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Winter vacation is around the corner, and a management school at Zhengzhou University has given one special assignment to students happily going home to celebrate Spring Festival: perform a kowtow to their parents.

The students are generally not pleased, according to media reports. The school explained that kowtowing is the highest manifestation of gratitude in China, and to do that to your parents during the Chinese New Year is not asking too much.

I don't know what's in the students' minds, but I don't think it's a good idea, either.

Now I have to engage in some fancy footwork to avoid self-contradiction because I had previously supported a similar task: washing your parents' feet.

In a fast-urbanizing world where human interaction becomes increasingly superficial, it is important to reinforce the fragile ties between parents and their children, who tend to drift away both physically and psychologically. The school authority is right to remind students that reviewing textbooks, partying and food binges are not the be-all and end-all when it comes to the holiday. There is one virtue that should never be neglected in any modern society love for your parents.

And it deserves to be on the educational agenda. Given the "little emperor" status of most children in China, appreciation is something that should indeed be hammered home once in a while to replace the natural sense of entitlement.

However, kowtowing is awkward. It implies supplication and is more often associated, through endless images in television soap operas, with inferiority. It is more a symbol of submission and respect than one of love and thankfulness.

I'm not against children who willingly kowtow to their folks. Physically it is by no means acrobatic, but if forced to perform the act, people will adjust their mentality and strip the gesture of any inherent meaning, which will evolve into another vacuous ritual.

Just imagine a kid who kneels and knocks his head on the floor to his parents on every possible occasion, and then turns around to take drugs and gambles away the family fortune. Would the kowtowing lessen their parents' heartbreak?

Washing feet could also degenerate into an inane ritual if the school rigidly enforces such an assignment. But it has obvious advantages over kowtowing: It is less symbolic; and since it involves physical contact, it could have an electrifying effect when it's first performed. I've heard that some children and parents experience a magic moment of bonding during the process.

Honestly, I cannot imagine kowtowing will have the same impact. Most probably, the parent will laugh a little out of unease and say "Rise! Rise!" which is a common line in costume drama. Everyone will regard it as play-acting, just like the offering and refusal of cigarettes as a greeting routine.

No, I don't think it is humiliating to kowtow to mom and dad if, unlike in feudal dynasties, it does not entail the surrender of one's free will. But as a token of love, it is just not as heartfelt and pragmatic as other options.

Here are some alternatives:

You can attend one less gathering with old buddies and instead scrub the floor, wash the dishes and do the laundry. In that way, your parents can enjoy a well-deserved rest.

Or you can take your parents for a walk in the local park, chatting with their buddies for a change. That'll probably take up a few hours of "Nintendo time".

In the very least, you can hug your parents and say: "Thank you for your love." Why give "free hugs" to strangers on the street when you can give it to the people who deserve it most?

(China Daily 01/27/2007 page4)