Pressure

The amount of pressure applied on kids and young adults in China is staggering.  As I have said before the pressure for a student to perform well in school is unreal.  In the US most parents want their children to succeed and some push hard but honestly I doubt it is anything like what happens in China.  In the race to improve their lives, often having come from farming or immigrant lives, the best way to improve the family standing is to succeed in school.  The pressure is to be #1 or maybe #2 in class.  Anything else is looked at as almost a failure. 

There are other pressures, like to get married at a young age.  Women who have not gotten married by 30 are considered "leftovers" and shunned in many ways by society.  This is increasingly a challenge as there are many women who have followed the first pressure of schooling and are now trying to be successful in the real world, thereby bypassing marriage (and kids) at a young age.

The pressure in this article was on a young school girl to get a haircut and read what happened.  So very sad....
http://www.chinasmack.com/2012/stories/chinese-schoolgirl-refuses-haircut-commits-suicide.html

As an FYI ChinaSmack.com is a very interesting website, you should check it out occasionally.

nolan