Chinese School

DOCUMENTARY: Chinese School
On: BBC 4
Date: 2008

There are 350 million children enrolled in education across China, and, in this series, we focus on just a few of them.

Chinese School takes as its subject one small town in rural Anhui, and focuses on the lives of a group of families, teachers and children during the course of a single academic year. The schools are schools like many thousands of others across this vast nation, but through the individual stories of hardship, joy and success, an extraordinary portrait emerges, not just of a group of children and a town, but of a side of the Chinese nation seldom seen.

*Episode 1/5: The Year of Golden Pig* starts as mocks begin for the world's most dreaded exam; the Gao Kao. Pass with flying colours and your future's bright; fail and you're a peasant for life.