Recently, there’s been a lot of attention paid to online gaming in China. For a bit of context, however, according to Limelight Networks, Chinese gamers averaged 12.4 hours a day, well over the global average of 8.5 hours. It is particularly concerning for children and a recent Xinhua article went so far as to blast the industry for pedaling “spiritual opium.” As a result, the government has announced a slew of new laws over the past few months, regulating everything from the amount of time children can play to the ways in which companies can monetize gaming services.

To get a different perspective and find out if the industry is really as predatory as it’s made out to be, I spoke with industry insider Ben “Books” Schwartz, a narrative game designer who previously worked with Microfun Inc. in Beijing.

China claims video games are addictive and designed to be so. Do you think there are industry practices that encourage addictive behavior?
Unfortunately, yes. Many Chinese game companies use wildly unethical and predatory design approaches, many borrowed from casinos and other forms of gambling. They lure in players with false promises of huge rewards (often carefully worded to avoid actually promising anything), they block off exciting content behind paywalls, and they make progress impossible without powerful characters and upgrades that can only be won from what is essentially a slot machine (a gachapon, in industry terms). These problems are also not unique to China and are being handled differently in different parts of the world. In some countries like Japan, these practices are regulated by the government; in other parts of the game industry, these practices are regulated by community morality. In China, they are unfortunately widespread and show no signs of abating. Notably, these practices almost never come from the actual game designers, as they make the games much less fun to play! Instead, they come from the monetization and marketing departments, following directives from company heads and outside investors who are just out to make as much money as they can from their players.

What do you think about the limits placed on gamers under 18?
I think it’s a complicated situation. There is very much a current push in media and government in China demonizing video games as having a negative influence on youth and consuming their time and money. On the other hand, many games in China are in fact predatory and manipulative towards their players, many of whom are young.

Do you think they will have an effect on limiting kids’ screen time?
To an extent, but I also know that kids are smart – they’ve been finding ways around similar restrictions for years, and I’m sure they’ll figure out ways around these too. (For example, many just register accounts in their parents’ names, avoiding the limits on under-18 players.)

Do you think it will have an effect on the gaming industry? How?
Absolutely, yes. Many Chinese game companies are frustrated with the regulations placed on games released in China, and so are pivoting to focus more and more on making games that will appeal to players outside China. It’s much easier in a logistical sense to release games for Western markets, but the hard part is making games that Westerners actually want to play. This is where people like me come in – Western designers brought in by Chinese game studios to help them do just that.

With 720 million gamers active in China the industry isn’t going anywhere and will continue to evolve. Tencent has already begun using facial recognition software on its wildly popular Honor of Kings game as a way of identifying and enforcing laws aimed at minors. Ultimately, however, only time will tell if these rules are effective and capable of curbing gaming addiction and predatory practices.

KEEP READING: I Spend 3 Hours Playing Video Games With My Kid On The Weekends

Images: Unsplash

Video game time is now 8pm-9pm on Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays, and public holidays only! No, that’s not your mom’s rule…it was actually handed down by China’s National Press and Publication Administration (NPPA) earlier this week.

In its ongoing battle against youth video game addiction, the new laws require online gaming companies to register all players using their Chinese IDs, and anyone under the age of 18 will have their game time restricted to approved weekend and holiday hours. The new rules, announced Monday, are much more stringent than the previous regulations which limited children to one and a half hours per day, seven days a week, and are intended to “effectively protect the physical and mental health of minors.”

This is part of an effort by authorities to curb what they see as dangerous and addictive behavior in minors. Xinhua reported the NPPA would be carrying out more stringent and frequent reviews of major providers like Tencent, whose game Honor of Kings has come under scrutiny in recent weeks.

There has been much speculation about how this will affect the USD 46 billion dollar Chinese gaming industry, especially as additional restrictions are expected later this year. In the meantime, 110 million underaged Chinese gamers are eagerly waiting, controller in hand, for the weekend.

KEEP READING: What’s Really Lurking In Your Kids’ Snacks?

Images: Unsplash

During a news conference on Tuesday, Aug 17, the Beijing Education Commission announced that no new business licenses will be granted to after-school training centers. Meanwhile, existing institutions that already have a license will be allowed to continue operating, provided they comply with the new standards and regulations set by the Education Commission.

According to China Daily, during the news conference Li Yi, a spokesperson for the Beijing Education Commission reminded the public that “the training institutions should not take up holidays, weekends, or vacation time in winter or summer to teach. Nor should they go public for financing.”

The latest reforms have already led to numerous national and international tutoring companies either closing down or filing for bankruptcy, such as Wall Street English.

Conversely, however, public schools are now being asked to increase their services and fill in the gaps left by the new regulatory changes, such as providing students with additional homework and activity assistance.

All of which begs the question: Might this usher in a new era of Chinese kids enjoying a life outside of education? According to one local mom, “we’re skeptical because we don’t want to loosen the reigns and then suddenly find that we’re behind in school.”

Apparently, it’ll take more than regulations and reforms to convince an entire generation of parents to change their parenting techniques or reimagine their priorities. Nevertheless, it does put a renewed emphasis on the importance of children’s physical and mental health. And no matter what a parent wants, should the new reforms stick, the days of shuffling kids off to tutoring centers after a long day of school and signing them up for even more weekend sessions might soon be behind us.

KEEP READING: What the Tutoring Ban Really Means for Kids, Parents, and Educators

Image: Pexels

Up, up, and awaaaay! Well, maybe not for a while. The weather’s great and we’re well into summer picnic season, but if you’re thinking of going to the park to fly your kite, you should probably hold off on that idea for now.

WeChat account 平安北京 published yesterday that on Sunday (Jun 13), a 64-year-old man was arrested for flying his remote-controlled drone in Dongba.

The Beijing Municipal Government issued an announcement that until July 1, all flying objects that might affect flight safety are restricted in Xicheng, Chaoyang, Haidian, Fengtai, Shijingshan, Fangshan, Tongzhou, Daxing, and 9 other districts in Beijing. This means no drones, model air crafts, kites, or anything else that you can think of that will take flight.

These restrictions are likely due to the ongoing air training and dress rehearsals for the upcoming 100th anniversary celebration of the Chinese Communist Party next month.

So if you’re heading out to a nice family picnic in the park with your kids, leave the kites at home and go have some fun with everything firmly planted on the ground – at least until after July 1.

Images: Pexels

Students and educators have a lot of “new normal” for the 2020-2021 school year, and the one that sounds the toughest to me is schoolyard distancing. Kids can go unmasked in the schoolyard but must play one meter apart from everyone else. If we want to ease the pain of our teachers tasked with enforcing this new rule, parents need to start playing socially distanced games with our kids now.

If you ever took theater classes, these games will sound very familiar. Theatrical training revolves around understanding your spatial relations onstage while maintaining an emotional connection with your partner, so it seems like a great place to find inspiration. Show them how much fun it can be one meter apart and they’ll take the challenge rather than complain.

Zip Zap Zop

This game always makes kids laugh. You clap your hands towards your friend and say “Zip!” The person you pointed to claps their hands towards another friend and says “Zap!” That person chooses someone to clap their hands at and says “Zop!” and you start all over. If you mess up and say the wrong word, you’re out. You can play with any number of people and variations are endless.

Zip zap zop from a distance

Whoosh Ball

You play catch with a friend, except it’s an invisible ball. Change the size of the ball just by the shape of your hands. All of a sudden, the ball is on fire! Or it’s an ice ball and it melts in your hands!

Hopscotch

If you can use chalk in your schoolyard, get one person to create the hopscotch board and another student can make circles where the other players stand one meter apart when not in play. Everyone uses a different landing piece, takes turns throwing it onto the hopscotch grid, and skipping along to pick it up without missing a beat. As one friend finishes, others move to a different circle closer to the start of the game.

I Spy        

We all know this one. “I spy with my little eye something that is… blue!” Then other friends try to guess what you saw. It might get a little hard to find new things after a while, but always a good game to try. It gets our family through a lot of DiDi trips.

“I spy with my little eye…”

Spot the Rainbow

Look around your schoolyard and find the colors of the rainbow, in order. This will require friends to agree on what colors are in a rainbow, but that’s fun too!

One Word Stories

Stand one meter apart and take turns telling a story together. The trick is you only tell it one word at a time. Spice up the game by suggesting a genre of a story to tell, like a fairy tale, comedy, talking animals, Halloween, etc.

Who Am I? And Charades

Classic games that never get old, one friend chooses a kind of person or an object and the other kids ask questions to figure out who they are. If the person who chose only answers yes or no, it can get very tricky.

Does anyone know why it’s called Simon says? Who’s Simon?

Simon Says

Nothing says you can’t play Simon Says at least one meter apart. One child starts as “Simon,” and gives instructions on what the other kids do. If the “Simon” says “Simon Says” before an instruction, the others have to do it. If she doesn’t, and you do it anyway, you’re out.

Freeze Dance

Someone sings while their friends dance. If the singer stops singing, the other players stop dancing and freeze. If you’re so into the dance that you don’t freeze, you’re out! Sense a pattern?

Mirror Exercise

Stand one meter apart from your partner, and slowly one of you starts to move. Stay very still except for one movement at a time, like a mirror image. The trickiest part is there shouldn’t be one leader. Both partners should feel as though they are working together to move. It’s a great game to build concentration.

Rock Paper Scissors

It’s always fun to see how long kids stay entertained by this game. Besides the standard rock, paper and scissors combination, challenge them to create new ones. There’s “Rock, Paper, Dragon,” “Giants, Wizards, Elves,” and “Rock, Paper, Scissors, Magic!” for the Hogwarts crowd.

I tried these with my kids at orientation, when they looked around their schoolyard and asked what they would or wouldn’t be allowed to do. Once we got into the swing of some of these games, it felt just as fun as contact tag! There’s one less thing to stress about this school year.

KEEP READING: Back to School: Grid Management and Canteen Regulations

Photos: Unsplash and Canva

All international arrivals entering Beijing will now have to complete an additional week of home observation on top of the 14 days of centralized or home quarantine already required for returnees. The deputy secretary-general of the Beijing municipal government announced the new regulations at a press conference on Tuesday, adding that incomers must also designate a ‘health monitoring contact person.’

To be sure, the country’s borders still remain closed to foreigners. Nevertheless, given that 9th and 12th graders will be returning to the classroom next Monday (Apr 27), all of the students and faculty currently stuck abroad will be eager to come back as soon as they’re allowed. Unfortunately however, given the new rules, it will be a full 21 days between landing in Beijing and walking onto campus.

Other than the need to provide daily health checks and the inability to leave the house, the exact requirements for those under home observation were not outlined during the press conference. It was stated however that individual requirements would be communicated to the person via text message, presumably upon the completion of their two-week stint in state quarantine.

As officials reiterated at the end of March, all people who enter the greater Beijing area must undergo quarantine, without exception. Whether returnees are quarantined in a centralized location or at home is dependent on the returnee’s community, their age, or preexisting health conditions.

The change follows a mid-April case in Shuangjing, in which a returnee completed two weeks of quarantine, tested negative for COVID-19 with a nucleic acid test, but fell ill two days after returning home. The returnee then infected three other members of the household and forced over 60 ‘close contacts’ to redo their quarantine. This also resulted in Chaoyang District being classified as a high-risk zone.

Most experts estimate that the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19 may incubate in the body for one to 14 days before symptoms appear, averaging an incubation period of five days. However, as the aforementioned returnee shows, the virus may be carried asymptomatically for even longer in some rare cases.

In addition to a growing number of cases in South Korea that have shown patients may not always attain immunity after recovery – a phenomenon that could either be caused by reinfection or from remnants of the virus resulting in false positives – cases like this illustrate just how little we know about the disease, which is why extra precautions are still being taken.

This article first appeared in our sister publication the Beijinger.

Photos: Sarah McCutcheon (via Unsplash)

Masks while teaching. No large-scale events. No outsiders on campus. Temporary isolation areas for possible virus sufferers. These are just some of the 25 requirements the State Council has set forth for Beijing (and the nation at large) for creating a safe environment for all when it’s time to resume school.

First things first – no date has been announced yet for the new semester (so if that’s what you’re looking for here, read no further).

With that out of the way, below are the 25 requirements for K-12 schools that were announced Tuesday by the State Council’s Joint Prevention and Control Mechanism Against Covid-19.

Also, if you are searching for the original Chinese, you’ll find the document from the State Council’s website here (a different document was also circulated for preschools here).

Before School Opens

1. Ensure the health of students, teachers and staff by conducting and submitting daily heath reports to supervising authorities.

2. Provide all staff training on prevention and control systems, personal protection, disinfection, and the like.

3. Thoroughly disinfect the entire campus, as well as ventilate all classrooms.

4. Assure all returning teachers, staff and students have conducted a 14-day self-quarantine in the local area before returning to campus.

5. Assure an adequate supply of hand soap, hand sanitizer, masks, gloves and other prevention and control materials.

6. Set up a temporary isolation area for any person who shows signs of fever or other symptoms related to Covid-19.

7. Formulate clear emergency plans for epidemic prevention and control, including training and drills, with the school principal holding top-line responsibility.

After School Opens

8. Keep abreast of the health of staff and students on a daily basis, inspect students and staff in the morning and the afternoon, implement a daily reporting system, and report results to the supervising department.

9. Properly store and mark disinfectant to avoid accidental ingestion or burns. When disinfection is carried out, the operator shall take effective protective measures.

10. Every area on campus (such as classrooms, dorms, libraries, laboratories, sporting facilities, cafeterias, teachers’ offices and washrooms) should be ventilated with fresh air at least three times a day for no less than 30 minutes each time. Ventilate with open windows or mechanical ventilation as much as possible during class breaks. If air conditioning is used, ensure safe air supply, sufficient fresh air input, and that all exhaust is vented directly to the outdoors.

11. Strengthen surface cleaning and the disinfection of common objects. Classrooms, dormitories, libraries, cafeterias and other places should be kept clean, tidy, with a disinfection routine recorded every day, with particular attention paid to high-frequency contact surfaces such as door handles, faucets, stair handrails and fitness equipment.

12. Strengthen the cleaning and disinfection of dining equipment. Tableware should be disinfected after every use. Students should be encouraged to bring their own tableware. Tableware should be sterilized using heat or a chlorine solution after each use.

13. Bathroom fixtures should be regularly disinfected with a chlorine solution and rinsed thoroughly afterward.

14. Ensure that hand-washing facilities are functioning properly and are equipped with soap or hand sanitizer, in hands-free dispensers when possible. There should be a least one washbasin or 0.6m long sink for every 40-45 persons.

15. Strengthen the sorting and disposal of garbage, ensuring prompt disposal and regularly disinfecting containers.

16. Teachers are advised to wear masks when teaching.

17. Implement strict hand hygiene measures for teaching staff and students. Hands should be thoroughly washed with soap and running water or hand sanitizer before meals; before and after trips to the toilet; after contact with garbage; after going outdoor; after using sports equipment; after using school computers or other public equipment; after contact with animals; or after touching any possibly contaminated goods.

18. Strengthen the monitoring of absences due to illness. Keep records of absenteeism, early retirement and leave requests. Follow up with staff and students who are absent due to illness.

19. Large group activities should not be held.

20. Promote personal hygiene and protection among staff, students and parents. Demonstrate the correct way to wash hands and cultivate good health habits such as using tissues when coughing or sneezing.

Emergency Treatment of Suspected Virus Sufferers

21. If a staff member develops a fever, has a dry cough, fatigue, stuffy nose, runny nose, sore throat, diarrhea or other symptoms, they should immediately alert their superior and promptly report to a designated hospital. Public transportation should be avoided and a proper medical-grade or higher mask should be worn en route.

22. If a student develops a fever, has a dry cough, fatigue, stuffy nose, runny nose, sore throat, diarrhea or other symptoms, they should promptly alert the school and take appropriate measures.

23. Any suspected case of Covid-19 among staff or students should be reported immediately to the District Disease Prevention and Control Department, and cooperate with the relevant departments to manage all close contacts of the suspected case.

24. All of those who are living and studying with the affected person should be informed of risks and should seek medical advice promptly if symptoms such as fever or dry cough arise.

25. Designate a staff member to be responsible for monitoring the health of staff or students while under quarantine.

Photos: Unsplash

On Feb 17, China’s Ministry of Education (MOE) released a warning regarding a new fraud scheme meant to deceive students and parents using online learning platforms.

According to numerous reports by parents of elementary and middle school students, people have been impersonating school employees through various WeChat and QQ groups, doling out fraudulent information about the postponed Spring semester and the implementation of online teaching, and then requesting payments via WeChat, Alipay, and other online payment methods. 

It’s no secret that the move to 100 percent online learning caught many schools and families off guard, effectively plunging both into otherwise uncharted territory. As such, MOE stressed that education departments and schools should continuously work to develop and manage their systems, as to ensure the safety and security of teachers, students, and parents .

For schools’ WeChat groups and QQ groups, MOE suggested relevant staff:

• Strictly enforce the responsibilities of group admins
• Strictly identify all members in the groups (real-name system)
• Strictly implement group approval and verification systems
• Remove suspicious people

It is recommended that students and parents double-check with schools and teachers before making any purchase. If students or parents do find themselves in a suspicious situation, they should report it to their school, keep relevant evidence and documentation, and promptly report the incident to police.

Photo: unsplash.com, moe.gov.cn

Parents that both work and have children under 18 will be allowed to have mom or dad stay home to take care of the kids without fear of termination or having their pay docked, Beijing’s Social Security bureau clarified last week.

Earlier this month, the Beijing Municipal Human Resources and Social Security Bureau and the Beijing Municipal Education Commission jointly issued a notice stipulating that one spouse from every dual-working household shall be permitted to stay home and look after children under the age of 18. Likewise, the one parent staying home is entitled to full pay regardless of the amount of work they can get done, Lu clarified.

In an article in Beijing News last week, Beijing Municipal Human Resource and Social Security Bureau press secretary Lu Xiaobo reiterated the rules on the eve of what was supposed to be the first day back to school for most Beijing students.

Currently all public and private schools in the city are restricted from restarting off-line classes due to the Covid-19 outbreak, with no new announced restart date in sight.

Lu also said that employers will not be permitted to terminate the labor contract with those staying home for child care, and for those with labor contracts about to expire, employers should extend them until the completion of the quarantine period or the emergency measures imposed by the government.

Parents of minors should follow their company’s leave application procedure and negotiate a work from home arrangement with their employer, or adjust hours as necessary, such as working weekends to compensate for lost time once business operations return to normal. In the meantime, employers and employees are encouraged to be flexible with working hours to ensure that their company gets back on track.

It should also be noted that the policy does not strictly address single parent households.

Moreover, according to the regulation, this policy only applies to parents who have children in kindergarten through grade 12, and cannot attend school due to the delay in onsite classes. The policy does not apply to children under the age of 3, who, according to Chinese law, are not required to attend school.

As with most things during the Covid-19 outbreak, this policy is largely predicated on an honor system, and puts faith in the employee to honestly self-report their family’s unique situation. So although two parents could, conceivably, both tell their employers that they are unable to work, and thus take untold days off, it is up to each and every one of us to do what we can to get China’s economy back on track.

Lu said companies and employees should keep their communication positive, negotiate in kind, and reach a mutually agreeable consensus.

“Each family member should take some responsibility for looking after children,” Lu said. “We recommend sharing the responsibility in order to allow the working parents to return to work, which will benefit the whole country’s economic recovery.”

Photos: Alyssa Stevenson on Unsplash, Pixabay