China’s Test-Prep Education: Super Gaokao Factory

Pig digging cabbages (Part 1) – The current state of education in China Recently, a video of a speech given on a TV program in China has been circulating on the Internet. The speech was given by Zhang Xifeng, a senior student of Hengshui High School in Hebei province. In his speech, the teenager expressed his wish to change his fate through the college entrance examination but was also filled with resentment and discontent towards coming from a lower-class family in the countryside. In particular, he said: “I’m just a pig from the countryside, but I’m still determined to go dig for cabbages in the big city.” In Chinese everyday language, if a very ugly and poor man marries a beautiful girl, it is referred to as “a pig digging a cabbage“. In the case of this teenager, it means that he wants to go to the big city, work his way up, and change his humble destiny.