Parents across China are paying thousands of yuan to send their children to rural camps that put them to work. The programmes have city kids digging potatoes, stripping bark and feeding pigs through the summer holiday.
The camps are sold as courses in hardship. Organisers say a season of farm labour teaches children what physical work feels like and what money is actually worth.
A 10-day course costs more than 4,000 yuan or about 600 US dollars, and a full month can run past 10,000 yuan. Most of the camps operate in the southwest across Sichuan, Guizhou and Yunnan, where summers stay comparatively cool.
The daily schedule copies the working life of a farmer. Children dig potatoes and then hawk them by the roadside, and they also tend pigs and other livestock.
Camp rules are strict. Phones are taken away on arrival and supplies are handed out according to how much work each child finishes. A child who misses the target eats only potatoes at that meal.
Videos circulating online show children in tears and begging to be sent home. One boy says he will do every piece of homework he is given, as long as he never has to farm again.
Organisers defend the model. They say the point is to show children the real cost of labour, and the tasks sit within what a child that age can manage.
Some camps also ask children to write letters home. Parents have shared those letters widely and they have since become part of the sales pitch.
A father in Sichuan sent his daughter to one of the camps during her first year of secondary school. She complained the whole time, he said, but she ended up enjoying the farm work.
A mother in Shanghai sent her seven-year-old daughter away for 10 days. The girl is still a picky eater and still avoids chores, but her mother was glad she had left her comfort zone.
The trend has split opinion in China. Supporters argue that a spell of hardship teaches children to value an easy life and stops them growing up spoiled.
Critics see a risk instead. City children with no experience of manual work could be harmed in body and in mind if the workload runs too heavy.
The camps were reported by the South China Morning Post.
Related news
- China orders 4-million EV recall over hidden door handles, Tesla hit hardest
- China’s housing crash architect gets life in prison
- Google plans to move all Pixel production out of China by 2027
The story Chinese parents pay thousands for farm camps that leave children in tears as seen on Thaiger News.
