THE WEEK: Battle in school

Battle in school

Chinese teachers have travelled to the United Kingdom to teach British kids Chinese style. The cross-cultural educational experiment was for a BBC documentary called Are Our Kids Tough Enough? Chinese School, suggesting the Brits think Chinese teachers are pretty tough, and they are! British students were subjected to rote learning, long school days and terrible tracksuits. The result? They were bored witless and largely distracted. The Chinese teachers said the British kids were spoilt but did like the fact that the British system allows for students with different interests and learning levels. But really, the problem was cultural, British students are simply not under the same sort of pressures as their Chinese counterparts. The Chinese might argue that pressure makes diamonds - but it can also just get you a lump of coal.

Snow problems

Beijing has been announced as the host city of the 2022 winter Olympics, Despite the games being seven years away there are already naysayers, with certain negative nellies pointing out that China’s capital doesn’t tend to get a lot of snow in winter, which makes it particularly difficult to do things like...ski. The Week suggests Beijing simply holds events more suited to it’s winter climate, like, the most inventive hairstyle created purely using static electricity or, a sweet potato eating contest. The gold medal goes to anyone who can get a taxi out of Sanlitun after 11pm when the temperature is below freezing.

Brave new world

But forget 2022, we’re looking toward 3022, when the Olympics will be held on Kepler 452-b, the newly discovered planet that scientists believe to be the most earth-like place they have discovered yet! Human’s are very keen to populate other planets because we’ve royally stuffed this one up, the problem is most of the people who want to start a brave new world are a lot like this guy.

（中国日报网英语点津 Helen 编辑）