An enormous red-and-gold banner stretches down the gray masonry front of the No. 19 High School in this northern Chinese city, proclaiming its proudest achievement: Ninety-two percent of this year’s graduates won admission to universities.
Like most Chinese high schools, No. 19 has no sports teams and no gymnasium. On the pavement outside, there are a handful of basketball hoops and a set of rusty metal parallel bars. The playground was completely empty on a recent summer afternoon.
“The cool kids are the ones who do best at their studies,” says Niu Shibin, 18. Mr. Niu, who will be a junior in September, says he likes to play basketball, but his nearly 12 hours a day of school work leave him little time.
China’s elite young athletes may be winning a lot of medals at the Olympics. But in China, organized sports still aren’t really something for regular kids.
Less than 3% of Chinese secondary-school students attend schools with sports teams. Children with exceptional athletic prowess or physical attributes are pulled out of ordinary schools early on and sent to the special academies that train the country’s sporting elite.