Ancillary 9
The issue I want to focus on is the “Haidian Chicken Kid”（海淀鸡娃）phenomenon in Beijing, China. This phenomenon is about a group of parents in the district in Beijing called Haidian, in order to get their kids into a good university in China or in other countries, they made a detailed plan for their kids from kindergarten to high school. At the time when other parents randomly choose a kindergarten near their home and let their kids play happily, the chicken kid parents already take their kids to all public English courses and English interview practice centers to get the kids into top international kindergartens. Ever since elementary school(usually famous schools located in Haidian), other than the normal study kids take in school, chicken kids’ parents will take their kids to study Mathematical Olympiad or higher level English during the weekend to prepare their kids for Chinese Gaokao. Some parents even look beyond Gaokao to let their kids instead apply for international universities like ivy league or Cambridge and Oxford. In this way, besides academics, those chicken kid parents didn’t fall back on children’s interests development. Piano, tennis, equestrian, all chicken kids master at least one kind of musical instrument and one sport……. The elite kids who are developed into a Chinses perception of “morally”(德), “intellectually”(智）, and “physically”（体） comprehensive development（全面发展）under the “chicken”(鸡, which actually can be used as a professional jargon in China）of Haidian parents are called “Haidian Chicken Kid”.
The happening of this phenomenon is attributed to multiple reasons. First, from the parents’ aspect. Most Haidian parents are graduated from local or international infamous universities (local especially those located in Haidian like Peking University or Tsinghua University, international include top 30 universities like USC and ivy league in America). They usually work at the company's management level and earn more than a million RMB a year. It can be said that the parents themselves already went through a “chicken” process in their childhood. They know clearly about the importance of long-term planning and the process of admission to the infamous universities, and they now have enough money and resources, especially in cities like Beijing, so they try their best to give the best resources to their kid. Then, at the social aspect. Beijing is the capital of China and is the dream city that most Chinese people want to work and live in, while Haidian is the district that contains the most educational resource in Beijing and almost the whole country. Several best universities in China (Peking Universities, Tsinghua Universities, Renmin University of China) locate in Haidian, not to mention plenty of Beijing’s top elementary and high schools. Therefore parents who live and work here have both awareness and resources to get the best educational supporters for their kids and also maintain high expectations for their kids that finally made their kid “perfect” and get into top universities to repeat the successful life of themselves.
On the other hand, the crazy example of “Haidian Chicken Kids” in fact reflects a social issue in China, which is the Chinese education inequalities. The inequality is mainly embodied in that most of the top educational resources are highly gathered in the “big cities” like Beijing or Shanghai: they have the top universities, top high schools, top companies, most extracurricular agencies, and lower admission quotas for local universities. Naturally, metropolises like Beijing and Shanghai have a better chance for students to obtain the best education. The strong economic resources will further attract people with a good educational background to work and live there(just like the “chicken kid” parents) which enlarges the competition for getting into top high schools, so parents need to make more effort on developing their kids to get them into a good school, and the school also need to hire more teachers to deal with expanding student body. Therefore, the education model of the “Haidian Chicken kid” is given birth, and the market demands more extra-curriculum agencies and teachers, which collects even more educational resources into the metropolis and forms a vicious cycle. Compare to big cities, small and medium cities in China don’t have as many top universities as Beijing and Shanghai, in the whole province of Jiangsu(one of the big provinces in Southeastern China)for example, there’s only one university is among the same level with Peking Universities. The extracurricular agencies are also at the minimum amount in small and medium cities, not to mention a comprehensive development for a kid to enter the international universities. Due to the vicious cycle mentioned above, educational inequality will only get worse. The Chinese government seems to try to solve this inequality by giving Gaokao bonuses to minorities or people living in country areas who have hardiness access to education, China also tries to stop extracurricular activities throughout the country. But due to the high demand, people are thinking of multiple ways to facilitate their kids’ studies like changing to online extracurriculars or having one on one in one’s home or coffee shop. So the effectiveness of the Chinese government policies is still needed further research.
Why I think this is an important issue that I would like to study and is important for me is that I myself have partially gone through this process and can be called “Chicken Kid”. It’s a great part of the reason that my parents’ “chicken” practice like taking me to study for the English and Mathematical Olympiad ever since elementary school and going to a two-hour tennis class every weekend and practicing table tennis an hour a day during the school day when I was in elementary school that I can finally enter USC. And coincidentally, almost all of my academic extracurriculars are taken in Haidian. So as I saw the current Haidian parents are making more effort to “chickening” their kids and found that friends from other cities may have a totally different life experience from me, I start to think of the deep social reason that causes this phenomenon in China, and what the government does to solve this problem and how effective those policies are. What is more, I also found that this “Haidian Chicken Kid” and educational inequality seems not just to happen in China, but also in Asian countries like Korea, and even America, which can be a global issue that needed to be discussed and solved.
