Parents of 2018 kindergartners were surprised, to say the least, when they found out that the back-to-school assembly featured a performance by a pole dancer. The principal of the Xinshahui school in Shenzhen, China, apparently thought it would be a good idea.
Pole dancing is, of course, an art that is not necessarily sexual. However, in a country as conservative as China, it's not surprising that parents did not respond well to the news that their 5-year-old children were made to watch such a performance without their permission.
The pole dancer incident is apparently not the first strange thing that Principal Lai Rong has done for her children. At the end of the previous school year, she reportedly arranged several days of "military-style celebrations" that glorified guns and other weapons. If anything's inappropriate for little children, it's being told that guns and violence are great. Lai managed to survive that, but hiring a pole dancer for kids was too much.
These strange instances were reported by journalist Michael Standaert, who has (or had) children enrolled in this school. He came across some video footage of the performance and was not pleased by what he saw. You can see portions of the dance on his Twitter account, and it looks to be, at the very least, pretty sensual.
But it gets weirder. Apparently, there were also ads around the kindergarten for a pole-dancing school, presumably where the performer came from. Maybe it's just me, but I feel like those kids might be a little young to drop out of regular school to learn pole dancing.
"More from the opening day of our kids' kindergarten. Crazy," Michael tweeted. "We're trying to get them out of there and get our tuition back."
Can't blame him there.
When Michael's wife called the school to complain, Principal Lai apparently called the performance "international and good exercise" and then hung up on her.
Nobody's disputing that pole dancing is good exercise, but maybe there are less controversial forms of exercise for little kids? Possibly?
Michael also posted photos of the military displays that included "machine guns and mortars" from the previous school year. The journalist had considered pulling his students out of the school then, but decided not to. The pole dancing, however, was the last straw.
"Here's the Bao'an education bureau's announcement about the firing of Ms. Lai," he wrote. "Parents had already complained to the police, the bureau and called Chinese media before I'd even posted anything here."
That is not surprising.
Lai sent an apology letter to the Global Times after she was fired explaining that the school had not reviewed the content of the pole dance beforehand. Apparently, however, someone above her was aware that there would be a pole dance. Lai wrote that "the school was simply trying to liven up the atmosphere."
She even claimed that some of the parents approved of the pole-dance performance.
"A few parents did come to me requesting a refund and threatening to pull their children out of the school," Lai wrote in her letter, "while others said it was just to learn a new type of dance."
Somehow, it seems that Lai did not at all anticipate being fired, and she's pretty broken up about it.
As bizarre as this was, it's not the only strange thing that schoolkids in the area have been made to watch at assemblies. One school reportedly put together 12 minutes of "mandatory viewing" they claimed was "educational," and it turned out to be a bunch of commercials for school supplies.
There were actually protests in the Hunan province about overcrowding in classrooms at almost the same time as kids in Shenzhen were watching pole dancing. One recent protest of angry parents turned into a full-on riot that ended in 46 arrests.
The parents alleged that the district responded to overcrowding complaints by transferring some of the children from public schools to private schools. This would have been a fine solution if the parents hadn't then been charged exorbitant private school fees when they couldn't afford them in the first place.
I'd be throwing bottles, too.
There was probably some attempt to make money involved in the kindergarten pole dance, but it's also very possible that the people who organized the assembly didn't know it would cause offense. An article about a 5-year-old giving a pole dance performance in Haikou points out that there are no (or at least very few) strip clubs in China. People in the country therefore might not connect pole dancing to anything particularly sexual.
"However, with there being no strip clubs in China, pole dancing does not carry the same negative connotations it does in the west," the Nan Fang reports. "In fact, the introduction of pole dancing has become so positively regarded in the country that the China Daily said pole dancing has 'shake(n) off its ill repute in China.'"
Then again, parent Michael pointed out in a comment that the principal did a bit of a dance herself that appeared to involve some actual stripping.
"The principal also danced (and threw a piece of clothing she'd stripped off) and there were advert placards all over the school grounds for the pole dancing school."
Okay, then. Shut it down.
