Audrey's teacher at her school here in Beijing has apparently told all the kids they need to take their backpacks off the rollers and carry them on their backs.
"You're kidding me!" I said to my husband. Her backpack weighs a ton. "You've got to call her teacher and protest," I told him.
"The teacher has been saying this for weeks," my husband replied.
With this classic example of indirect communication, what he means is that we should quietly resist and see if we can get away with it.
I think many Chinese have this sense for which rules must be followed (only one kid) and which ones can be ignored (stop signs). We'll see which category the Backpack Mandate falls under....
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On backpacks - I found that the weight of my backpack grew progressively smaller as I went from one standard to next - until they vanished in middle school. School then became a place to go and hang around with friends rather than go study. Study was for home and school was for fun :) Though I did carry around some heavy backpacks when I was a kid - we didn't have strollers.
My gym recently got all serious about the harm heavy backpacks can do to children's spines and they have been trying to get the word around in the local community
Posted by Shubho on October 06, 2007 at 08:32 AM CST #