Students at a leading high school in central China’s Hubei province walked out of class on July 10 after administrators abruptly cut their summer vacation, marking the fourth documented student protest over school-imposed rest restrictions since mid-May. A video on X shows students confronting school staff directly over the decision.
Students walk out over a slashed summer break
First-year students at Anlu No. 1 High School in Anlu, Hubei, stopped attending class on the morning of July 10 and gathered outside carrying a hand-painted banner reading “oppose centralized control, promote equality, give us back our twenty-day summer vacation.” The phrase “反集权,” translated here as “oppose centralized control,” is more commonly used to criticize political authority than school policy.
Reports differed over the exact length of the cut. Some online accounts said students were given only five days off, while one student told Epoch Times they were ordered back by July 15, leaving roughly four and a half days of vacation.
A school staff member reportedly offered to approve individual leave requests on the spot. Students rejected the offer, saying it did not explain why the vacation had been cut.
“Why is it that every year someone revolts here?” one student asked a teacher in a video circulated online. “Have you ever thought about why?” The exchange was independently reported by both a mainland outlet and Taiwan-based New Tang Dynasty Television. Other video showed students carrying exam papers marked “long vacation” as they marched through a corridor, refusing to disperse.
Success
You are now signed up for our newsletter
Success
Check your email to complete sign up
Accounts of the outcome diverge. Some say administrators restored the full twenty-day break that day; others say the school instead canceled its planned summer tutoring sessions, a narrower concession. New Tang Dynasty Television said the resolution claim came from unverified online reports and could not be confirmed.
One widely shared comment accused the school of using what Chinese internet users call “PUA” tactics, a slang term describing manipulative psychological control. The commenter argued that administrators first took away a benefit students were already entitled to, then restored it only after organized resistance.
Anlu No. 1 High School was founded in 1942 and is a provincial model school in Hubei.
A student at the school’s older campus, a boarding facility in Anlu, said conditions there lag behind the newer campus, which has better university admission rates. “Most of us here avoid living in the dorms if we can afford to rent instead, because the housing conditions are especially poor,” the student told Epoch Times under a pseudonym; the account could not be independently verified. The student said the vacation cut triggered frustration that had been building for some time, and that the school moved only once students voiced a unified demand.
Student unrest spreads across China
Three earlier protests targeted school rest-time restrictions elsewhere in China. On May 29, students at Yangxin County Experimental High School in Hubei sang “Freedom Flower” from classroom windows, a song written for the June 4th vigils commemorating the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, while throwing down notes; one read “give me liberty or give me death,” the standard Chinese translation of Patrick Henry’s line.
On the night of May 26 into 27, students at two Guangxi colleges, the Guangxi Vocational College of Sports and Guilin University of Aerospace Technology, sang through the night after dormitory power outages left them without air conditioning in 30-degree heat. Both schools sang “Glorious Days,” a Cantonese anthem by the Hong Kong band Beyond about Nelson Mandela’s struggle against apartheid, whose lyrics urge holding onto freedom through hardship.
The largest incident took place on May 16 at Wenshang County No. 1 High School in Jining, Shandong, where more than 2,000 students walked out after the school extended weekend dismissal from 3:50 p.m. to 5:50 p.m. for extra exam preparation. An X account tracking mainland protests, “YesterdayBigcat,” reported that resentment ran deeper: the school had long guaranteed only one full day off every four weeks, and reforms since 2024 still left students roughly 24 hours of rest a week. Students blamed Wu Zhiguo, the newly appointed vice principal, for reversing earlier concessions and testing how far restrictions could be pushed.
After learning of the extended dismissal plan on the evening of May 15, students organized overnight by word of mouth. The next morning, students on the third floor of the main teaching building walked out first, joined quickly by first- and second-years until the crowd passed 2,000. One student carried a banner, reportedly a prop from a school drama production, reading “fight for sovereignty abroad, punish the traitors at home,” a slogan from the 1919 May Fourth Movement. A text titled “A Manifesto Against Wenshang No. 1” circulated among students that day, urging them to stand firm and reject the new restrictions. After about 45 minutes, the school restored the original 3:50 p.m. dismissal time, and students returned to class.
