Students required to run over 100 km each semester at Zhejiang University

When talking about the busiest place at a university, you might think of the library or cafeteria, but at the Zijingang campus of Zhejiang University, the right answer is the sports ground.

Zhejiang University recently reformed physical education courses for its undergraduates. Under the new curriculum, class hours for physical education have been extended from 36 hours to 54 hours a semester, reported Qianjiang Evening News.

In addition to compulsory PE classes, the university also requires students to go extra lengths to obtain a high PE score.

A student has to run 48 times a semester, at least 3.5 kilometers each time for men and 2.5 kilometers for women, to get a full mark in the off-class part of the PE evaluation. The weight of the off-class part in the total PE score has increased from 10 percent to 15 percent.

That means a male student needs to run 168 km a semester and a female student 120 km. To avoid cheating, students need to upload photos onto a specially-designed app to punch in at the end of each run.

The university hopes the students develop the habit of consciously exercising and make sports a part of their lives, said Wu Yehai, director of the university's Department of Public Physical and Art Education.

He hopes that 60 percent to 70 percent of the students will keep the habit of physical exercise after graduation.

The university also requires every student to take part in at least one intramural sports competition from among the plenty of competitions staged every week.

A week after the reform was implemented, there are a growing number of students that are exercising on the ground track field now.

A freshman surnamed Ni who used to not like running said that it turns out that running 2.5 kilometers is not as scary as she imagined.

"After getting used to running, I feel I am living a more productive life every day," she said.