Campus Taboos

Do not return to your dormitory at midnight.

— D University’s Prohibited Rule

My name is Lin Zijian, a student at the D University School of Business—a quintessential college student.

Getting into D University took all the effort I could muster. God knows this perverse school also has some sort of bizarre aptitude test, and just that alone eliminates ninety percent of applicants. Strangely enough, after enrolling, none of us could recall anything about that test. Still, it didn’t affect our daily lives.

D University is a completely closed-off private institution. As long as you’re admitted, your parents receive a large sum of money. In other words, it’s as if your child is being sold to the school. The university ensures that all students who graduate normally will never want for food or clothing, but its elimination rate is even higher than that of fighter pilots—by graduation, fewer than one in a thousand of an entering class remain. Even so, parents scramble desperately to send their children here. After all, with the two-child policy now in place, if one’s ruined, there’s always a second, isn’t there? Better to sell them to the university than waste them at home.

Today, I vented about all this with some friends from my hometown. Since our parents abandoned us here, we can only rely on each other to survive. Even if we do manage to graduate, no one wants to return to that so-called home.

As the saying goes, “A thousand cups are too few when drinking with a kindred spirit.” Today I found a like-minded companion and drank five bottles