Emphasis of Education
I am going to blog about the emphasis of education that is put on the Chinese people. I have noticed that the people here take education very seriously. A reason for this is because they really want to be successful at what they do. I would say some of it is because of Mianzi or face. They want to portray themselves as something good and education is by means of doing so. Also, students have a test weekend to get in college which basically decides their fate. If they don't pass this test then they won't be able to go to college. If they do pass then they get in. The colleges around Tianjin only let in around 5,000 students a year. If you look at the population size of this country, that's not a lot of kids and so it is very selective. Another reason is cost. The cost to go to school is not cheap and only the families that have the money can send their children to school. There isn't many people that can afford to send their kids to school and for the ones that can, they know they are lucky they can go to school and want to make sure they put all they can into it. Also, people here need a good education to achieve a higher status of living. When you want to go into a profession the first thing they look at is your education. This is true in the U.S. as well. There is a lot of poor people here and most of them will never get the chance to move up because they lack an education. These are some of the reasons why I see them so serious about school.