News You Might Have Missed: Beijingers’ Bad Behavior and Color-Coding Children

Beijingers’ habits of spitting and running red lights aren’t the best, but in comparison to blackmailing one’s parents and breaking out in profanity-laden rap battles, they seem OK. And when it comes to rewarding or punishing behavior, is discrimination on the basis of color the best way?

Sixteen-year-old Zhang Xinyang, who initially made a name for himself as the youngest university student in China, is again in the spotlight after demanding (and receiving) an apartment from his parents by threatening to abandon his studies. Zhang justified his actions as follows: “I am inheriting my father’s dream. They wanted me to stay in Beijing [to attend university] so they should work hard for it.” The teen’s unfilial views have led some netizens to label him an “unselfish boy” and “abnormal child.” Zhang's statements also exposed obvious tensions between himself and his father (who’s written his own “Tiger Dad” book) that reminds us of a similar case of an American child prodigy who couldn’t cope with his father’s overzealous ambitions.

Zhang Xinyang isn’t the only child that has recently been caught extorting money from his parents for his studies. A 31-year-old man from Jiangsu province conned his parents out of RMB six million to study at Oxford. In reality, he never attended the prestigious university, or was even accepted; instead, for the last six years he has remained in Beijing, unbeknownst to his parents. After blowing through all the money, including an additional RMB 400,000 loan, the man quickly lost his girlfriend and was forced to come clean to his parents. He has since been forgiven by Mom and Dad after threatening suicide.

All this bad behavior isn’t just limited to dysfunctional family dynamics. A two-year dispute between two incense vendors near Yonghegong subway station has escalated into a full-on kuaiban (wooden clapper chanting) battle. Imagine a cross between Eight Mile and Chinese opera, or just insert a lot of vulgarities into this following Chinese rap battle clip and you’ll start to get an idea of the scene at the subway.

How can we punish this type of bad behavior? Maybe we should take a cue from some schools that are implementing some colorful policies concerning punishment and reward. Last month, a school in Xi’an began stripping underachieving students of their red Chinese Young Pioneers scarves and replacing them with green ones. The scarf-swapping prompted a national outcry and was discontinued. An overwhelming 93 percent of respondents on Sina.com believed that this public shaming would psychologically damage the young children.

This color-coding incident seems to have started a trend. Last week, a middle school in Baotou chose to use color as a reward, not punishment, by awarding high-performing students with special red uniforms. Even more recently, a Shandong school was discovered handing out green, yellow and red assignment books to the students with each color signifying a different degree of difficulty: green for advanced, yellow for standard, and red for remedial. Now we're confused ... wasn't red supposed to be for the smart kids?

Photos: news.ifeng.com, ministryoftofu.com, qq.com