Chinese father orders ‘rebelling’ 11-year-old daughter to dig for lotus roots in blazing hot sun to teach her value of education

The video of the girl working on the farm went viral and sparked a debate about harsh parenting
Many people thought it taught her a life lesson, while others thought it was unnecessarily harsh

Parenting: teens

Liya Suin Shanghai

Published: 9:00am, 28 Apr 2022

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A father’s decision to force his daughter to dig for lotus roots by hand to teach her the value of education sparked a debate about how Chinese parents should discipline their children.

The father, surnamed Ye, was trying to teach his 11-year-old daughter in central China’s Hubei province perspective about what life without proper education would mean for her future.

“My daughter was going through a period of rebellion, and her teacher told me that she did not want to go to school any more,” Ye told the mainland news platform Yidian Zixun.

The girl spent hours working in a lotus root farm in central China. Photo: Weibo

Ye decided to bring his daughter to the lotus field where her grandfather works. The girl spent four hours in the blazing hot sun picking the roots out of mud, leading to sunburns and peeling skin.

“Take off your shoes quickly and get into the water. If you do not want to go to school, you must surrender to the reality of life,” Ye told the girl in the viral video.

The girl did as she was told but cried loudly and wiped away tears with her T-shirt during the ordeal.

The video sparked a heated debate on the Chinese internet, as people debated if the father was teaching the girl an “important life lesson” or had been unnecessarily harsh.

One person who claimed to be a teacher commented on Weibo: “This is a good idea. I have kept this video in my file and am prepared to show it in my class.”

Another said: “Parents like him should have two or three kids in response to the three-child policy.”

“When will you organise a field trip? I must enrol for my kid to experience how difficult life is,” a user asked.

The girl listened to her father, but spent much of the time crying. Photo: Weibo

Simultaneously, the video also sparked a lot of criticism.

“The essence of learning is not to escape a hard life,” one commenter said.

Another added: “It is a good idea that offers her the freedom of choice, but it is hazardous and the little girl had a bad sunburn.”

Authoritarian parenting in China has sparked fierce social debates for years, and many families believe in the maxim of “spare the rod and spoil the child”.

Last year, officials removed custody rights from a mother who had violently punished her 12-year-old daughter for not studying.

Less seriously, a video of a mother in northeast China staring at her child when she was taking online classes in 2020 went viral.

On January 1 this year, a new law that regulates how parents care for their children came into effect. In the country’s first case, a court in Hunan province heard a case of a nine-year-old girl forced to live with her nanny because her divorced parents had neglected her.