It’s an eventful day this Monday, February 13 for nearly three million students: it’s time for the start of the new school year in the schools, colleges and high schools of the Chinese capital. Reporting.
The event had to be celebrated. This Monday morning in front of this school in the Chaoyang district, in Beijing, the students are welcomed with great fanfare. The principal and the teachers came out into the street to greet the children, one by one. The police were deployed on the sidewalk and Chinese television also made the trip: it’s back to school for nearly three million students.
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This moment was eagerly awaited after the Chinese New Year holidays and, above all, after three years of “zero Covid” policy, during which schools remained closed for very long months. Since 2020, there have indeed been many periods of closures and interruptions when there were cases of Covid-19. The last time the children were in the class was in October 2022.
Zhiying, 12, does not hide his relief to finally see the final end of online classes: “I’m happy to be back at school to see my classmates. Until now, it was only on screen, I could not meet the teachers, nor the other students face-to-face, which is not very interesting”she explains.
“She will be able to work more efficiently than at home”
During the past three years, it has often been the grandparents who have kept the children at home and they too have been waiting for this recovery with great impatience. “I wanted my little girl to go back to school. I think she will be able to work more efficiently than at home. She will be able to concentrate better on her studies and it will be less monotonous“, explains this grandmother.
Joy is visible in children and parents. When an 11-year-old boy slips be”thrilled“, and to have “want to have fun with my friends“, his mother specifies: “I’m super happy, because now it will be a better working atmosphere and he can have fun with his friends as well. Online courses, all the time in front of a screen, it was not good for the eyes. After class, I had to ban him from all screens.“
However, all sanitary measures have not yet disappeared. All the students arrived this morning with the mask and for the moment in this school they must keep it in the classrooms.
Sébastien Berriot’s report near a school in the Chaoyang district of Beijing
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