I woke up again at 5 am. Very mad at Brent because he was working last night until 11. I wanted to sleep at 10, because I knew jetlag will get me up early again. So I have a headache again from not enough sleep.
My aunt and uncle have a house keeper or maid. It's very common and affordable in developing countries to have a maid. Just as the States use cheap immigrants in manual labor fields, so does China use immigrants from the country side as domestic workers. It works out well for both parties economically, but makes family life so difficult. She's from the countryside with 4 siblings. I don't know how that was possible as she's my age. She has a 17 year old son who is going to high school this year. She has been working as a domestic worker (I don't need to worry about political correctness here so I'll just type maid in the future) for 7 years. Her sister has been raising her son for the last seven years. Her husband works as a construction worker and was also in Shanghai before. But for the last year he's been working in Beijing so they don't see each other much at all. Because of the large population, it's even more competitive to get into a good high school meaning possible college education. There are 12000 students compete to go into better high schools, but there is less than 500 can be accepted. To enter college, they have to get much better scores than the kids in the big cities as they have a fix quota for many more people. You could however, to enter a good high school with score less than ideal. The best high school requires a score of 640, you could get in with a 630 if you pay 30000 Yuan. That's a huge sum for many, but since it's their only hope for college education, the parents work very hard and save very hard to get their kids in, if they even get 630. And you have to fill out which schools you want to go to even before you take the entrance exam provincewide. So it's guess work. The district looks at your selections after the exam. If your first choice school requires 640, your second choice requires 620, they will put you in your first choice because they can make money out of you. And you have no say in it. Or you go to a "bad" school then you'll never get into college. Bad schools here don't have guns, but just bad quality of education.
Her son goes to a boarding school as many country kids. Not the English type preppy boarding school. They live there so they can study. They get up at 5 am and study till 11pm. For the top 30 students, the school give them special treatment hoping they can enter good high school therefore college. The special treatment is to have teachers teach them on Sundays as well. So they go to school 7 days a week. They have a 15 minute lunch break, which doesn't allow them to eat much. It takes the 15 minutes to walk to the cafeteria and get food and walk back, and then the next class starts. He often eats rice soup since it's quick. He has stomach problems, and he's only 17! The students don't even have time to do laundry or even take a shower. By the time you take off your clothes, the bell rings for the next class.
In the restaurant or shops we went to, I often saw help-wanted signs. They want nice looking people age 18-25. Equal opportunity and ACLU doesn't apply here. There are too many people for too little. The maid told her son, if you want to be like your dad, don't worry about studying so you can have a easy life (childhood), but if you want to be in an aircond office in the hot summer, you better study hard. He chose the latter and I sure hope he gets into a good high school (he'll take the exam early July). His parents work too hard.
