A photo published by the People's Daily newspaper last Friday touched me greatly. A school boy of about 8 or 9 pulling two large sacks - almost the size of himself - of empty cans he had collected to his school as part of his "summer vacation homework".
The Dongfeng Primary School of Yuyao city, Zhejiang Province, had asked the students to collect empty pop-top cans and plastic bottles during their vacation. They would be sold to raise money to help students from impoverished families continue their education.
The school's move is commendable. It was obviously designed to help the kids develop a compassion for the poor and a love for manual labor. More significantly, I think, the "homework" will teach them how hard it is to earn money.
Nowadays, children in urban areas are mostly pampered and spoiled. Their parents will satisfy whatever wish they have. They never worry about food and clothing and are never short of pocket money.
A survey of school children in China, Japan, South Korea and Vietnam conducted in 2004 indicated that Chinese children of urban families had the largest pocket money allowance, about twice or three times that of their Japanese and Korean counterparts. During Chinese lunar New Year holidays, a child can receive thousands of yuan from grandparents, uncles and aunties in addition to their parents' gifts. But they never bother to think how the money has been earned.
When the children in Dongfeng Primary School counted the money they got from selling the empty cans and bottles, they must have realized how valuable each jiao (1.4 cents) was. A pop-top can is priced at two jiao at salvage stations. Supposing a large sack can contain 150 cans, then the boy could have earned 60 yuan. That is about - to say the least - the weekly allowance he may get from his parents.
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