On October 3, 2026, viewers and friends, welcome to “Great Vision of America and China.”
On September 1st, it was the first day of school for elementary and middle school students in China. In the Jinghai District of Tianjin, a third-grade boy suddenly burst into tears while doing his homework, saying, “What’s the point of this? When I grow up, I’ll just be a rich person’s horse or cow.” His mother tried to comfort him, saying, “If you study more now, you’ll become a wealthy person when you grow up.” Unexpectedly, the child cried out, “Is this the reality, tell me? Even if you do well in exams, can’t find a job when you return, and end up hauling bricks or being treated like a beast? This world is originally a big pit.”
Now, hearing such despairing words from a ten-year-old child in China is shocking. Many adults hear their own sighs in the child’s cry.
This video has received over 145,000 likes, and some comments in the comment section say, “This child understands life clearly.”
In fact, back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, a saying was popular in Chinese society: “It’s better to sell tea eggs than to make missiles, it’s better to hold a shaving knife than a surgical knife.” By the late 1990s, with the expansion of university admissions and rising education costs, the question of “Is studying really worth it” once again caught people’s attention.
However, at that time, the Chinese Communist Party was eager to set the tone by shouting the slogan “Knowledge Changes Destiny” everywhere in China.
But today, the discourse of “studying is useless” has re-emerged, and it is being spoken from the mouths of primary school students. This change may not only reflect the current situation of young people in China but also people’s confidence in the value of education and the future.
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