This week in Shanghaiist
The Beijing Haidian District Art Vocational School (北京市海淀区艺术职业学校) has found itself in the centre of a controversy when a video clip of several students abusing a 70-year teacher was circulated online on video sharing sites and enraged netizens across China, sparking a debate over the state of the morals of Chinese youths today. Angry netizens have overwhelmed the school's website (now inaccessible) with comments, and hackers have blacked out the website.
The 5-minute video shot a week ago shows a boy with an earring approach his teacher to pull his cap off, and another student throwing a bottle at the teacher (which missed), while the rest of the students were laughing away or sleeping. The clip also included very colourful language from the students, eg., "That is a stupid c*nt. Kill him!" [那是一傻比，弄死他！]
EastSouthWestNorth tells us of the ensuing manhunt, started by netizens on the Tianya and MOP forums:
On the afternoon of May 26, a campaign began to identify these students. Both the Tianya and MOP forums started their human flesh search engines (人肉搜索引擎). At 6pm, a Tianya netizen noted that the blackhoard had the national flag of Uzbekistan with words of welcome for the friends from there. This netizen searched for visits by Uzbekistan groups and found about the staff of the Ubzekistan embassy being invited to visit the Art School in Haidian district, Beijing. Meanwhile another netizen had broken the passwode of the female student who posted the video and found many photographs and related information. The netizens were able to pinpoint a particular class in the Haidian Art School. In the evening of May 26, the names and telephone numbers of several students in the video were published.
This online rage soon spilled over to the real world when a group of netizens took it upon themselves to hunt down the students. They went down to the school and stopped a school bus that was taking some of the above-mentioned students home, demanding that they step out of the bus. The confrontation only ended when the school security guards came over and enabled the bus to leave.
In the meanwhile, Jiefang Daily reports that the 70-year old teacher Sun Xinmao (孙辛卯), who was hired in 2003 and is paid RMB40 per lesson, said the students have already apologised, and there was no need to pursue the matter. He says that he was only verbally abused by the students and remained physically unharmed, and added, "The education of students takes place over a process. Teachers should bear some responsibility if the students remains uneducated." [学生的教育有一个过程。老师没有把学生教好，也是有责任的。]
*Image from EastSouthWestNorth.
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Gross, gross, gross - spoilt little s**ts. I never had students like that - what is with those kids and what disciplinary action is being taken?
yeah what is wrong with our society and those darn kids!! pussy.
The BRILLIANT thing, xoxo, is that there was such disgust that people searched for and found the offenders. That wouldn't happen in many other countries.
Trev: Interesting observation, but are you sure it doesn't happen elsewhere?
If I think about any country showing kids acting like that, then I just don't think anyone would bother in this way.
If in the US, UK, Europe, then kids acting this way is not even particularly rare! People would be p*ssed off with it, and feel that the kids are sh*ts - but you hear about gangs of kids shooting each other in the west, so behaving like this would not prompt a search.
In Asian countries, e.g. Korea, Japan, Thailand, Vietnam etc., I don't think that people would act as they have done here.
Mona, you have to understand that Trev is totally arrogant and believes that he can somehow extrapolate all knowledge from his obviously limited experience (and years, apparently). So please don't be so silly as to ask him is he is "sure."
Of course, this happens elsewhere. However, different countries, regions, cities, boroughs, etc. have different mechanisms for dealing with bad behavior, and obviously, this teacher did not feel that he had much recourse or ability to control these kids within the school system. That is, the school's disciplinary apparatus is obviously not working or the teacher doesn't know how to apply it. Thus, netizens are forced to resort to vigilante enforcement via the internet.
There is in fact a great deal of such injustice in China (e.g. farmers losing their land to corrupt officials, which has happened many times; theft of IP is another huge example), but there is simply no systemic or meaningful recourse for many individuals -- particularly if your poor, migrant, minority, or lack guangxi -- who are wronged under China's ham-handed system.
I extrapolate all my knowledge from my experiences.
It's funny to see that my opiniosn cause you such grief.
And "of course, this happens everywhere", coming from a presumably young (not that that matters) an inexperience person is just hypocrisy.
But I won't get into it. You do display your insecurity and childish competetiveness. You won, you're cool, you're great.
On another note, has anyone watched Lauren the rebellious schoolgirl played by Catherine Tate? She's a rrriot! And I love her! Hahah!
You're not trying to stifle unintelligent debate with your Catherine Tate canard, are you Kenneth? But I do say, she is such a card, that delightful little she-devil!
That's why those little shits have been sent to the "Vocatioanl School", what's more, the art vocational schools are the worst in Chinese education. They could not qualify to high education colleges, they could not do anything. Shame!