少年发声

What is this book about?

A collection of in-depth interviews by the veteran Chinese journalist Chen Yu with sixteen young people from different backgrounds. Their ages, regions, and family situations vary, but the interviews converge on one kind of experience: growing up under an education centred on grades and tightly controlled by parents, and the sustained psychological strain and distress this produces. The book is built mainly from the teenagers' own accounts — how they describe their situation, their relationships with their parents, and the feelings they find hardest to say at home. It is a Chinese-language work of reportage.

Why read it?

It is a rare piece of Chinese reportage on family upbringing that lets the children speak for themselves. The author does not rush to conclusions or prescriptions; she presents sixteen interviews and lets readers hear what the young people say. For parents and teachers, these first-person accounts supply material that adult perspectives rarely reach. For readers who have faced something similar, the book at least shows that the feeling is not an isolated one.

Core Ideas

• An education centred on grades and tightly controlled by parents has caused deep psychological harm to some children.
• Not everyone is suited to being a parent; raising a child takes capacity and self-awareness, not blood relation alone.
• Children's psychological suffering is often overlooked by adults, or read as disobedience and immaturity.
• What these children need is to be heard — and the interviews exist to give them that chance to speak.

What questions does this book try to answer?

• What do children actually endure under a family education led by grades and control?
• What have Chinese children done wrong to deserve such distress?
• How should parents respond when a child shows psychological suffering?

Who should read it?

For Chinese parents and teachers, and for young readers still living with the effects of a difficult upbringing who want to know their feelings are not unusual. Some parts may be distressing; read it when you are steady, and seek professional support if it touches your own experience.

How to Read It

Sixteen interviews, each standing alone, so they can be read in any order. The author is a journalist who has long covered education; the method is documentary, with no systematic educational or psychological explanation, which makes the book a set of testimonies rather than a research monograph. The interviewees speak with their own feelings and positions, so treat what they say as particular experience rather than a summary of all Chinese families. The author's central concern is that adults take children's distress seriously.