Tsinghua University senior Han Yanjun, a worshipped “Study God.”

Yesterday, tweets and pictures of a cute American teenager scanning items for customers in Target went viral and #AlexFromTarget became a trending hashtag on Twitter as well as other social media in the U.S. Meanwhile, on the other side of the globe, a Chinese young man became as famous as, if not more so than, Alex from Target, on social media, although for very difference reasons. On Sina Weibo, the hashtag #WorshippingTsinghuaStudyGod (in ZH) occupied the top of the trending topics yesterday, and a page hosted by People’s Daily, the official mouthpiece of the CPC, is dedicated to it, attracting tens of millions of viewers. The young man in the center of this public attention, Tsinghua University senior Han Yanjun, may not be as cute as Alex (or is he?), but he is sure smarter than most of his peers. One of the most viral weibos on the topic, posted by the People’s Daily, reads:

[Stop claiming you have a solid math and sciences foundation. . .] Yesterday at the defense of Tsinghua 2014 Special Award, the transcript of Han Yanjun, a senior in the Department of Electronic Engineering, was shown, and some students said, “The result of the defense is really not important anymore. Look at the photo below, and I think it says a lot.”

A photo is attached to the weibo, which shows a powerpoint slide projected on a screen that lists the student’s perfect grades for the core courses required in his major.

The “Study God” weibo from the People’s Daily

To those who haven’t experienced the brutal competition that Chinese youth are faced with in their education, it seems absurd that a college student should make national news solely because of his perfect grades, let alone be crown as a “Study God.” However, anyone who has experienced or witnessed such pressure will know exactly why such a academically successful student is set up publicly as a sort of demigod for students and parents to worship. As academic performance is an overwhelmingly dominant criterion in students’ evaluation that determines the quality of college education they receive and their future career opportunities, Chinese students, their parents, and their teachers put enormous emphasis on exams and grades.

The most notorious hoop that most high school graduates have to jump through is the college entrance exam. For many students, from elementary school through high school, all those years of hard studying all comes down to this one exam. Although college admissions have been growing exponentially since 1999, and since 2008, the number (in ZH) of high school graduates who participated in the college entrance exam has declined (due to, among other factors, an increasing number of students seeking college education overseas), the exam remains extremely competitive. According to the latest available records (in ZH), in 2012, 9.15 million high school graduates took the college entrance exam, and 6.85 million, or 75 percent, were admitted. The admission rate does not seem low, but, due to the vastly varied quality of education across colleges and universities, high school students are competing with each other for the few spots in better universities that will give them an edge when they go on to the increasingly competitive job market after graduation. For rural students, especially, getting a college education and landing a job in the city is not only a way to escape the fate of low wage jobs as those that tens of millions of migrant workers have, but an opportunity to change their resident status from rural to urban and have access to many resources and services that are unavailable to the rural population.

In any case, you get the picture. Academic competition is fierce in Chinese schools and universities. In addition, unlike in the U.S., for instance, where students’ grades are considered privacy and not for disclosure without students’ consent, in China, the competition is done publicly, where students’ grades are published in school and students are often ranked according to their grades. Top-ranked students are praised by teachers and revered by students and their parents, and those on the bottom and their parents are often shamed. Such public ranking of students according to their grades puts even more pressure on not only students, but their parents as well. In fact, academic pressure is a leading cause of suicides among youth in China, where youth suicide rate is higher than any other country in the world (see some of the reports here, here, and here, in ZH).

In this context, the state sanctioned celebration of a “Study God” no longer seems that strange. However, the term “Study God” itself is no ingenious invention of the People’s Daily. Rather, it is a term coined by the tormented and self-mocking Chinese students. Besides, the term is not one of a kind, either, but one of an array of terms that characterize different types of students based mainly on their academic performances, while addressing, at times, some nuanced characteristic demeanors of the students in each category. The Beijing Youth Daily summarized some of these terms:

• Study maniac (学魔, xuémó): They are obsessed with studying, unable to live without doing exercises in their workbooks.
• Study Master (学霸, xuébà): They’re highly intelligent, social, and well adjusted. Good at everything, they’re born with charisma and class.
• Study God (学神, xuéshén): They’re tall and handsome/beautiful, spirited, and aloof. They’ve gone through countless advanced workbooks yet still are able to keep the cool with little effort.
• Study Punk (学痞, xuépî): They sleep in class, and fucking around outside class, yet they always get high grades.
• Study Plebeian (学民, xuémín): With average intelligence, they worship Study Masters but despise Study Scums (see below) and the ranks below them. They only have one belief, that one day, they’ll surpass Study Masters, for which they work extra hard.
• Study Imbecile (学弱, xuéruò): They burn the late night oil all the time, frail, unable to bear the pressure for long.
• Study Ash (学渣, xuézhā): Half of their intelligence has been burned in studying. They work hard, but never succeed.
• Study Disabled (学残, xuécán): They’re completely burned by studying. They’re in much pain and unrecognizable from the torment of studying.
• Study Scum (学沫, xuémò): They always feel lacking in intelligence, but they’re not hard working either, getting by each day, hoping to get something for nothing.
• Study Water (学水, xuéshuî): Regarding them, intelligence is no longer relevant. They’ve given up long ago.

Certainly, a hierarchy is assumed in such a lexical invention. Indeed, some of the terms are quite humiliating and it is not hard to imagine the damages they can do to kids who are labeled with them. On the other hand, one cannot help being amazed by the kids’ sense of humor under such pressure to perform. Even the most derogatory terms among them have been used by kids in such self-mocking ways that express no other than their resistance and rejection to an educational system they resent, for good reasons perhaps.

On a final note, one may not see many high school students working in retail stores in China, saving money for his first car or the next iPhone, like Alex, since most of the Chinese kids are hard at study, stuck between the pages of their textbooks, notebooks, and workbooks. However, Americans may see more and more Han Yanjuns landing in graduate schools in American universities after they graduate from Tsinghua University, Peking University, or other top Chinese universities. After all, more than a quarter (in ZH) of undergraduates from Tsinghua and Peking University went on to attend graduate schools overseas after they graduated in 2013. As to Han Yanjun, word on the street (actually, according to the People’s Daily, in ZH) says that a professor in Stanford has remarked that he “has exceeded the requirements for a Ph.D. student.” I guess one would hardly expect anything less than that from a “Study God.”

Yes, we Chinese love our “face.”

In the past, this love for “face” was largely metaphorical. In recent years, however, to Chinese, especially young Chinese, the importance of “face” is becoming more literal than ever. With the growing appeal of entertainment and celebrity culture, Chinese youth seem to be increasingly obsessed with good looks. The employment and gender inequality has given rise to a culture that disproportionately values outer beauty, especially in young women.

A reality show featuring "artificial beauties" was canceled by media authorities in 2007.

The lure–and pressure–of having a beautiful face and an attractive figure has motivated tens of thousands of young Chinese to go under the knife each year, spending millions of dollars of cool cash for a hot look that they hope will bring them, if not fortune and fame, at least job opportunities and love. According to Phoenix TV (ZH), China has become the third biggest market of plastic surgery in the world after the U.S. and Brazil. From 2009 to 2010, 3.4 millions of plastic surgery procedures were conducted in China. In 2010, the plastic surgery in China was already a 300 billion yuan ($47.7 billion) industry that employed more than 20 million people. The industry has a 40% annual growth and its suppliers boast a staggering 60% annual growth in sales.

Besides those who undergo plastic surgery in China, other Chinese chose to do it in South Korea, a country with the world’s highest per capital rate of cosmetic plastic surgery. According to the statistics from the Korean Embassy in China, in 2011, Korea issued 1,073 visas (ZH) to Chinese citizens who would travel to Korea in order to undergo plastic surgery.

The burgeoning celebrity culture in China feeds young Chinese’s curiosity and interest in plastic surgery. News, gossips and speculations about celebrities’ faces have become popular topics online, often accompanied with before-and-after photos for comparison.

Recently, Faye Wong, the legendary pop icon who is known for her unique style and uncompromising attitude towards media, is at the center of speculations. Gossips about whether Wong has gone under the knife to fix her nose and chin are circulating wildly online and getting mixed reactions from fans. Some are surprised that even the unearthly “goddess” of pop has resorted to plastic surgery, something that only lowbrow (su, 俗) celebrities seek. Other fans, however, respond with understanding and respect. “Online on-lookers love meaningless gossips. Whether or not the icon Faye Wong has undergone plastic surgery is none of anybody else’s business,” a fan wrote on Weibo.

Nevertheless, plastic surgery is almost an open secret in the entertainment circle. Many aspiring young men and women won’t hesitate to spend money and go through painful procedures to change their looks so that they have better chance in their career. This trend compelled Beijing Film Academy, the number one film school in China, to announce before its entrance examinations this year that students who had tattoos or had undergone plastic surgery would be disqualified for admission. “The changes in their faces or other parts of the body, and the tattoos too, might affect their performance when they are trying to depict a figure in a play,” Wang Jinsong, deputy director of the Performance Institute of the academy, told China Daily.

The popularity of plastic surgery, however, isn’t just among those who work in entertainment. Gender inequality and employment pressure for young women have forced some of them to consider plastic surgery seriously. It is almost an unspoken rule that some employers tend to hire female employees based on their looks more than their educational and professional merits. “They may not say it openly, but during the process they will pick the prettier one,” a college graduate, who had her eye lids worked on told Los Angeles Times.

Sadly, the great value society puts in women’s looks has created image issues for many young women in China. Although society respect strong, intelligent and capable women, many Chinese men still consider physically attractive women who are less capable than they are more desirable than otherwise as their partners. In the first-tier cities where single women outnumber single men (7:1) and where young people have more disposable income, as many young women feel great pressure to have good looks and a slim body more than anything else, plastic surgery looks more and more like a viable option to happiness and security to young women. In a recent post on zhuansoo.com, an online community for Chinese students who are interested in studying overseas, the author asks, “Should female students go and study abroad or save the money to get plastic surgery?” According to her, almost all male students who responded to a post she came across had said that they would choose a pretty girl who was only interested in beauty, shopping and fashion as their girlfriend over a plain-looking but academically successful girl. “Is face really that important?” the author is confused.

However, image is not only an issue for young women. More and more Chinese government officials, both men and women, are also rushing to go under the knife so that they will look younger, thinner, and more attractive. Caring more and more about their image, these official hope that plastic surgery will improve their popularity among the public and hide the signs of aging.

As more Chinese are willing to invest in their looks each year, health experts have warned the public of the risks related to plastic surgery, especially in a country where poisonous milk power and fake cooking oil are not rare cases that scare the public on a daily basis. In fact, in the past ten years, on average, 20 thousand cases of medical malpractice claims were filed each year, which amounted to a total of 200 thousand faces destroyed in China. In 2010, a reality show starlet died from a medical accident during a plastic surgery procedure, which raised the awareness of the negative impact of the craze for artificial beauty on Chinese youth’s mental and physical health.

Recently, on a special topic page on Weibo, netizens are asked whether they will choose to undergo plastic surgery considering its benefits and risks. The topic became one the most popular on the website, which has received 3,419,100 responses.

Although most of those who responded still prefer “natural beauty,” they are also open to surgery, being aware of the risks. However, now, one may take more caution and think twice before she/he lets anybody cut open her/his face or body: “if you’re to undergo these procedures, you must first verify the source of the products and whether the service provider is a professional institution so as to reduce the risks,” as a netizen warns.

But if you think that travel is the only challenge of the New Year, you’re too naive. How can you forget the relatives? Yes, relatives, families, those people whom you haven’t talked to for a whole year but sadly share some genes with, or those who are connected to you solely with some kind of arbitrary marital ties. Sure, we Chinese value our families, but time has changed. The week-long celebration of the Chinese New Year with extended families can be overwhelming to younger generations. Emerging from the New Year celebration, many young Chinese are now sharing their love and loathing of these holiday family reunions on social media.

One of the things that annoys and in many cases “scares” young (or young-ish) Chinese during those family reunions is their parents’ and inquisitive relatives’ persistent interest in their personal lives, especially the part about marriage and money. On weibo.com, one of the most popular microblogging websites in China, a poll, which asks”When you’re back (to your parents’) home for the New Year, what are the most annoying questions you get?,” shows that 65 percent of respondents chose “Do you have a boy/girlfriend this year?” and 63 percent chose “Where do you work? How much do you make a month?” The poll allows each respondent to choose up to two answers, and these are the two most popular answers, with percentages significantly higher than the third ranking answer “How was the year? Much much money did you make?” with a 13-percent popularity.

Traditionally, it is not only acceptable but also expected from senior relatives to ask younger people about their love life, marriage or kids. Same is true with questions about their income. To the older generations, this is a gesture of love and caring, but to most Chinese who are in their 20s and 30s, it is nothing but intrusive. Also, as young Chinese are increasingly faced with employment and economic pressure, more and more of them choose to give up dating and delay to have a family so they can focus on their career. Questions about love life and money can only remind them of the pressure and anxiety that they try to escape especially at a time of holiday celebration. No wonder on weibo.com, netizens gave these questions a name: the questions of “poisonous tongue” (dushe wenti or 毒舌问题).

For many young women, the expectations of marriage from their family and those of career success from society can be overwhelming. “Every New Year the pressure is on,” writes a young woman, “with so many relatives, the older ones and the younger ones, as a single young woman in between, my wallet is pretty tight! Plus (I’m) asked repeatedly when to get married, or whether I have a boyfriend! Before I have a successful career, I won’t consider getting married! Why does happiness have to involve a family and children?” While choices like this are quite common among young women in China nowadays, they’re still hard for older generations to digest.

Similar pressure is shared by young men, who are supposed to make money and provide for a family so that the family name will continue. These expectations can make some young men quite bitter. “During the New Year at home, some people asked you how much money you made each month, some asked you when you would get married, some asked you about your plans after the holidays,” a man writes, “but they seldom asked you: Are you happy and content? (an emoticon of a sad face).” Another man writes, “You know what is more annoying than being asked by your relatives about your girlfriend when you don’t have one? That’s when your relatives ask you, not knowing that you and your girlfriend broke up a year ago, ‘Why don’t you bring your girl?’ ‘How’s your girl?’ etc.”

What’s more frustrating to young people is that, despite their aversion to these questions, they are supposed to show respect to their senior relatives and answer their questions politely. To shut up her parents’ endless inquiry about her love life, a young woman lied that she was into girls. “After a week of silence,” she writes, “they said, ‘Next time bring your girlfriend back and let us have a look at her!'” Yes, Chinese parents are persistent.

From the New Year experience shared online, one can see a generational cultural change. Compared to their parents’ generation, Chinese youth expect more personal space and more respect given to younger people, including children. Based on people’s comments on the topic, weibo.com summarized ten New Year’s taboo questions:

1. Are you seeing someone? When are you getting married?

2. Son, where are you ranked in your class?

3. How much money did you make last year?

4. What did you eat to get so fat?

5. How’s your job?

6. (To kids) Why can’t you greet people properly? You’re a big boy/girl!

7. How old are you? (Implying the kid is too old to receive the lucky money.)

8. You’re not planning on going to grad school?

9. You can’t recognize me now? I carried you when you where a kid!

10. When are you going to buy a house?

These questions used to be acceptable in China, but nowadays, they are considered offensive, intrusive or simply embarrassing.

Chinese New Year is a time of giving. Families exchange gifts and the older relatives give younger ones lucky money wrapped in red envelopes. But some people complain that materialism these days has turned the New Year into a time when relatives show off their wealth at family gatherings. Even those who do not have much are pressured to match their wealthier relatives’ giving so as not to “lose face.” A netizen summarizes this materialist trend of the New Year with some fun word play:

Spending the New Year with less than 10,000 yuan ($1,585) is hard… The “Spring Festival” (chunjie or 春节) has turned into the “Spring Robbery” (chunjie or 春劫)… New Year greetings (bainian or 拜年) have turned into “money worshiping” (baiqian or 败钱)… The lucky money has turned into a “face-saving project” (mianzi gongcheng or 面子工程)… “Looking forward to the New Year” (pan guonian or 盼过年) has turned into “being scared of the New Year” (pa guonian or 怕过年) — (This is) the New Year, with less and less a festive flavor but more and more the smell of money.

The lesson learned? If you’re young, single or poor in China, be thankful that the awkward and stressful time of the New Year is finally over.