn't like to be operated by someone who can pass out on me! Get some sleep please! More time of work ≠ more quality work done. Humans have their limits and favorable conditions of working. I bet all those students could learn just as good in shorter time if they weren't stressed, exhausted and overworked. And definitely they could be able to work for 40+ years instead of being hospitalized in their 30s. This is so sad.

Coming from India, which also has a overly competitive populace when it comes to academics. I also spent 10+ hours per day studying during my final two years of school but I still had an enjoyable time in school before those important years. It makes me sad that these kids have to write over the word limit in their essays just to outdo their peers because I fondly remember the one aspect of my exams I liked were the language exams, specifically the essay writing part! I almost always went over the word limit not because I was try harding, but because I loved writing about things which came into my mind and pouring my heart into it, I always kept these parts for the end of my exam so I could have a nice time, away from all the stress and anxiety the exam preparation entailed and escape into a little world of mine which simply existed between me and the words I laid bare on the sheet of paper, not trying to impress anyone but simply there because I liked writing. I won't deny I still wanted good marks for an essay but it was never a strong feeling, I was always reprimanded for writing over the word limit but never disincentivised, my teachers would also never tell me that what I'm writing is wrong but rather you should respect the word limit given to you, at first it made me a bit mad because, who are you to stop me? I'm already writing more than what you asked for! Hahaha looking at this comment you could probably guess, that it is still indeed the case! But in due time I realised their words were meant to teach me that sometimes you should also make things concise so others can understand what you are trying to convey, language is about understanding others and learning to have others understand you as well :) Now coming back to why the predicament of chinese kids makes me sad, because I for one extracted so much enjoyment and fulfillment from going over the word limit, specially when it was wrong to go over it so I can't begin to imagine all the enjoyment these poor souls who might have budding interest in the activity have their enjoyment be taken because now they are forced to write more, simply to outperform the other rather than trying to be true to themselves. Guess I've been writing too much here too but I wanted to share another story of mine, So as I stated I'm from India but since we have N number of regional languages here and I came from a family whose native Language was not Hindi. While I knew how to converse fluently in Hindi because spent a lot of time in schools with people coming from all kinds of backgrounds but writing is an whole other aspect of a language, which is the harder part. I did not understand many concepts and My family couldn't help me much either and the worse part was, I was in weird minority place because I could converse fluently for everyday conversation but when it came to articulated writing? I sucked, So there was quite a conundrum! Teachers might've thought that all of the things should come naturally to me since I can converse and it comes normally to everyone else because most others do come from Hindi households, So while I harbor bitter feelings for my older Hindi teachers now, but at a point in my childhood I harbored that feeling towards the language itself! I felt as if I could never be good at it, I would only be allowed to suffer in this middle ground of mediocrity and inability where it is everywhere and everyone just performs well in the exams in this subject other than me! and this was highly contrasted by me performing very well in English because I was one of the few kids who came from a well to do background so I had early access to the internet, therefore my proficiency in English was much higher than the others, simply because I was not only consuming most of my studies in English, but also multiple types of media which simply gave me more exposure to the language in it's written form eventually leading to me being better at English compared to almost everyone in my class but then being miserably worse in my country's native language than others! quite a weird place to be in, don't you think? Something changed in the 9th year of my schooling but, I actually got to have a Hindi teacher who genuinely was there for teaching and cultivating young ones, She understood that I stood at a weird place where I definitely held love for languages and writing as I performed well in English and as stated earlier was always writing more words than asked for but In Hindi I had multiple grammatical mistakes, multiple spelling mistakes, putting wrong articles here and there, almost as if I was making the mistakes of a 6th grader as a 9th grader! She personally understood all of my problems and helped me understand the language, and all the mistakes I was making and guess what, the language towards which I held bitter feeling towards, I began to love it, I began to exceed word limits in the exam of Hindi as well! Improving my grades massively, writing essays with much better articulation and started extracting the same amount of enjoyment writing essays as I did in English. I won't deny while writing all this, I'm a little teary eyed because I remember all this so fondly which is the exact reason as I stated above that these Asians kids having to deal with their writing and Exams in such a way makes me incredibly sad, I assume many start harboring bitterness to their own languages too. While I would also want to talk about how their struggles and the bad sleep schedules struck a chord with me as well because in the last 2 years as I stated, there pressure on me was also immense and I simply remember those years with bitterness aside from a few memories with friends which helped me keep going, but I've been rambling on enough, I hope systemic change happens some day because I personally know how much a teacher can change one's life and world view and help one break free of their preconceived ideas which they might have developed simply due to their circumstances, because in the end they are kids. They learn what they see, they think the right thing is what they are told.

Your channel is so interesting! As an Italian I can only react like this :-O when hearing this involution thing

Love that you cover China and Chinese society. It's pretty refreshing to have this perspective compared to all the video essayists basically covering what feels like the same Western oriented topics. Looking forward to your next videos!

Portuguese-Chinese here, I had a relaxed education in Portugal, sure my parents did always push me to be better, but never in an abusive way. On the other hand, my wife was raised in China and received the full package of Chinese education. I can say that I'm impressed by her ability to learn, study, and work, it's like she has been playing in a different league.

thank you aini, you put in so much into these videos and what u say is very impactful and well organised :)

If the teacher set a 5000 word essay, and you turned in 10,000 words, wouldn't the teacher hate you for making him do more work? He has to sit and read the thing.

Japan isn't as competitive an academic society as China and South Korea, but the number of applicants for private junior high school entrance exams in Japan is increasing year by year, Many Japanese elementary students are busy studying for exams.

Unfortunately its true,we had a kid from China and they were good with exams,and stuff but when we asked about hobbies he'd replied he didn't have any which surprised us as well as not being able to ask challenging questions or be creative.