Barefaced cheek

Hu Huakai bolted out of a blue Ford sedan, wearing nothing but a white loincloth. He ran through a throng of students for about 50m and removed the cloth before dashing back, said "thank you" to the crowd and disappeared into the waiting car.

The whole episode lasted just a few minutes. Some onlookers did not even realize what had just happened. It was shortly after 9 pm on Nov 5 and the scene was a street outside a college campus in Hangzhou, eastern China's Zhejiang province.

Hu is a senior at Zhejiang Gongshang University. He was not happy that school authorities shut off the power at 11:30 pm and the streak was a kind of protest. In press interviews afterward, Hu added the protest was not just about the power being switched off, but the education system as a whole.

Hu is one of those students who does not fit into China's one-size-fits-all mode of education. By conventional measures, he is a bad student. He ranks 46th in a class of 46. He flunked 35 courses out of a total 59. He rarely attends classes and even skips exams because, he says, "The professors simply read textbooks aloud".

Yet Hu's classmates think he is smart. He writes well and often posts his poems online. He loves literature and intelligent computer games, but not his major of trade and commerce. He has what his peers call "character" and is influential among his peers.

Hu is disdainful of the education he is receiving. "Teachers care only about our attendance and our homework. They don't give a damn whether we love what we learn. Study should be full of joy. I'm happy when I study on my own. Why can't teachers give me a similar experience? I wouldn't be surprised if one course was boring, but all courses - that shocks me," Hu said in one interview.

Education is not only boring, but useless, according to many who are familiar with China's education system. When graduates are shoved into the job market, many find themselves ill prepared for real-life. I brought up this issue with a few of my high-school buddies who, unlike me, were science majors in college.

"What I learned in humanities turned out to have little relevance in the real world, but you guys were taught useful stuff, right?" I asked.

"No," they replied, they had to learn on the job.

To be fair, not everything taught in China's institutions of higher learning is extraneous to our society. But few can deny that quite a lot of the textbook knowledge that's being imparted is better left in the archives. No wonder students are so apathetic, even resentful.

In the past decade, a few celebrities have been born from acts of rebellion against the system. Painter Chen Danqing quit his position as Tsinghua professor because good students were sieved out when they failed to pass tests not pertinent to their line of work. Writer Zheng Yuanjie took his son out of the school system and gave him home schooling instead.

From press reports, it is difficult to determine whether Hu is gifted or just a failing student trying to find an excuse. But his complaints were spot on. He simply cannot cut it in the grinding machine, which will only suffocate him. He needs to find his own path.

As for the well-planned streak, the enfant terrible was shocked at the overwhelming response. Tens of thousands of comments were posted in just a few hours after the incident, most in support of him and some inviting him to repeat the act on their campuses. They were all students and shared his frustrations.

On more formal platforms, such as the print media, opinion formers were predominantly against him.

"Does baring your buttocks make you an artist? Don't pick up foreign habits without foreign ideas. That will only disgust me," wrote Long Hua in the Beijing News forum.

Another observer, Sun Yuguo, opined: "Running around without your underwear makes you an animal. You'd better stay in the woods."

It is clear detractors have one thing in common: They hate public nudity, especially by men. It is, for them, a shameless act.

Why do normally broadminded pundits suddenly turn intolerant when it comes to nudity? Isn't streaking less harmful than, say, smashing bottles and throwing them out the window, as is the norm on some Chinese campuses when steam needs to be let off?

In the minds of the old generation, youngsters have more outlets than ever. They have the Internet, albeit often dammed from the outside world. The young see how their peers in other countries behave and have a tendency to imitate.

"Maybe what I did will start a new trend, like those who first streaked at Harvard. It's a youthful thing, devoid of any lewdness," Hu said.

Many years ago I wrote about the streaking tradition at Harvard. Many colleges in the US have this custom. I know several Chinese students who participated. They were not protesting, just testing their mettle by deliberately breaking a taboo more psychological than social. They told me the experience was "liberating".

I'm not encouraging it, but streaking should be tolerated. Those who make a big fuss over it are quite hypocritical. Not so long ago, before Chinese households were fitted with water-heaters, we all had to go to a public bathhouse and face a battalion of naked bodies.

Critics of streaking do not seem to realize it is their attitude that makes streaking so effective. The more you denounce it, the more rebels like Hu will use it to get in your face. If you ignore it, it won't have any impact. Why don't you pick on spitters instead? Spitting has a verifiable negative effect on others.

Thinking of it, this conservatism is probably seated in our collective subconscious. Confucius was insistent on proper rules and rituals and covering up one's body was the sine qua non. A century ago, the little that athletes wear now would have been scandalous. Yet we have adapted. We have also shifted from seeing ballet as porn (consciously or not) to viewing it as an art form. If Confucius were alive today, I'm sure he'd be adamant Chinese divers cover up.

Hu's streak got a condescendingly positive response from the school authorities. Less than two hours after it took place, a representative was dispatched to "have a long chat with him". He would not be "punished", but showered with attention. The school sees every student as its child, even if Hu wants to be seen as an adult.

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