Chinese parents pay for ‘hardship camps’ where their kids clear dung, pick tea, cook in earthen pots

While Chinese parents paying thousands of yuan to give their kids a taste of hardship has existed, the trend saw a dramatic surge this year.

In China, parents are sending their city-raised children to gruelling countryside camps to experience manual farm labour. At these “hardship summer camps,” campers spend up to a month doing demanding tasks such as feeding pigs, gathering firewood, cleaning dung, and even cooking by themselves.

Children at the camp share a room with others and cook on their own. (Representational image). (Unsplash)

Though this trend is not new and has existed for years, this year reportedly saw a massive surge in parents spending thousands of yuan to give their kids a taste of hardship.

What are the camps for?

The “chi ku”, or “eat bitterness”, hardship camps are advertised for children aged 6 to 16, CNA reported. They are mainly organised in areas like Sichuan, Yunnan and Guizhou. These events promise to “toughen up a generation” that many Chinese parents believe have “gone soft”.

In the camp, the kids are expected to mirror farmers' daily tasks, which include digging for food, cleaning and feeding animals, and cooking. The kids' phones are confiscated before they enter the camp, reported South China Morning Post in a report published in August.

The children have to follow strict rules and are even punished if they fail to complete their daily tasks. Several videos have surfaced on social media showing children crying and pleading with their parents to take them home. The camp organisers, however, claim that the tasks given to the kids are not “too hard”.

How much do they cost?

Though the costs of different camps vary, they usually range from 5,000 to 10,000 yuan, depending on the duration. People can enrol their kids for ten days or nearly a month.

What do the organisers claim?

Tong Lu, who is the mother of an eight-year-old kid and also runs a six-day hardship camp, told CNA that kids nowadays cannot “take any hardship”.

“These days, kids … all end up a bit soft,” she said. “They are well-fed and well-clothed. Parents pay to send them to all sorts of enrichment classes (and) almost every family has a car,” she added.

Liu Baoshun, a study tour instructor, told the outlet that, initially, most kids react with shock and surprise upon arriving at the camp, where they are usually required to share a room with five or seven other kids. “They'll say, 'What? We're staying here? I want to go home.'

The organisers of such camps, however, don’t promise lasting transformation. “We’re not a military camp,” Zhang Hao, programme designer of one such camp, told CNA.

Zhang added, “You can’t send a child here for five or six days and (expect) them to turn into a completely different person.”