In mainland China, bullying incidents on school campuses are rampant, with victims often being minors. During the process of seeking justice, they are subjected to secondary harm. “Reporting to authorities is a trap, and for students who have not yet entered society, it is a tragedy,” a victim told a reporter from Dajiyuan.
Pei Shixuan, hailing from Rizhao, Shandong Province, was originally a high school student in the “elite class” at Rizhao No.1 Middle School. However, due to not having the money to participate in school winter and summer tutoring classes, he was targeted and insulted by teachers for a long time, leading to bigger conflicts.
“Voluntary tutoring during winter and summer vacation was actually not voluntary at all,” Pei Shixuan recalled. During his first year of high school, the school required cultural courses and Olympiad math tutoring, costing three to four thousand yuan. His parents’ monthly income was only about three to four thousand yuan, which they couldn’t afford.
Unexpectedly, in his second year of high school, the math teacher began mocking him. For instance, during a math class exercise, the teacher asked: “Who solved this problem?”. Pei Shixuan raised his hand, thinking it was a good thing, only to be ignored by the teacher who later said: “Even this rural kid solved it, why haven’t others figured it out yet?”
“I didn’t know what I did wrong. I am indeed from a rural area. There were many other times when I felt belittled. Eventually, I stopped attending classes because I felt uncomfortable being ridiculed in such a manner,” Pei Shixuan said. However, they would still often meet in the same building, where Pei Shixuan saw her rolling her eyes at him and avoided contact with her.
In the second half of his third year in high school, in April 2020, Pei Shixuan encountered the math teacher and school guidance counselor on the stairs after school. An argument ensued, escalating into a physical altercation where Pei Shixuan accidentally fell backward, hitting his head on the steps.
Pei Shixuan got up, carried his school bag, and went home. After a few days, he started experiencing lack of focus, difficulty getting out of bed, feeling fatigued and drowsy, even struggling to speak for about half a month. He was later diagnosed with a motor aphasia and depression.
“At that time, my parents were very anxious and didn’t understand the situation, thinking it was a possession. Initially seeking treatment from a local traditional Chinese medicine practitioner, then to a hospital in Jinan, and finally being hospitalized at Beijing Anding Hospital,” Pei Shixuan explained. After over a month of treatment, he was discharged but missed the college entrance exam (due to being delayed until July that year because of the pandemic).
Upon discharge, Pei Shixuan immediately went to the police station to report the incident. However, the police refused to file a case citing lack of evidence and declined to access the school’s surveillance footage. Pei Shixuan’s parents called the school leadership, who reassured them he could return to school. Overly submissive, his parents eventually rented an apartment for him to prepare for retaking the exams starting in September, but the school leadership suggested he take a year off or transfer to another school.
In December 2020, Pei Shixuan began posting on a local forum, detailing how he was gradually pushed into depression by the teachers at Rizhao No.1 Middle School. One of his posts garnered over 65,000 views.
“Many people left comments supporting me, but that post was eventually deleted,” Pei Shixuan recounted. “When the post gained attention, that evening the school leaders and police came to our house, scaring us. They threatened me to delete the post, continue studying quietly, or else face accusations of provocation and disturbance and be sent to prison!”
Helpless, Pei Shixuan had no choice but to apply for the post to be deleted. However, the issue remained unresolved. Remembering a lesson in his political education textbook about “petitioning being a great innovation in China,” he decided to begin petitioning.
In January 2021, Pei Shixuan lodged a complaint on the National Petition Office website, stating that due to the exclusion and slander from teachers, he suffered depression, incurring over a hundred thousand yuan in medical expenses. The school authorities did not take his issues seriously but instead obstructed any publicity. He hoped for justice and the freedom to continue his education.
“I didn’t know that petitioning was a trap, China’s political textbooks are more like extreme propaganda material,” Pei Shixuan later realized that petitioning resulted in him being registered as a key controlled individual. “They never really investigated, claimed there was no bullying on campus, and quickly fabricated that kind of report. When I applied for a review, all my requests were rejected. I am completely helpless at this point.”
Meanwhile, the school leaders called his parents, using his family member’s job to threaten them. Later, the involved teacher apologized in person, and Pei Shixuan gave up seeking justice. “I did not receive any economic compensation, my right to education was taken away, all my social media accounts were banned, and my life had no hope left,” he said.
In 2022, Pei Shixuan started working. He did telephone customer service, restaurant service, and eventually worked the night shift in the guest rooms of an international hotel. “Local wages were only three thousand yuan per month. I spent over a thousand on meals, another thousand on medication, and could barely save any money.”
In April 2022, Pei Shixuan saw the math teacher’s name on the “excellent teaching staff list for teacher ethics assessment” on the school’s official website. This angered him, so he called the school leadership, leading to a back-and-forth between the school and the education bureau. The math teacher even sent him a blank email with the subject “Ha Ha.” This incident caused his illness to relapse, and he ended up being directly admitted to a local psychiatric hospital, soon realizing that the mental hospital was largely a tool for government stability maintenance.
During ward rounds, doctors got into a disagreement with him, physically assaulting him, and calling the head nurse to bring restraint straps to tie him up and take him to solitary confinement. His mother, the accompanying relative, quickly told the doctors: “We want to transfer him to another hospital; we don’t want him staying here!” It was during the quarantine period, having spent three days isolated in the ward for just a day; Pei Shixuan then noticed his health code suddenly turned red and restricted his movement, forcing him to return home.
In early 2023, once the quarantine was lifted, he and his parents went to Beijing for medical treatment. While swiping the turnstile at Rizhao West Station, they received an error message: “System error, please use the manual channel.” Railway staff questioned them extensively, only letting them through after providing reservation records and return train tickets.
Journalists reached out to the math teacher, inquiring about why they had sent a blank email with “Ha Ha” as the subject and requesting a response to the incident but received no reply by the deadline for publication.
In 2023, Pei Shixuan learned how to bypass internet censorship and considered seeking asylum in the US. He was fortunate to obtain a student visa for a university in the United States and entered the country in December of that year. However, his two months in the US turned into another nightmare.
He paid a $2,000 deposit to his lawyer to process his legal status. To cover the legal fees, he resorted to working under the table, laboring for 12 hours a day, with only two days off per month, earning $1600. He hesitated to visit a hospital for prescription medications due to not taking medication for an extended period, deteriorating his mental condition.
One morning, he received a call from Anhui province, questioning his whereabouts and current job. Feeling tracked, he quickly resigned and moved to Texas, ultimately ending up in a hospital in Chicago. Following discharge, he couldn’t afford the medical bills and fearing imprisonment, he had no choice but to return to China.
But Pei Shixuan did not give up on seeking asylum. To earn money, he went to work in Shenzhen. After just one or two weeks on the job, police called him to the station, interrogating him for two hours. This made him realize that wherever petitioners go, local authorities receive stability maintenance messages.
In August of this year, he encountered a parent of a student with a similar experience on Zhihu. They added each other as friends to chat, but then their WeChat accounts were suddenly banned. Later, they found out that local police had also contacted the other person. “I didn’t know WeChat was monitored. It seems both of us were designated as key monitored users.”
A research project conducted by the China Youth Research Center’s “Youth Legal Education Research” team from 2020 to 2022, involving 3108 underage students, showed that 53.5% of students experienced bullying on school campuses.
Pei Shixuan stated that there was no history of mental illness in his family. The harm he suffered was not just psychological but also had a significant impact on his brain’s physiology.
In September of this year, he bought a ticket to North Macedonia (with a visa waiver for US visa holders to stay for 15 days) and while transiting in Zurich, Switzerland, he once again applied for asylum. This time, he had a pro bono lawyer.
In August of this year, a bullying incident occurred in Jiangyou, Sichuan, triggering large-scale demonstrations by local residents. The police forcefully dispersed the crowds and made several arrests. This resonated with Pei Shixuan, who mentioned that schools would definitely try to suppress such incidents, as schools would never admit to bullying. They would do everything in their power to silence the victims, thinking it’s the easiest and least resistant way out.
“The Chinese Communist Party’s system is designed to be accountable upwards, not downwards, which is very oppressive. In any situation, be it bullying or major accidents, this system ensures that the government always hides things and prevents others from knowing. This leads to ordinary people being harmed by the government,” he said.