One day my daughter, a sixth grader in elementary school, told me about her school experience when she was home from school: "Mom, we watched last week's news review on TV that the yellow and dry grass lands in Beijing were especially painted green because China is striving to host the Olympic games in 2008, and all students and teachers sneered at it. In discussion, some of us held that covering a city with grass was for beautifying the environment, but doesn't painting it with chemicals just damage the grass and harm the environment? The dry, yellow grass will turn green after winter, but spraying it with chemicals will kill it. One student told us, 'I also asked the same question when I watched the news at home, but Dad told me that in China the government would be up to killing people at will, so will they bother to take care of the life of the grass?' All of us were shocked by what he said.
"Some classmates asked the teacher, 'What did we do in striving for the Olympic games in Sydney?' The teacher replied, 'You are too small to know what happened that time, but do you remember what we did in last year's Olympics in Sydney?' One student answered immediately, 'My sister worked as a volunteer.' The teacher continued, 'being a volunteer is a noble activity of the Olympic spirit. You have seen that everything during the Olympics is natural, true, and without artificial exaggeration and cover, because the meaning of Olympics is not the score itself but it lies in the spirit of peace, friendship, enterprise and participation. It would have gone against the spirit itself if we had cheated in striving for the position. Imagine, how many lies would a person tell if he or she can cheat before public.'
"Our teacher told us that any cheating is immoral, no matter whether you are in an exam or doing other things. Cheating others is just cheating yourself.
"The following class is about family; everyone talked about his or her family. When I said my forefathers lived in China and all my relatives except my immediate family are still living in China, some students laughed and made the gesture of spraying. Obviously the influence of the last class still existed. They even asked me jokingly, 'Did one of your relatives spray the chemical on the grass?' I had to explain that I am not Chinese because I was born in Australia."
Finishing her story, my daughter asked, "I was really embarrassed today, mom, why did the Chinese people cheat?" I explained, "The workers will not be paid if they don't do their job." My daughter was puzzled and asked naively, "Why can't they quit the job that cheats people when so many people in Australia volunteered in the Olympics?" "I'll never do such a job no matter how much I am paid," my daughter said. I smiled at the pure little girl. Children always tell the truth, but actually we were all once children. Isn't that true?
A practitioner in Australia
March 7, 2001