我这辈子最讨厌的就是形式主义。
“The thing I hate most in this life is formalism.”
A 13-year-old boy in China makes videos calling out the fakeness in his school, his family, and the system that produces both. He is the child in the Emperor’s New Clothes — the one who says “he’s not wearing anything” while every adult nods along.
What He Sees
The school food is fit for livestock. They run a “clean plate” campaign — a good intention that is only an intention. Students buy homework assignments for 520 yuan. The baking class provides no ovens and forbids using the school’s equipment, so students buy baked goods online. 形式主义 (formalism): the performance of education without its substance.
Writing compositions, they cannot write anything too negative. But those are their true feelings. The textbook says to write with sincerity — and then the exam punishes sincerity. He says: “We elementary students have our own lives. We are not study-organisms.”
The moral blackmail comes from all sides. “You’re a Young Pioneer, you should know better.” Teachers invoke duty. Parents invoke sacrifice. The commandments of harmony are enforced on a 13-year-old body.
What He Knows
His parents fight constantly. The relationship is not harmonious. He did not receive much love. He writes his father a letter and leaves it under the ashtray where his father smokes.
你们自己把自己的婚姻过得一团糟，还平时对我这样的一个孩子提各种各样的要求
“You’ve made a mess of your own marriage, and yet you make all kinds of demands on a child like me.”
His father has a control compulsion — wants the child to follow his thinking exactly. When the boy makes his videos, his father says it is no different from suicide. This is the letter-to-parents written by a 13-year-old who has not yet learned to be cold — who still has the courage to say what the adults around him cannot bear to hear.
The Commentary
The commentator observes: this boy has encountered the wall of the system for the first time — you can raise objections, but nothing changes, because behind it is a web of vested interests.
China’s primary education is a system that suppresses human nature. It is a process of making you accept, submit, get accustomed to lying, and gradually accept the unspoken rules of the ugly, the false, and the evil.
In China’s education system, if a child develops independent spirit, it is almost always through rebellion — because a good student in this system is virtually incapable of having independent spirit. The Johnstone insight applies globally, but in China the mechanism is total: the system does not merely discourage the first thought — it trains you to produce the approved thought so automatically that you forget the first thought existed.
When you speak truth in this society, will you receive praise? No. You may face destruction. He is like the child in the Emperor’s New Clothes — and the commentator asks: in a society where all the adults say the emperor’s clothes are beautiful, what happens to the child who says otherwise?
The Dead Bird
那纸打开之后是一对鸟的翅膀，这个鸟已经死了。
When the paper unfolds, it reveals a bird with outstretched wings. The bird is dead. The commentator observes: this boy perhaps already knows he IS that bird.
He says: “I’m not sure how long I can keep holding these beliefs. Maybe I can hold onto them — but these things will grind away my edges.”
This is the fifth stage of mastery that will never be reached — not because the boy lacks talent but because the system is designed to arrest him at stage two. The integrity test starts at age 13. The cost of being disliked in this context is not social awkwardness but the systematic grinding of a child’s soul.
The adults have failed him completely. His parents fight and demand. His teachers moralize and punish sincerity. His father calls truth-telling suicide. 希望所有的受摧残的这个小树苗，都能够重生，能够长成了璀璨的花 — “I hope all these trampled saplings can be reborn and grow into brilliant flowers.”
He is 13 years old. He already knows that hope is unlikely.
Main Payoff
I want to make these videos so that they know: there is a boy who dares to face things for the sake of truth. I will not tolerate living in such a garbage environment.
The radical-honesty question: what happens to a society where only 13-year-olds are willing to tell the truth? The how-to-talk-to-kids question: what happens to a child whose true feelings are systematically classified as “too negative” and punished? The running-on-empty question: what fills the space where love should have been?
The dead bird with outstretched wings. That is the answer.
References:
- 小孩哥 video, YouTube