Chinese teen’s suicide puts crushing academic pressure in the spotlight

A heart-wrenching suicide note left by an 18-year-old girl who killed herself in April has reignited discussion online about the heavy academic burden placed on children in China.

In the letter, the girl – who was in her final year at a top high school in Bengbu, a city in the central province of Anhui – wrote about the pressure she felt to do well and said she had been broken by relentless exams, particularly maths and physics.

“I cannot bear how you meticulously checked the scores of all the examinations and tests. I cannot bear how my scores appeared frequently in the text messages between you and your friends and relatives. But then you were afraid that I might see them and you secretly deleted them afterwards,” the girl said in the letter written on the back of school test sheets, which was posted on social media recently.

The girl said she had been so stressed that she could not eat the day before an exam, and that the stress had become so severe that she had decided to end her life.

The girl had been attending a high school in Bengbu, Anhui province. Photo: Getty Images

Her father said in a text message sent to friends and relatives that his daughter had hidden her feelings, and he urged other parents to pay more attention to their children’s mental health. He said in the message, which was circulated online, that she had always done well in exams and usually had the highest or second highest marks in the class.

The girl’s death is far from an isolated incident in China – official statistics show deaths by suicide among children and adolescents are on the rise. And experts say excessive schoolwork, and pressure from the traditional notion that academic achievement is the only path to success, are factors.

South China Morning Post