Weighed Down by Schoolbags(4)

Before schoolchildren play ball-games at recess, they know that they are in elementary school to prepare for middle school; they will go to middle school to get into a good high school; they will go to a good high school to prepare for college; and they will go to a good college to find a good job.

As for Xiao Chen, the pressure of examinations affects her extracurricular activity. Many times, her backpack is loaded with paintbrushes, a paint palette, and a recorder. Adults have turned children's fun pastimes into fodder for aptitude tests. Ensuring their children's future careers, they have taken all the fun out of their favorite activities.

Even the backpack factories understand that children cannot cope with the weight on their shoulders. They now produce specialty backpacks with buckling belts and wheeled carting features, popular sellers. Sales promoters at Xidan Shangchang Bazaar advertise the new bags: "Go ahead and add more weight on, there's no way the straps on this backpack will snap."

Indeed, the army satchel book-bags of old, with five-point stars and Chairman Mao faces printed on the front, have become antiques now sold to tourists as souvenirs. Xiao Chen's father is often bewildered when he sees these articles commonly sold in Beijing on Yindaixie Street and South Luogu Alley. He doesn't understand where today's students, carrying various subjects, foreign languages, dictionaries, and writing utensils in their backpacks, are going.