Chinese local government officials in Shenzhen built an umbrella for this tree. Why? Because it was planted by the Chinese president Hu Jintao.

The above is a math question for a Chinese elementary school. See if you can solve it. Characters in the first row are aliens and the second row non-aliens. Pick up the alien from the third row.

Students at Liaocheng University (聊城大学), Shandong (山东) organized a blessing ceremony for the victims of Sandy Hook shooting.

On the other day, someone asked this question: “How to teach times tables to students?” on linkedin “Math, Math Education, Math Culture” group. A few answers the song option. What it means is that children remember the multiplication table as a song (or poem) before school age. They don’t even know what it means, but they can speak out answers right away. Unfortunately, this option is not available for English speakers.

In Chinese, we have the famous “nine-nine table” (九九表). Every single Chinese pupil in China grows up with this table. This method has been used for more than 3000 years and is populated into other neighboring countries such as Japan.

So, can we have a similar English multiplication table and let children try at daycares? There are many songs on YouTube, but I don’t really like them. I think we should make it simple. We don’t need a song that one can sing from start to end. Instead, what we really want is a poem such that when someone gives you, say, 8 and 9, you can speak out 72 right away. That’s exactly what the Chinese multiplication table does. I make up a table as follows:

nine-nine table

Literally, this is just the Chinese “nine-nine table”. I am not an English native speaker. So, this table may not perfect. Can someone else help me improve it?

The image is not so clear. So let me make the first four rows below. The key is the usage of “be”. Note that there is no “be” at the last column.

If you don’t read Chinese, you might be surprised by the above photo. Did the boy do something wrong? No, not at all. To the contrary, he is a well-behaved boy. The reason that he was tortured was that his teacher wanted to take this picture. The teacher Yanhong Yan (颜艳红) enjoyed taking this kind of pictures. Many children in her class had to be her stage properties. See the images below.

Ms. Yan didn’t think that she did anything wrong. In fact, she thought the picture was funny and showed it to the boy’s parents voluntarily.

After the case was exposed to the internet, the daycare let the teach go but the Chinese police could not find a law that could be applied to the teacher. The teacher herself refused to apologize to the parents either.

Related post: Nanny beats baby but it is legal in China.

Fake pregnant belly is popular in China these days. Some use it to avoid being laid-offs. Some others use it to get seats on bus. The price range is from 400 to 2800 yuan (US$60 – 420).

Beijing’s Traffic Jam on Sept 26, 2012
Source: wenxuecity.com

More pictures can be found here.

This scene occurred at Hope Elementary School, Cixi City, Zhejiang Province (浙江慈溪市坎墩街道太阳希望小学). There male students talked in class and punished to run with loosing pants. The teacher assigned two female students to watch them as well. These photos were posted at a local forum and was removed three hours later. But it had reached out to other websites already.

It is said that this is a real road plate pole in Haikou City (海口), China.