Boot camp doesn't spare the rod for China's spoiled boys

HANGZHOU, China -- Asked whether anyone has ever been beaten by his teacher, all the boys point to Chen Chen. The 12-year-old lifts up his shirt. Sure enough, there are four faint scars on his back from the feared whip.

``Of course it hurt," Chen acknowledged. ``But it was because I misbehaved."

``We were all scared to death," classmate Xia Jingying chimed in.

These children aren't victims of substandard public schooling. Rather, their parents paid good money to send them here to West Point, a popular boot camp named after the US military academy but designed to straighten out the ``little emperors" of China's one-child generation.

For more than two decades, China's strict family-planning policy has created a culture in which the coveted lone male heirs tend to run amok at home and in school as besotted parents forget to teach them the meaning of discipline.

One woman believes the only way to rein in all these spoiled boys is to stop sparing the rod. At Wan Guoyin's West Point, every child knows the consequences of bad behavior.

The worst offenders get a whipping, minus their shirts, even in the dead of winter, and in front of the entire school. Minor offenses such as cursing can result in being forced to swallow a spoonful of hot chili sauce or chew on a bitter Chinese herb that turns the tongue yellow for hours.

``I saw a kid spit it out and throw up," said Zheng Dongxin, 12. ``The teacher made him eat twice as much!"

``We do it more for the humiliation than the pain," said Wan, 47, in a simple black cotton dress, and braided hair reaching to her waist. ``The goal is to give them a memorable lesson."

Wan got the idea for the school a few years ago when she was a guest on a radio program about problem children. The former kindergarten teacher and mother of a 22-year-old daughter remembered that nearly 90 percent of the callers complained about disciplinary problems with their sons.

A couple of years ago, she started a small after-school program to see whether she could help. Parents liked it so much that the program grew from a dozen or so children to the current 100 full-time summer camp students, with more than 100 on the waiting list.

In the summer, the boys live full time at a rundown campus rented out by a foreign language institute on the outskirts of town. They remain here for the two-month program, living in dorms where everyone gets up at 6 a.m. and spends the day either studying in stifling classrooms or training outside in the heat. There is free time to play, but no TV. (The older children are permitted to watch half an hour of the stodgy official CCTV newscast at 7 p.m.)

``My son has improved so much his teacher says he is a changed boy," said Yang Yang, the mother of 12-year-old Ling Ling, who had behavior problems since his first day of school.

The majority of Chinese children still live in the countryside, and many suffer from poverty so dire that they can't afford a basic education, much less expensive extracurricular activities. But in another sign of China's growing wealth gap, alternative schools of hard knocks have sprung up across the country to meet the rising demand of mostly urban parents frustrated with the wayward ways of their overindulged sons.

``As only children, their parents give them everything they want and they don't have to do anything for themselves," said Wan, who charges about $300 a month for her program. ``The kids still say they are unhappy and misbehave. That's because they don't know what happiness is. Here we provide bitterness, so they have a point of reference."

At first, whippings were not part of the daily routine.

Then a student spilled a drop of soup on another. The student with the stained shirt reacted by pouring a bowl of hot liquid on the offender's lap. Wan happened to be standing nearby and without thinking whipped the boy with the plastic jump-rope in her hand.

``Even I was shocked at what I did," Wan recalled. ``All the students froze." Stricken with remorse, Wan immediately contacted the student's parents and apologized. To her surprise, the mother told her, ``You should have done that long ago!"

Gradually, Wan began to work the whipping into her repertoire, and it became the hallmark of her academy.

``Some parents beat their children too, but it's often random and the children don't always understand cause and effect, so they get hurt for nothing," said Wan, who insists that she's careful in her canings. ``Here we would never make anyone bleed. I'd only strike on the back and only on the skin, not the bone. That way it looks bad but heals fast."

Each week, about a dozen boys are pulled out of their regular classrooms and singled out for special punishment and an obligatory public whipping.

They have to endure several hours more physical training in the summer heat and must pull weeds and clean the campus. And they are permitted to eat only plain rice for lunch .

``After three days of severe punishment like that, they all realize going back to the classroom to do homework is a much better option," Wan said.