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the pole in the time it takes to play their national anthem, but with our extra-tall flagpole and our lofty national stature, our national anthem will need to be played twice before our flag reaches the top.
    Of course, I hope the day will never come when we need to lower the flag to half-mast in mourning for ordinary citizens, for that would mean a terrible disaster had happened—at the very least, the collision of two jumbo jets.

Let’s do away with student essays

    June 15, 2007
    As a reasonably competent writer in school, I participated in quite a few essay competitions. Before each event I had first to brainwash myself and check to see what slogans were in fashion at the time. In the days when there was great concern about the “Seven Improper Behaviors,” for instance, you would need to cook up a story related to this theme. If I told how somebody was about to spit and how I dashed over, stretched out a hand, and caught the gob of phlegm just before it hit the ground, and threw in some praise of our great country for good measure, I’d be sure of getting a high mark. Unfortunately, I only ever won second prize, because there was always somebody who succeeded in singing China’s praises even more effusively than I did. Even today I still feel like saying to those first-prize winners, “I really scraped the bottom of the barrel with my essays—how did you manage to be even more shameless?”
    In recent years a number of no-hopers in the university entrance examination have submitted essays that were awarded zero points. I’ve had a look at these essays, and what they all have incommon is this—they truthfully express the author’s opinion. But our educational system does not permit the truthful expression of opinion—what it tries to do is discourage you from having your own views, and then, using teaching materials that are decades old, tell you that this is right and that is wrong. If you don’t agree, it’s not as though you’re taking your life in your hands—all that will happen is that you will be expelled or will get no points. Or maybe you will pick up a few—as long as you make an attempt to answer, the grader is not supposed to give you a zero. But the only real difference between the successful essay and the failed one is that you think this way and I think that: What’s the logic in you getting full points and my getting none? Even if I haven’t bought into the master narrative, I should at least qualify for a consolation prize, no? And for an essay—something that lacks an objective grading criterion—to be evaluated on the basis of the appraiser’s personal tastes and incorporated into a university entrance exam that professes to be fair: This in itself is unfair.
    Fortunately, though students care about the marks they get for their essays, they have little interest in the essay assignments. It’s things written off as junk culture that enable them to salvage a few shreds of imagination and creativity.
    It’s fair to say that many people’s experience of telling lies starts with writing essays, just as their limited experience of telling the truth starts with writing love letters. From an early age, model essays and essay-writing textbooks convey to students that the function of an essay is to eulogize and extol—to expose and censure, on the other hand, is considered negative and downbeat, dark and bleak. Some people may like to use Lu Xun as an example of how to get a point across, 5 but the role he plays in the school textbooks is eulogy and extolment too, with him as the lead vocalist. Praise and appreciation are good things, of course—who doesn’t like praiseand appreciation? The problem is that the subjects we can praise and appreciate are dictated to us. You’re not allowed to eulogize a girl’s butt, for instance, or extol a hooker’s technique. All kinds of restrictions